Re: Zelandish (was: 2nd pers. pron. for God)

 --- John Cowan wrote:

> This is slightly reminiscent of the non-standard English versions of
> the demonstratives with adverb attached:  this-here /DiSj@r\/,
> that-there /D&tEr\/, these-here /DizIr\/, those-there /DozDEIr\/, and
> them-there /DEmEIr\/ in my pronunciations.
That is exactly what the demonstrative pronouns look like in Afrikaans:
|hierdie| "this, these", |daardie| "that, those".

Polish has something similar: |ten| "this", |tamten| "that ... over there".
Note that the latter is rare in comparison to the "normal" form, |ten|.

> It may be (nobody knows for sure) that the anglophone habit of writing
> "'s" for historic genitives derives from this 16th-17th century style of
> "John his book" > "John 's book" > "John's book".
Again, Afrikaans does this: "Jan se boek". Or another example I remember by
heart: "Die generaal se beursie" (the general's wallet).
In Dutch it can be encountered as well ("Jan zijn boek"), but only in spoken
(and not very sophisticated) language. Correct would be: "Jans boek" (currently
more often written "Jan's boek". English influence?), but in this case the |-s|
is a genitive form, definitely not a remnant of |zijn|.

> One of the cool things about the Germanic family (and probably many
> others, though Romance does not seem to have this property) is the
> way in which they reuse the stock of ancestral function words and
> morphology differently in each language, making each language appear
> like a bad parody of the others.  This also affects the main lexicon,
> though to a lesser degree in modern times when there is so much fully
> international vocabulary.
That's why it is so funny to translate things literally. This kind of humour
gave birth to phenomena like "Double-Dutch", "Duitslands", etc. Unfortunately,
it is understandable only for those who know both languages. A poem of John
O'Mill would be probably incomprehendible for an Englishman who doesn't know
Dutch.

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com

Reply