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We finish out our Holy Trinity of Verbs with Mood — a slippery, slippery subject if there ever was one. Of course, after trying to make some sense out of that, we move on to review South Eresian
Top of Show Greeting: tzoi
Rescources:
Conlang: South Eresian (blog)
Feedback:
Email from James Campbell:
You’re up early :-)I keep meaning to suggest dialects as a topic for discussion. We English speakers tend not to realise the extraordinary divergence that can be found in dialects, but my exposure to North Norwegian dialects over the last decade or so and (briefly last month) a West Flemish dialect has demonstrated to me that it’s not just a case of a little non-standard grammar and some unusual terms for fish and farming equipment, as one might think from the situation in England these days. What gets me is the differences in pronouns. Allow me to illustrate:Where standard written Norwegian (bokmål) has “jeg”/”meg” for “I”/”me”, Northern Norwegian has “æ”/”mæ”. For “you” (plural), instead of “dere” Northern Norwegian has “dokker”. Which I like a lot.My friends from near Ostend in Belgium informed me that their local dialect of Flemish also has some interesting pronoun forms. For “I”/”me”, where standard Dutch has “ik”/”me/mij” they have “ekke”/”min”. The plural pronouns are fantastic:
Std Dutch dialect
nom/acc nom/acc
You’re up early :-)I keep meaning to suggest dialects as a topic for discussion. We English speakers tend not to realise the extraordinary divergence that can be found in dialects, but my exposure to North Norwegian dialects over the last decade or so and (briefly last month) a West Flemish dialect has demonstrated to me that it’s not just a case of a little non-standard grammar and some unusual terms for fish and farming equipment, as one might think from the situation in England these days. What gets me is the differences in pronouns. Allow me to illustrate:Where standard written Norwegian (bokmål) has “jeg”/”meg” for “I”/”me”, Northern Norwegian has “æ”/”mæ”. For “you” (plural), instead of “dere” Northern Norwegian has “dokker”. Which I like a lot.My friends from near Ostend in Belgium informed me that their local dialect of Flemish also has some interesting pronoun forms. For “I”/”me”, where standard Dutch has “ik”/”me/mij” they have “ekke”/”min”. The plural pronouns are fantastic:
Std Dutch dialect
nom/acc nom/acc
we wij/ons widder/us
you jullie/jullie gidder/junder
they zij/hen zidder/under
This just blows my mind. It goes to show that there is more to language evolution than regular sound changes 🙂 Makes me wonder whether small populations are less conservative and more radical in their language changes than large populations are. I need to do more work on Jameld dialects now…
Keep up the good work on the podcast – always enjoyable.
James
mood as people?
James Campbell
What I should’ve said was “the situation in rural England”, of course. Especially in the south, where I am. I’m aware that urban dialects, and World English, are a completely different riverbank (as they’d say in Jameld).
Koppa Dasao
You asked for it…
I: jeg, /jej/, e, /e:/, æ: /æ:/, i, /i:/
Me: meg: /mej/, mæ: /mæ:/
And try this one on the show:
– /æ æ a ɔ eder/
– /ɔ æ an a ɔ eder/
Translation is as follows:
– I’m off for a meal
– Oh, is he off for a meal.
Koppa Dasao
Btw, can I mess a little more with your heads?
Try out these Norwegian sentences:
Ber bønder bønner over bønner?
/ber bønner bønner ɔver bønner/
Does farmers say praises over beans?
Fatter fatter at en mutter ikke er mutter?
/fatter fatter at en mʉtter ikke er mʉtter/
Does father understand that a nut is not mother?
Leker dokker med dukker?
/leker dɔkker me dɔkker/
Do you (plural) play with dolls?
So how does Norwegian keep these words from each other? Easy. Norwegian is a tonal language. Stress and tone changes the meaning of equally sounding words.
Kenneth Nyman
I’ve been thinking about mood as closely related to the philosophical notion of speech acts. Clearly an imperative statement is another speech act than an indicative one; thus I see no reason not to treat the imperative as a mood.
Ossicone
It is generally treated as a mood. It’s just the ugly duckling of moods – it just doesn’t quite fit in.
Karyn
Many thanks for trying to describe the terminlogy to the newbies!
Hans Georg Lundahl
Std Dutch dialect
nom/acc nom/acc
we wij/ons widder/us
you jullie/jullie gidder/junder
they zij/hen zidder/under
This just blows my mind. It goes to show that there is more to language evolution than regular sound changes
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Correct so far.
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Makes me wonder whether small populations are less conservative and more radical in their language changes than large populations are.
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It’s more like the small populations have kept other original pronouns. In this case more like old duals.
In Standard Dutch, jullie is anyway an innovation, very recent, replacing sth else.