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

=?iso-8859-1?q?Jan=20van=20Steenbergen?= scripsit:

> 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|.
So also in English: John's book is clearly a direct descendant of the OE
genitive.  But the *orthographic* use of apostrophe probably reflects the
mistaken notion that "John's book" is short for "John his book" (though
nobody writes "Mary'r book").

> That's why it is so funny to translate things literally. This kind of humour
> gave birth to phenomena like "Double-Dutch",
BTW, the phrase "double Dutch" in English means bureaucratese or other overly
technical jargon, not any kind of language mixture.  It's just one of a fair
number of negatively loaded terms with "Dutch" in them:

Dutch courage: the kind you get from drinking
Dutch uncle: a patronizing person
Dutch anchor: a useless object (archaic)
Dutch treat, go Dutch: each pays for himself
Dutch auction: the asking price is lowered until someone bids
if that's so I'm a Dutchman: emphatic negation
in Dutch: in trouble with parents or other authorities

We've discussed most of these at one time or another.
A nice quotation, author forgotten:

"[After leaving college] you no longer read French literature in the
original French, nor sociology textbooks in the original double Dutch."

> A poem of John
> O'Mill would be probably incomprehendible for an Englishman who doesn't know
> Dutch.
Try us!

--
John Cowan                              jcowan@reutershealth.com
http://www.reutershealth.com            http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Humpty Dump Dublin squeaks through his norse
                Humpty Dump Dublin hath a horrible vorse
But for all his kinks English / And his irismanx brogues
                Humpty Dump Dublin's grandada of all rogues.
                        --Cousin James

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