Re: Learning a language
From: Eugene Holman (holman_at_elo.helsinki.fi)
Date: 06/16/04
- Next message: Des Small: "Re: "I'm coffee and he's espresso." -- facially nonsensical"
- Previous message: Peter T. Daniels: "Re: "I'm coffee and he's espresso." -- facially nonsensical"
- In reply to: Peter T. Daniels: "Re: Learning a language"
- Next in thread: Eugene Holman: "Re: Learning a language"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 15:05:24 +0300
In article <40CFBAE8.425D@worldnet.att.net>, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Eugene Holman wrote:
> >
> > In article <40CEF95E.1A4D@worldnet.att.net>, "Peter T. Daniels"
> > <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> > <deletions>
> > >
> > > The way you've been approaching pidgins and AAVE doesn't have its roots
> > > in Labov, that's for sure.
> >
> > Now that we've waxed all nostalgic about our shared Cornell past, what is
> > your intake on the following situation from the Cornell area?
> >
> > About twelve miles due south of Ithaca there is a town called van Etten.
>
> Four years there, and I never heard of the town, much less its Finnish
> dialect.
Van Etten is part of what is now officially known as the Village of Spencer.
Live and learn:
Source: http://www.tiogacountyny.com/Spencer-History.asp
<quote>
<deletions>
The Town of Spencer was much larger when first organized in 1806. It
included the towns of Candor, Caroline, Danby, Newfield and Cayuta (Van
Etten).
<deletions>
As the Village of Spencer grew, place names were also given to various
sections. The northern part of the village was known as Bradleytown for
the Bradley brothers, who improved the area and built a large store in
1850.
The downtown area was known as ³The Corners.² In this area the Fishers,
the Emmons and others built stores and businesses. Across Catatonk Creek
from the Corners was an area known as ³Brooklyn.² The western part of town
was known as ³Seelytown² for the Seely Company that was made up of
sawmill, gristmill, an electric company, store, hotel and a glove factory.
The railroad station was also located there.
About 1909 the Finnish people started moving into the area, buying mostly
the poor farms. There were frugal and prospered. They started the Spencer
Cooperative Society which sold first groceries, then hardware, farm
machinery, and feed. As the poultry industry in Spencer became a very big
business, the Co-Op also bought and sold eggs. As the young Finns grew up,
many went to college, joined the army and did not come back to this area.
The older generation had saved their money and many of them moved to
Florida in their retirement.
Today the biggest industry is the Spencer-Van Etten School. The Tioga
State Bank, which has six branches, has its headquarters in Spencer. Other
businesses are: Northern Lights, an upholstery business, Raymond Hadley
Packaging firm, Starfire Swords, Ltd., a florist, nursery, landscaping,
blacktopping, Bed and Breakfast, food store, café, restaurant, pizza
place, gas station, Ford car dealer, local newspaper and many other small
businesses.
There are five churches and a Historical Society with a museum. There is a
Doctor¹s clinic, an osteopath, a Message Therapist, midwife, and
veterinarians. There are nine dairy farmers.
</quote>
Its Finnish "dialect" is a local variety of Finlgish, something that is a
cross between a heavily anglicized dialect of Finnish and a word game
using a simplified version of Finnish morphology and syntax, and close to
100% English lexicon modified through the filter of Finnish phonology. As
such, it has to be learned; it cannot be understood by monolingual
speakers of English or Finnish:
Source: http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/P1/RSV/jt-fingl.html
<quote>
<deletions>
The Finglish Speech Community
The main characteristic of immigrant speech communities is that the
dominant language of the speakers is the language they brought with them
from their country of origin. It is the language that English will, in
time, transform in accordance with its own structure and the background of
individual speakers. In Astoria, Oregon, for example, the speakers ranged
from Finnish monolinguals (who did not speak enough English to cope with
their daily lives) to English-dominant bilinguals whose knowledge of
Finnish varied depending on their background.
The two defining features of a speech community are
€ a shared language variety and
€ homogeneous norms for its use.
Finglish is unique to this type of community because neither Finnish nor
English speakers are able to comprehend it. As for shared norms, Finglish
speakers use their speech variety within the community, but become very
conscious of their speech when communicating with either Americans or
Finns. On such occasions they try to shift respectively toward English or
Finnish as much as possible
<deletions>
Characteristic of Finglish is that
almost all voiced consonants in English are replaced by their voiceless
counterparts in Finglish, e.g.:
lumperi ‹ 'lumber'
piiri ‹ ' beer'
rapoli ‹ 'trouble'
karpetsi ‹ 'garbage'
three contiguous vowels are not allowed. They are broken up by inserting
either a back or front glide depending on the phonetic environment, e.g.
leijata ‹ 'to play'
sauveri ‹ 'shower'
syllabic consonants are modified by inserting a vowel in front of them, e.g.:
kaluna ‹ 'gallon'
rapoli ‹ 'trouble'
words should end in a vowel. The preferred word-final vowel is /i/ but
/a/ is also encountered, e.g.:
reimi‹ 'frame'
kaara‹ 'car'
heerkatti‹ 'haircut'
loijari‹ 'lawyer'
when the word in English begins with two or three consonants, all but the
last consonant must be deleted before the word is acceptable for Finglish,
e.g.:
raikki ‹ 'strike'
touvi ‹ 'stove'
raippi ‹ 'stripe'
rosseri ‹ 'grocery'
<deletions>
<quotes>
This local Finnish "dialect" is widely spoken in the area (visted there in
1975 and can attest to that), and it serves a) as a mark of local
solidarity for exchanging pleasantries and simple conversation, often with
code-switching into English, b) as a secret code that has enabled local
sports teams to exchange verbal comments without being understood. As far
as I know, it has no other functions, and will probably persist as part of
the local linguistic scene. In this sense it can be regarded as a
linguistic system which succeeded in carving out a functional niche for
itself and found a body of speakers when it was in what might otherwise be
considered the final stage of language death.
A similarly anglicized and radically simplified variant of Hungarian is
used in and around McKeesport, Pennsylvania, not only by people of
Hungarian descent, but as a local "in-group" code-language, cf. Anna
VENYVESI:
- "Nyelvkontaktus és nyelvvesztés az amerikai magyarban: A hasonulások
sorsa a mckeesporti beszélõk nyelvében" [Language contact and language
loss in American Hungarian: The fate of assimilations in the speech of
McKeesport speakers]. Presented at the 9. Élõnyelvi Konferencia [9th
Language Use Conference], August 22-24, 1996, Szeged, Hungary.
- "Hungarian-American case: Morphological change in McKeesport,
Pennsylvania". Presented at the 11th Conference of the Finno-Ugric Studies
Association of Canada , May 28-29, 1996, Brock University, St. Catharines,
Ontario.
- "Patterns of borrowing and language attrition: American Hungarian in
McKeesport, Pennsylvania". Presented at the Third International Conference
on the Structure of Hungarian , January 10-13, 1996, University of
Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
- Next message: Des Small: "Re: "I'm coffee and he's espresso." -- facially nonsensical"
- Previous message: Peter T. Daniels: "Re: "I'm coffee and he's espresso." -- facially nonsensical"
- In reply to: Peter T. Daniels: "Re: Learning a language"
- Next in thread: Eugene Holman: "Re: Learning a language"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
