Re: American Dutch dialects

> > This is what happened in Europe: with the arrival of the railway,
> > towns of any importance (old towns with a railway, new towns at
> > railway junctions) had four men who had an education in the
> > big city: the station master, the doctor, the priest and the
> > school teacher. That number meant they could meet on Sundays to
> > play l'hombre or whist in the home of one of them, after the
> > school marm wife had cooked dinner, which is what they were since
> > no one is more conscious of getting socially ahead from the
> > boorish masses they came from than they are, or they wouldn't
> > have chosen that job. This is the beginning of what used to be
> > the Standard Language in the European countries. It would be
> > strange if USA was an exception. I don't think the school
> > marm would want to teach her pupils to speak like the
> > frontiersmen.
>
> Not too different but with one exception: the US is huge compared
> to Europe and school marms normally would not have come from far
> away. They simply would have spoken an acrolect version of the
> local language. In many, if not most cases, schoolmarms were small
> town girls who wanted to move up a rung or two in society, so they
> took a chance and went out to the country with the hope of marrying
> a pastor, a station master, etc. But we're talking about 50
> kilometers or so in most cases. According to folklore, schoolmarms
> were expected to be single.

But you forget one thing: the extreme mobility, albeit mostly one way
and once only, of American society at the time. If she struck lucky,
that school marm would find a husband so important that he had
actually studied on the east coast, or at least at the local state
university, where he would have been taught by professors from the
east coast.

> My maternal grandfather was one of the local gentry, and later in
> life, was a schoolmaster. He spoke a softer more standard version
> of the local WV dialect. He said "tomato" instead of "mater", etc.
> but with the local intonation.
> Keep in mind that in the 1800s, the r-less Boston dialect was
> probably seen as the prestige dialect, but it certainly was not
> taught by schoolmarms in Appalachia and the Midwest.

Well, you keep in mind that America always had two standards: one New
England / British one for blue-blooded Americans and one 'true'
American one for red-blooded Americans. On that point it was similar
to Norway in the 19th century: you can't use the language of those you
just freed yourself from, so to assert your differentness you have to
pick up habits from the bottom layer, in Norway the dialects, in the
USA, since there was no national legitimacy to be gained from local
dialects, from Low New York, in my opinion, which would have had
retroflex r's and r-colored vowels at the time or Brooklynese wouldn't
have /oI/ today. Place a school marm in the loyalty conflict between
the nationally dubious and mostly breadless New England, and the
blingbling of New York; those are the two sociolects her successful
husband would have mastered, and you know what she will choose.

> > And since the Sinter Klaas -> Santa Claus plays a large role in
> > the American pantheon (just kidding), the channel which brought
> > that deity from the Dutch would be conducive to language
> > peculiarities too.
> > Remember that similar religions imply cultural influence.
> >
> > BTW I read in the archive that according to Miguel the retroflex
> > r occurs in both Leids and Rotterdams.
>
> Yes, but they also picked up Chivari, etc. from the French and I
> don't think we picked up our /r/ from them either.

Erh, okay. Who they and what on earth is Chivari?


Torsten