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

 --- Christophe wrote:

> > A recent thread on this list refered to some Dutch dialects having the
> > varient third person plural pronoun |hullie|, derived from |hun lied|.
>
> Yes, I had forgotten it, but I found it in the archives of the listserv. Note
> that |zullie| appears too :)) .
... and don't forget the first person plural |wullie| :) It sounds funny, but
it does exist.

> > I wonder about the probability of Zelandish having |hylie| but not
> > *jylie.
>
> Well, in Dutch 'jullie' appeared because the original second person
> plural 'jij' gradually replaced the second person singular (like in English),
> which disappeared entirely, and like English uses a description "you all",
> "you people", etc... to mark the second person plural, Dutch developped such
a
> description too, which eroded into the unanalysable 'jullie'. So 'jullie'
> developped only from a need to separate the singular from the plural second
> persons.
That is probably true. But the other forms |hullie| and |zullie| appear to have
emerged rather as variations of |jullie|, without there being anything that
needed repair; |zij| "she" and |zij| "they" are sufficiently distinguished from
each other by the verb form.
|Hullie| and |zullie| remain dialectical forms. In contemporary, spoken Dutch a
frequently made mistake by many people is the use of the original dative form
|hun| (or even worse: |hunnie|!) instead of |zij|.

The personal pronouns in Afrikaans, by the way:
ek, jy, hy/sy, ons, jullie, hulle.

[ snip snip snip grrrr]

> So basically in the case of Zelandish there's no reason why there should be a
> *|jylie|. Basically the speakers of Zelandish did with the third person
> plural like the English speakers, except that they developped an own
> expression instead of borrowing a pronoun from another language.
Agreed.

Jan

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

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