Plattdüütsch

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Widukind
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Plattdüütsch

Postby Widukind » 2018-09-02, 21:16

Hello, everyone.

I am looking for online resources to help me with practicing spoken "Low German". Specifically, Northern Low Saxon, but I'm willing to learn with a different dialect in the meantime because they're all so similar anyways. I've been learning Mennonite (Plautdietsch), but it's been mostly because of circumstance and availability of resources. Here in Canada, it's pretty easy to find information and speakers of that dialect.

Anyways, I'd really appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction, short of actually going to Germany right now. I don't have the time to do that right now.

caleteu
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Re: Plattdüütsch

Postby caleteu » 2018-09-03, 5:15

Well, as a matter of fact, English is a Low German dialect. And so is Dutch.
yours, Caleteu

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linguoboy
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Re: Plattdüütsch

Postby linguoboy » 2018-09-03, 5:20

caleteu wrote:Well, as a matter of fact, English is a Low German dialect. And so is Dutch.
yours, Caleteu

Yeah no, not under any commonly-accepted definition if the term.

Are the lessons from Radio Bremen still up? Those were the best materials I ever found for Northern Low Saxon.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

h34
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Re: Plattdüütsch

Postby h34 » 2018-09-03, 6:51

linguoboy wrote:Are the lessons from Radio Bremen still up? Those were the best materials I ever found for Northern Low Saxon.

Yes, they are:
http://www.radiobremen.de/bremeneins/serien/plattdeutsche_nachrichten/plattsprachkurs100.html

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Widukind
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Re: Plattdüütsch

Postby Widukind » 2018-09-03, 10:03

caleteu wrote:Well, as a matter of fact, English is a Low German dialect. And so is Dutch.
yours, Caleteu

Not really. English doesn’t represent that part (old Saxon and Angle) of its roots very well. Dutch is a bit closer, but it isn’t a dialect.

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Widukind
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Re: Plattdüütsch

Postby Widukind » 2018-09-03, 10:04

Thanks for the insight, guys. I will definitely be listening to Radio Bremen on the regular.

caleteu
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Re: Plattdüütsch

Postby caleteu » 2018-09-04, 5:36

Widukind wrote:
caleteu wrote:Well, as a matter of fact, English is a Low German dialect. And so is Dutch.
yours, Caleteu

Not really. English doesn’t represent that part (old Saxon and Angle) of its roots very well. Dutch is a bit closer, but it isn’t a dialect.


A linguistic would define Dutch as a dialect of Low German, because Dutch speakers and Low German speakers can usually converse. We call it a language because it is the state language of a state. By the same token Portuguese is a dialect of Spanish. Bavarian and Swabian, however, are not dialects of High German, they are languages.

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linguoboy
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Re: Plattdüütsch

Postby linguoboy » 2018-09-04, 15:43

caleteu wrote:A linguistic would define Dutch as a dialect of Low German, because Dutch speakers and Low German speakers can usually converse. We call it a language because it is the state language of a state. By the same token Portuguese is a dialect of Spanish. Bavarian and Swabian, however, are not dialects of High German, they are languages.

There is no consistent scientific criteria for distinguishing "languages" from "dialects". Mutual intelligibility is inadequate for several reasons. For starters, it often isn't mutual: Portuguese speakers can generally understand Spanish, but many fluent Spanish-speakers struggle to understand Portuguese. (See the discussion currently taking place in the Romance Cafe thread.) One reason is that intelligibility is often closely tied to exposure and Lusophones in Europe generally have more exposure to Spanish than Hispanophones have to Portuguese. I've yet to meet a Scottish-English-speaker who couldn't understand American English, but I know scores of American-English-speakers who are baffled by Scottish English. (Not Scots, mind you, but English spoken with a heavy Scottish accent.)

To bring this back to the topic, have you actually heard Low German and dialectal Dutch speakers conversing with each other without switching to German, English, or ABN, caleteu? Books will still tell you there is a "dialectal continuum" covering the Northern European Plain, but practically speaking this hasn't been the case for generations. Moreover, there's a significant divide within the Netherlands between dialects classed as Franconian (including the Hollandic varieties providing the basis for Standard Dutch) and the Low Saxon varieties of the eastern Netherlands. Mutual intelligibility is reportedly still high between Dutch Low Saxon and German Low Saxon but low between Low Saxon and Low Franconian.

(The Netherlands in general has some truly impressive dialectal variation for such a small area. How much spoken Limburgs can you understand, for instance?)
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons


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