Re: I'm back, and an 'ow' question ...

Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
>
>  --- Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > >There was "Kashubian", "Polabian" and maybe another. "Pomeranian"?
> >
> > There used to be a such language, but that's all I know about it.
>
>AFAIK Pomeranian was spoken in the region called in Polish "Pomorze", which
>is
>bluntly speaking everything East of the Oder, North of Poznan, and West of
>Gdansk. I know nothing about the language, but I have the impression that
>it
>was rather a Polish dialect than a language.
It was not spoken in whatever Vorpommern is called in English
(Vorpommerania? West Pommerania?)?

>Kashubian is currently spoken only in the region north of Gdansk, for
>example
>on the peninsula of Hel.
>I'm quite positive the language in question is Polabian, since it was
>spoken
>West of the Oder. Strange language, if you look at it.
Hm, I found an article at http://www.luzicane.boom.ru/RZaroff.html which
uses "Polabian" to refer to all Slavs west of the Oder-Neisse line, and
subdivides the Polabians into Obodrites, Veleti(ans) and Sorbs. I assume
we'd be dealing with the Veletian version here?

> > >You are saying the local Berliners said that e.g. "Pankow" should be
> > >pronounced /'pANkoU/ not /'pANkOf/? I find that very strange. It's most
> > >un-German. In fact it's most un-Slavic.
> >
> > I shan't swear to the exact pronuncation, but it certainly sounded
> > diphthongized to me. And there certainly was no [f] in it.
>
>I used to have a landlady, who had come to the Netherlands as a Jewish
>refugee
>from Berlin in 1940. Her maiden name was Cunow, pronounced [k_hu:no].
Appears much the same. Shifts back and forth 'tween stuff like [o] and [oU]
in unstressed position are only to be expected across dialects and times,
aren't they?

                                             Andreas

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