| Archive for langcafe2.myfreeforum.org Come in and have your daily cup of languages! |
| Porthos |
A Frisian conversationI've been looking for coherent conversation such as a talk show in Frisian online, but I can't find anything. Can somebody post a link to something like that? Grazie! |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
You can listen to Frisian radio online here:
http://www.omropfryslan.nl/ Move the mouse (but don't click) to 'Radio' and click 'Harkje Live' from the dropdown list. Unfortunately, I can't listen to it, as my internet connection is not fast enough. |
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| Porthos |
That sounded in between English and German. And it sounded a lot like Dutch, but much softer and less gutteral. Is this your opinion of spoken Frisian?
I also must admit that I understood absolutely nothing except for their "yes", "okay" and "non-stop musik". And it sounded more like Scottish English than English from England or the U.S. |
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| Porthos |
If we want to really compare English with Frisian we have to see it with an English orthography. The Dutch style orthography really throws us off. | ||||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
I'm afraid I've never really been able to hear it. Anyway Josh, what do you think of these recordings? 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselecto...gc=C0C0C0&nbram=1&bbram=1 2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselecto...gc=C0C0C0&nbram=1&bbram=1 3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselecto...gc=C0C0C0&nbram=1&bbram=1 |
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| Porthos |
Was that Scots? Or was it some strange dialect of English? If you speak RP, then you must not be able to understand some of your own countrymen! That's very strange.
I understood about 50% of what was said, and I noticed that they used quite a bit of local slang which I as an American am not familiar with. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Basically, here's what they were: 1. Shetlandic, arguably a Norse-influenced dialect of Scots, spoken in Shetland, which is a group of islands in the northern part of the North Sea that are technically part of Scotland (although many people there may not regard themselves as particularly Scottish or British). The woman is talking about harvesting potatoes. 2. A woman from Berwick-upon-Tweed who seems to be speaking something between Scots and Northumbrian dialect (hardly surprising given the location), although that is the recording which is the most influenced by Standard English. 3. Black Country dialect — spoken in the region about 15km west of Birmingham, which is very near to where I live. If I were to go into a pub in that region, that is how the people would be speaking — I would not be able to understand them perfectly, even though it's not very far away at all. I've probably mentioned this before, but when I was doing work experience at a small historic house just down the road from where I live, we had a school group from the Black Country. It is no exaggeration to say that they were speaking like in that recording — needless to say, we found them difficult to understand! You'll notice that those recordings contain virtually no words of Greco-Latinate origin, which is very much a 'Standard English' phenomenon. |
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| Porthos |
I think it's amazing that there can be such a variety of dialects spoken in a relatively small country. These dialects don't even appear to be mutually intelligable. How is national unity preserved if people 30 miles apart can't even understand each other clearly??? I would have thought that these dialects would have wiped out given the national standardization following the Industrial Revolution and universal public education systems, along with the rise of the radio, tv, and internet all providing uniformity for the newer generations.
My county has only been around for less than 300 years, so we don't really have this problem at all.
Is this because these people are illiterate, ignorant, or uneducated? It sounds as if the language they speak is a dumbed-down, improper and uneducated form of English. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
'National unity' in Britain? LOL! 
But basically, almost everyone can understand Standard British English. And although many people would not be able to speak Standard British English properly themselves, they seem to know to switch to a more 'standard' variety of English when speaking to people from outside of their region.
This has led to a widespread passive knowledge of Standard British English. It is true that mutual intelligibility between dialects has increased as a result of this, although you should be aware that many people are very enthusiastic about their local dialects and take great pride in them because it identifies them as being from a particular region. Of course, I don't speak a regional dialect, so I don't really feel as though I'm 'from' anywhere as such.
I don't really see this as a 'problem'.
Well, to a large extent, much of the Greco-Latin vocabulary was apparently introduced in around the 17th and 18th centuries by the ruling élites in England who believed that French was superior to English. They would almost always have been able to speak French as well as English, so it became fashionable to include a lot of semi-anglicised French words in their English speech to make it sound more 'sophisticated'. They also essentially gave up inventing new English words of Germanic origin, instead looking primarily to French, Latin and Greek for inspiration. Of course, the ordinary working class people weren't particularly interested in this, so they continued speaking their more 'Germanic' form of English. |
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| Fredrik |
Yes, I'd also say that Frisian sounds like gentle Dutch, with a flowing character that reminds me of English.
You can also watch Frisian web TV, if you click the links with a little camera under Thús (= home). Quite funny to see what Fryslân and the Frisians look like, too! Very interesting samples, Benjamin! The Shetlandic (or hjaltlenzka, as they would say in Old Norse) sample was impossible to understand! It sounded very Dutch to me, but I guess the un-Englishness of it has a rather Norse background. For instance when I read the transcript of what the woman was saying, I saw she used the word "hent" for "gather" or "collect". In modern Norwegian we also say "hente" for "collect" or "pick up", though not in the same sense as she uses it. The Black country dialect was hard to understand, but the accent sounds beautiful. Very life-affirming, I'd say. Very interesting that you as a RP-speaker even have problems understanding dialects close to your home, Benjamin! Because in most cases when there is a high-low sociolectical divide in an area, the elite will know the low variety, at least passively, even though they don't use it actively themselves. How will they otherwise be able to understand their "subordinates"? 
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
The regional dialect in Birmingham sounds similar to the Black Country dialect, but it's more 'Standard English'. It's almost routinely voted the most hated accent in Britain. Black Country dialect has many surprising features, such as the use of 'tha bist' to mean 'you are' in the singular-informal, and 'yow am' to mean 'you are' in the singular-formal or plural — so essentially, it retains t-v distinction. They also often seem to append '-en' to many verbs, although I don't know the grammatical rules for this. Additionally, they often (but not always!) seem to use 'them' as a definite article, which I sometimes like to think might be a leftover case system that no-one knows about. Actually, many people in Birmingham also seem to use 'them' (or more often 'dem') as a definite article some of the time, at least for plurals.
That's interesting. I suppose I perfectly understand Birmingham regional dialect passively, even though I don't/can't speak it myself. But the Black Country is further away, and the dialect is much more divergent from Standard English, so it's more difficult. |
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