Re: political Zera

> Date:         Wed, 12 Apr 2000 15:18:53 +0200
> 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.

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.

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).

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