Re: political Zera

> Date:         Wed, 12 Apr 2000 13:18:20 +0200
> From: Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
> What about a Dano-Inuit creole? But I think more interesting would be
> a Juto-Inuit creole. The really really old dialects in Jutland are
> almost entirely non-intelligible to Eastern Danes. So perhaps a form
> of Danish could have evolve in those territories from some older form
> of Juttish. I'm reminded of Afrikaans and Dutch. I'm part Juttish myself
> so I could contribute. Maybe I should join the Hangkerim mailing list
> for that.
Make it a Norse/Inuit creole, perhaps --- I don't see how speakers of
anything like modern Jutland dialects would have been present in any
significant numbers on Greenland.

Contrary to Romantic beliefs, the dialects found in Jutland now aren't
'old'. They do preserve some very old features, but they are generally
_less_ conservative than the inland Zealand dialects that formed the
basis for current Standard Danish. At least that's what I was always
told.

Interestingly, it seems that there's a very ancient isogloss running
right down the watershed in the middle of Jutland --- the East Nordic
Monophthongization, which has been dated to 600 CE. So in West Jutland
you can still find diphthongs in words like 'stein' (stone), which is
'sten' in East Jutland and Standard Danish.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)