Columbian Danish (was: political Zera)

Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>> From: Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
>
>> I'm not up to par on Zera's history. But in *our* world, the Nordics
>> in Greenland died out in the early Middle Ages. When Danes came back
>> to Greenland, it was already after the Renaissance. I was picturing
>> the same situation in Zera. Since Northern Jutland was in most places
>> infertile bogland, it would have seemed ideal for Jutlanders to move
>> to what is in our world Northern Canada -- not necessarily Greenland.
>> The Danes, afterall, colonized Northern Canada as well in the world of
>> Zera.
>
>I don't think straight-forward colonization normally leads to creole
>formation. Settlers would probably deal with native groups separately,
>and creoles seem to happen more when linguistically diverse groups are
>forced to live together under an administration whose language none of
>them commands, as in slave and imported labour camps.
That sounds realistic. So perhaps not a creole, but some a variant
of Danish not intelligible with European Danish. It seems to me
afterall that the Danish language changes/evolves quite quickly. One
only has to watch old Danish movies to hear how much Danish has
changed over the decades. So if we go backwards in time, then
Columbian-Danish certainly would have evolved from some form of
Danish that is no longer spoken today.

>And even then, I think the administration language tends to form the
>lexical basis for the creole, with only minor additions from the
>original languages of the speakers.
What's the story with Afrikaans then? Dutch must have certainly been
the administrative language at one time in S.Africa. But Afrikaans
has sufficiently changed since then such that it is now considered a
separate language from Dutch. Maybe something similar could have
happened with Columbian Danish? Carlos?

>On the other hand, I would assume that a trade language/pidgin would
>arise, allowing the settlers to trade with the Inuit and Indian
>peoples around them. And if something --- war, disaster --- then
>happened to displace and mix up large number of natives, the trade
>language might end up forming the basis for a creole.
>
>> I was refering to the generation of Jutlanders who are old -- those born
>> before the German occupation. Relative to Jutlanders who are born after
>> 1975, these older generation Jutlanders speak an 'old' dialect. They
>> are certainly NOT "speaking Danish" when I hear them. ;-)
>
>That's true. They speak the pure dialect, not the school/TV-weakened
>version that the younger generations use.
>
>But I thought you were referring to the old belief that those dialects
>are little changed since Viking times, and that West Jutland fishermen
>are able talk to Scottish ditto when they meet at sea because their
>dialects are still similar. (That's more probably due to a sort of
>trade language, perhaps combined with a shared set of sea words ---
>taboo replacements for words that will offend the sea).
Oh yeah, I heard that one too. I have never taken that seriously though.

-kristian- 8)