Re: Low German and Dutch (was Re: Aesthetics)

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:56:56 +0100, T. A. McLeay wrote:

>Perhaps you know why if Holland and Switzerland left "Germany" at the
>same time, what differences in history account for a standard Dutch
>language, but no standard Swiss German language? Being a separate state
>obviously is not a sufficient quality but it probably was necessary at
>the time... (Consider Scotland, where Scots ceased to be considered a
>separate language from English at a similar time, because of the merger
>with England.)
There may have been a number of reasons:

* In the United Provincies of the Netherlands, there was an elevated national consciousness
because of the independence war from Spain – the treaty of Münster 1648 marked the end of
that war. In Switzerland, however, national consciousness had declined after Swiss expansion
had ceased in the early 16th century.

* The Netherlands were an economic and military superpower of the time, whereas the
Switzerland was a rather loose association of mostly rural states.

* Around 1500, Swiss writers started adopting the common German language, abandoning
older language traditions tied rather to "classic" Middle High German, a language that was
closer to the local varieties than modern German is. This was a slow, but steady process,
linked also with the expansion of the printing press. The statal chancellery of Berne was the
last to adopt the common German language only in the first half of the 18th century.

* Ties between Swiss and German literary traditions go back into the Middle Ages, whereas the
(southern) Netherlands had an early literary tradition of themselves. Often, it was Netherlands
tradition that influenced on German traditions and not the other way round because already in
the Middle Ages, the Netherlands were a more developed region and played an important role
in transmitting the culture of chivalry from France to Germany, consider that even such a
cruacial term as "ritter" 'knight' is a phonetically adapted loan from Netherlands "ridder" into
Middle High German (the corresponding Middle High German word is "rîter").

* The Zwinglian reformatory tradition of Switzerland may have been closer to the German
Lutheran protestants than the calvinists of the Netherlands. More important, Switzerland was
confessionally mixed (or rather split), so the catholic states did not want to alienate from other
catholic states abroad.

* I don't believe there were any systematic linguistic reasons. There were proper Swiss literary
traditions in the 15th and early 16th century at the heyday of early Swiss nationalism, as in the
Swiss illustrated chronicles from that time. The importance of French, Italian or Rumantsch as
other national languages was at that time only marginal because all the core states were
German-speaking.

---
crüess
mach
... ta loope-nììc mìr tie, vo floone, vo ìri-jarpeizħraf-tüe šoone-nùnt
üsi närfe no terzue...

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