Just saying hello
Hello everyone, I'm a new member here.
I have studied German for about 5 1/2 years. The story of all it how started is really long so I'll refrain from recounting it. When I was studying abroad in Spain, I decided to spend my last month in Berlin seeing as classes weren't in session. It was a wonderful experience and I really wanted to go back ( Read more... )
I have studied German for about 5 1/2 years. The story of all it how started is really long so I'll refrain from recounting it. When I was studying abroad in Spain, I decided to spend my last month in Berlin seeing as classes weren't in session. It was a wonderful experience and I really wanted to go back ( Read more... )
Uh, I guess the main thing about Low German is its status as a language or a dialect. It has an interesting history because it used to have a standard form, but now it doesn't have one and the standard forms that the speakers use are either Standard Modern Dutch or Standard Modern German.
There are several very interesting books that I've gone through that deal specifically with dialectology:
Dialects of Modern German edited by Charles V.J. Russ
This one deals with many different dialects of German Low, Middle, and Upper German varieties.
The Story of Low German and Plautdietsch by Ruben Epp
This one is very interesting because it details the migration and linguistic features of the specific group I'm studying and also looks at it in relationship to English (since English is closer to the Low German varieties than it is to High German varieties).
Um, there are also ones which have some historical dialectology but I'm not sure how readily available they are to the public.
Niederdeutsch Gestern und Heute by Hans Joachim Gernentz
This one was published in 1964 so like I said... I'm not sure how easy it is to find.
I hope that's enough, but if you have more specific questions, let's see if I can answer them! Because of the work I've been doing I can understand an intermediate level of this variety of Plautdietsch. I'm looking mainly at its structure.
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So you said it was closer to English, I heard that it was also close to Scandinavian. Any thoughts on that?
Aside from that I don't have any others questions :)
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I think the thing to keep in mind is that Danish was the most politically powerful Scandinavian language for quite some time (even today in the Faeroe Islands and possibly to some extent in Iceland). Denmark is very close to Low German speaking regions meaning speakers of one language could have easily maintained contact with speakers of the other language. So whether Low German was the official language or not, the fact that the speakers are so close to each other could have been environment enough to bring about shared linguistic innovations.
Now that my studies are over (for now) I have even seen some shared grammatical properties that these languages share (Low German and Mainland Scandinavian languages). These seem to be fairly recent innovations which surprised me. These are innovations that they don't share with High German, Frisian, or Icelandic.
I actually want to apply for a Fulbright to continue studying some of what I found in Northern Germany to see if I'm onto something.
Sorry if this doesn't make much sense... I've been adding things in and taking things out as I go! :P
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You spoke about recent innovations that linked both languages (Danish & Low German) together. Any idea or thought how that could have happened? As it is, I noticed that few people speak real Low German, most only have some lexic or a certain sentence structure here and there with only perhaps the pronounciation being 'obviously' Low German. So I wonder how recent innovations could happen in both languages when few speak Low German?
Do you have any examples?
Also, what is a Fulbright?
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The Fulbright is a grant that is offered in several varieties. There's a teaching Fulbright and research Fulbright which are the two most common kinds. I want to go for the research Fulbright to go to northern Germany and continue studying this, but Germany is one of the most competitive locations. The only people from my school who have gotten it are people in natural sciences. My chances are probably better applying for the teaching Fulbright with this as my "project", but I really want to get a research Fulbright.
I specifically studied gender and case collapse in Germanic languages with a special focus on Plattdeutsch and Plautdietsch (the Mennonite variety). Many people I know who speak Plattdeutsch or are from northern Germany will admit that the language is dying, but I think this change might have occurred over 200 years ago. The reason is because the Plautdietsch communities exhibit some of the same collapse patterns which are specific to that region and the last time they were in Germany was over 200 years ago.
Something that I find curious though... Dutch underwent a similar collapse fairly recently (I don't have my books in front of me, but I think it was around the 1900s). Dutch, a descendant of Old Frankish, now shares the North Sea border too.
The collapse is basically what creates "common gender".
In Scandinavian languages (save Icelandic and Faroese), you see that masculine and feminine nouns share the same determiner where as neuters have a separate one. In Low German, you see the neuter gender as the most "distinct" gender for the most part and masculine and feminine are distinguishable, but to a lesser extent.
This also generally happens with a case collapse where you get what you have in English "Subject" and "Object". There is no formal distinction between direct and indirect objects. Some languages have even leveled this case distinction so that the subject and object aren't formally distinguished. English has done this in the lexical noun phrase, so there is no change in the phrase "the dog" whether it's subject, direct object, or indirect object.
The reason why I say recent is because these languages are generally spoken of in a grouping consisting of older characteristics.
1) 3rd Person masculine pronouns beginning with "h". English "He".
2) Not being affected by certain sound shifts that occurred in High German. English and Low German "Apple" instead of High German "Apfel".
This is all in contrast to the south where the case/gender collapse occurs in a different direction entirely. The collapse there will generally "combine" the function of the subject and direct object into one case that is opposed to the indirect object. This will tend to leave the gender system completely in tact and only affect case.
I think later this week I might make another post about my research in case anyone is interested. I hope I was able to answer some of your questions, but feel free to ask if you want to know more.
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