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

BP Jonsson scripsit:

> >One of the things I forgot to mention the first time is that Zelandish
> >uses the definite article for forming the demonstatives, |det deer|, and
> >|det heer| or |'theer| /te:r/.  It is declined for case and number.
>
> That's exactly like Swedish _den h=E4r/det h=E4r, den d=E4r/det d=E4r_!
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.  "Them" for "those" is also
a non-standard (and stigmatized) form.

> The same appears in Norwegian _Jon sine briller_.  Note the inflected=20
> possessive adjective!
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".

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.  The Second Sound-shift disguises this in Standard
German, but if you can undo that (not hard) then you see the same effect there.

--
John Cowan                              <jcowan@...>
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              http://www.reutershealth.com
                Charles li reis, nostre emperesdre magnes,
                Set anz totz pleinz ad ested in Espagnes.

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