J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>Here in the southern German speaking area, if see a feature our dialects
>have but standard German doesn't, then we assume this feature to be a
>southern peculiarity. But I'm not sure of it in the case of the use of the
>article with nouns.
>
>I know of one feature that is sais to occur all over the German speaking
>area except for standard German: The use of dative + possessiv pronoun in
>order to express possession in a noun phrase:
>
>dem Deutschen seine Sprache
>the-DAT German(-DAT) his speech
>'the speech of the German'
>
>The standard is:
>
>die Sprache des Deutschen
>the speech the-GEN German(-GEN)
>
>So the use of the article could be a similar case of a feature occurring all
>over the German speaking area except for standard German. I don't know it.
>
>gry@s:
>j. 'mach' wust
>
>
>
In the Spanish spoken in the jungle here in Peru a construction similar
to the first one above is often used. The standard would be for example:
la tapa de la botella
the top of the bottle
the colloquial would be
de la botella su tapa
of the bottle its top
del agua su duro
of (the) water its hard
(meaning ice)
The construction is sometimes used humorously in newspaper headlines of
articles about the jungle
De Iquitos su turismo.
(Iquitos being the main city of the jungle)
David Barrow