Re: CHAT: Being taken for a furriner ...

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 22:55:50 +0200, =?iso-8859-1?q?Steven=20Williams?=
<feurieaux@...> wrote:

> --- "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...> schrieb:
>
>> >Anyways, she made that remark after laughing at my
>> >saying something like "Draussen ist sehr heiß ,
>> >nicht?" ("It's very hot out, isn't it?"). I'm
>> pretty
>> >sure she was laughing at me using 'nicht' to mark
>> tag
>> >questions. Tell me, are tag questions particularly
>> >Bavarian?
>>
>> Not at all! It's common to tag-question with "nicht"
>> (the "t" usually
>> dropped which doesn't occur in other words ending on
>> "cht").
>
>You mean /Macht/ drops the [t], or is this true only
>in cases where the [x] is palatalized to [C]? Or is
>this only the case with /nicht/, pronounced as [nIC]?
Only in the case of "nicht" (never in words like "Gesicht, Gericht, dicht"),
and also in the case of "braucht" 'needs' 3.person sing., but in this latter
case grammarians suspect that the loss of the "t" is due to the verb
becoming a modal verb, modal verbs don't having a t-ending (muss, darf,
kann, soll) because they originally were preterito-praesentia.

>> There's even a
>> kind of tag particle in Southern German, "gell",
>> which is originally a verb
>> form related to "gelten", which can still be seen by
>> the use of it's plural
>> form in southwestern dialect: "gellet", which is
>> used when adressing groups
>> or as honorific (either third or second person
>> plural).
>
>Cool, "gell". Have to remember that.
>
>But I had a strong feeling my usage of 'nicht' as a
>modal particle was correct, since I've heard it before
>many times (and this is confirmed by my big honkin'
>German reference grammar).
Of course it is! It's even more 'standard' than "gell" which is often
considered substandard like many southern words such as southern "Stiege"
instead of "Treppe" or southern "daheim" instead of "zuhause".

>> >He used articles with proper names, which I find
>> >awesomely cool, if a bit comical. I'd use them
>> >myself, if I felt brave enough.
>>
>> In German, that is? It's considered to be a southern
>> regionalism, and maybe
>> northern speakers consider it to be vulgar.
>
>Well, I use them in English just to be facetious (ex.
>"How's the Christina doing?" for "How are you,
>Christina?"). I never use it in German, since I'm
>_very_ self-conscious about my usage; I usually err on
>the side of hyper-correctness to be safe, though
>recently, I've become comfortable using 'nonstandard'
>(i.e., usually not found in textbooks) contractions,
>like /'ne/ for /eine/.
>
>> g_0ry@_ˆs:
>> j. 'mach' wust
>
>[gRy:s]
>——Steven Williams
The dropping of the "e" in the plural of "Gruss" is a southern regionalism,
too. :) The (northern) standard is "Grüsse" (hope you won't mind the
correction).

Grüess
j. 'mach' wust

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