I posted about Wikitongues back in 2013, but it was pretty new then, and I wasn’t especially impressed. Seven years later, it’s clearly a going concern and has a much wider variety of videos and speakers, and I’m considerably more impressed. Their About page says “Around the world, people from hundreds of cultures are finding ways to amplify their voices, defying the assumption that globalization can’t be inclusive”; you can start digging into their videos here — the Texas German one sounds mighty Texan! (Via misteraitch’s MeFi post.)
Also, Victor Mair at the Log posted an eight-minute video by “Josh” (apparently Joshua Rudder) on how we know (some of) what what he calls Middle Chinese and Mair calls Middle Sinitic sounded like — nothing especially new to anyone who knows anything about the subject, but it’s fun to see the old rhyme tables and have the various elements explained. There’s more in the comments, where David Marjanović links to Wikipedia’s useful Reconstructions of Old Chinese article.
I wonder whether Stu knows any of those Texas Germans. There’s a Basil Fawlty type holding up a sign at a hotel saying “WELCOME GERMAN SPEAKERS” as if to say “I don’t like to do it myself, but nevertheless…”
Yes, I’m hoping Stu will weigh in.
Texas is a very very big place. I believe Stu grew up near El Paso, which is approximately 500 miles west of the German Urheimat, or even further depending on whether you think of Fredericksburg or New Braunfels as the Hauptstadt.
But Texans always love talking about Texas.
“If he’s from Texas, he’ll tell you; if not, why embarrass him?”
Ben Franklin wrote a short essay on the subject which he put into his memoirs:
In light of the discussion about Scots, I thought that the Shetlandic episode was interesting.
Shetlandic is its own thing, not the same as standard Scots. Shetland spoke a Nordic language until a few centuries ago. As it happens, I’ve been reading a lot about Shetland lately, and took a particular interest in that video.
One little item I read recently was about the Shetland fiddle tune called “Oot Be Est da Vong”. Whatever can that mean?
It turns out that “Oot Be Est da Vong” is a well-known fishing ground that is just east of a rock in the sea called “da Vong”, which is supposed to look like a tooth. “Vong” is a Shetland word for tooth, similar to “fang”.
I’ve seen mention of Walls, which according to her is not Walls at all, but a mistake by the Ordnance Survey. It certainly wouldn’t be the first.
Previously I thought it was connected to the subject of a TV show I saw–there’s a massive Neolithic stone wall in Shetland 4 km long. But that is something entirely different.
Another interesting cultural snippet is that the Hudson’s Bay Company used to recruit extensively from Orkney and Shetland, back into the 17th c., so some traditional cultural practices may survive among the Inuit around Hudson’s Bay. One example (perhaps a bit disputed) is the box fiddle.
If we ever get to travel again, that would be a place I’d like to go. (Shetland I mean, not Hudson’s Bay so much.)
maidhc, if you’re nearby (ish) the Faroes might also be worth a visit, especially if you like puffins.
When I was in Texas in 1969, an older woman from New Braunfels came up to me at a function and said, “Vell howdy deah! How iss you-oll?” I now think this was probably a put-on for obvious furriners, but there it is.
Shetlandic is its own thing, not the same as standard Scots.
It definitely is. I’m about to write a general rant on Scots at the other post, but two obvious features are the change of voiced th everywhere to d and the full preservation of the second person singular, so that the ordinary word for ‘you’ sg., is du. More details on Shaelan (the language); John M. Tait’s “Shetland and Scots in Standard Scots, or Tait’s approximation of it; Tait’s “Sheltie Prattle an da Blue Lowe [flame]”, a panto-cum-morality-tale mostly in Shaetlan using Tait’s orthography, which needs to make distinctions that Standard Scots doesn’t and can’t. There’s a glossary for Shaetlan words that are not shared with either English or Scots.
Yes, the Shetlandic one is really great; I think I posted a random comment about it here some months ago after watching and really enjoying it.
here for more direct reference is john m. tait’s website on all manner of things scots-ish, which is one of my favorite things i was introduced to through this site:
https://sites.google.com/site/scotsthreip/
invaluable reading for anyone interested in languages that are small, threatened, endangered, or being actively ‘preserved’ – or really, any languages.
more easily accessible if you speak scots (i don’t), but plenty in english or a combination. and (like much of the writing af yidish on yiddish) a great example of what’s possible when a language is taken seriously enough to be used for analytic writing about itself and its situation in the world.