Re: YADPT (D=Dutch)

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:

> Thanks for the clarification (and John, and Stone). I'm at home now, and I
> just checked in the dictionary: the Dutch name, surprise surprise,
> is "kasuaris".
> Note: possible, due to the recent spelling reform, the spelling ought to
> be "casuaris". But I'm not sure if that matters much to you... ;)
Silly little spelling reformers. When K and when C?

> >Okay. Mum was asking about two words, one of which was a dialect word and
> >the other was standard. I forgot which way was which (and what the dialect
> >word was for that matter).
>
> Hm, would you remember the other word, then?
> (in "my" Westfrisian dialect, not to confuse with Frisian BTW), the word
> would be "moidje").
durske or durksa. (I tried spelling it as dirska, thinking more in English :)

> I don't think it has anything to do with orthography. Partly because /S/
> and /Z/ do not exist in Dutch as phonemes, our pronunciation of <s> and <z>
> sometimes comes dangerously close, especially in city dialects.
Oh, okay, could be that then.

> >> No. <ie> is always [i], and [i] is always [I].
> >
> >Really? Because I really _cannot_ hear the difference. If that's not a
> >dialectal peculiarity or an oddity of my own, maybe the French should
> >learn to speak Australian English or something :)
>
> Strange, "bit" and "biet" (both existing Dutch words) are pronounced the
> same as English "bit" and "beat". With one difference: "biet" sounds like
> [bit], "beat" more like [bi:t]. Perhaps it's that difference that makes it
> difficult to distinguish for you?
Yeah, I'm imagining so (well, it's actually a diphthong in my dialect,
starting from [I], [@] or something approaching [e] but closer and tenser.
I'd probably pick up on the redundency of extra length in other dialects.
And the fact that I know English would probably help too). But I always
imagined I'd be able to tell the difference... It's something of a
surprise.

Oh, and een and twee are pronounced the way they would seem in English in
Mum/Oma's dialect of Dutch, so the <w> is /w/ and the ee is [i:] or
something. I guess the [w] > [v] would've been excluded after consonants
too?

And Mum suggests that you might be Protestant (or have had a Protestant
upbringing) and that that explains the difference in Hollands vs
Nederlands. (Oma's Catholic. Mum's nominally Catholic. I'm agnostic.)

> Ah, of course! Well, then you meant either "dank je wel" or "dank u wel"
> (the latter is more formal).
Ah, that'd be it. I was thinking it might be 'u'. And probably with a w,
not a v.

--
Tristan.

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