Re: CHAT: Blandness (was: Uusisuom's influences)

Anecdote time.

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, jesse stephen bangs wrote:

> Likewise when I heard Frisian--I got about a 3rd of it, and felt that the
> other 2/3 were just barely out of reach.
When I was an exchange student in the Netherlands (University of
Tilburg), I was watching a Frisian movie set in the 1700s--the
scene I happened in on was a court scene in which a Frisian
peasant was being questioned in Dutch. Of course, the poor man
didn't understand a word (no translator was provided for him),
and he was found guilty. One of my Dutch roommates came in while
and asked what I was watching, so I told him. He sat and watched
for a while and asked me if I understood what the Frisians were
saying. I was catching a lot of it, and I told him so. He just
shook his head and left, muttering something about how Frisian
was just incomprehensible to sensible folk. I attribute my
ability to understand as much Frisian as I did to 1) my status
as a native speaker of English, 2) Frisian's status as the
closest Germanic relative to English, 3) my proficiency with
Dutch, 4) the heavy influence of Dutch on Frisian, and 5) the
lack of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the Frisians and
their language and culture.

Another one. While I was in the Netherlands, Nelson Mandela was
released from prison in South Africa (now I've dated myself :-).
Since this was a significant story, there were some Dutch
reporters covering it in South Africa. They spoke Dutch to their
interviewees, who responded in Afrikaans; these exchanges
apparently took place without too much trouble. What I found
amusing was that they subtitled all of the Afrikaner dialogue on
Dutch television.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir

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