R: Re: German Dialectology was: Re: Tsuhon: tentative phonology

Henrik wrote:

> > cant remember the url now...) and am curious as to whether any of the
> > dialects have besides Bayrisch has as standardised an orthography as
> > that;
>
> No, because it is different from village to village.  I actually don't
> know what Bavarian orthography is based on, since I think there is
> also not only one dialect.
This recalls me the Northern Italian situation (Lombard, Ligurian,
Piedmontese...) - Just a note: most of you know I live on the lake Como.
There is a village in a lateral valley named Vegna (500 inhabitants, I
think), divided into 3 main neighborhoods. Until 30 yrs ago (I have a book
that witnesses it) each part of the village had a particular intonation
pattern! That's amazing, to say the least.

> > I've seen Saechsisch written dialectally too, but didn't look very
> > standardised...at any rate does anyone write in their dialect like they
> > did in Luxembourg before the introduction of the standardised
> > Letzebuergesch orthography?
>
> Yes, no standards.
The lack of standard orthography can be fatal to muribund languages...

> E.g. the dialect my grandmother spoke (unfortunately moribund now I
> would think: I'm one of the few of my generation that still understand
> it, but I cannot speak it), is very different from what is spoken 5km
> away.
>
> My grandma: Kuier mol wuier Platt.
>             [kUIj6 mO:l vUIj6 plat]
>
> 5km away:   Küör mol wedder Platt.
>             [ky96 mO:l wEd6 plat]
>
> `Speak Lower German (the name of the language: Platt) again!'
>
> (In X-Sampa.  And yes, [y96] is truely the triphthong(?)...)
>
> The orthography is kind of made up and not really stable.  Others
> would do it differently.
>
> It's a pity that this language goes the sad way of many others.  It
> has/(had) an extraordinary amount of diphthongs.
:-(

You can always do something: register your grandma's speeches and analyse
them, write an essay about the phonemics of the dialect, a grammar, try to
learn it and speak it whenever you can... I don't know what, but I think we
all should do something for endangered languages...

BTW, I generally speak Lombard with my closest friends... One of them picked
it up (but he hears it also at home), other two can now understand it (they
are not originally Lombard - anyway I'm not originally Lombard too, so...).

Luca

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