Moribund English dialect of Nova Scotia, Canada
Lunenburg English
is a
moribund
, German-influenced dialect of English,
[1]
spoken in the town of
Lunenburg
and
Lunenburg County
in the province of
Nova Scotia
. It is sometimes called "Lunenburg Dutch".
The dialect shows unique features in pronunciation, e.g. unusual handling of
rhotic consonants
, in syntax and vocabulary, which portray the various sociohistorical influences.
History
[
edit
]
Lunenburg was founded in 1753. Troops from Braunschweig-Luneburg settled in Nova Scotia as well as many Germans, some Swiss and French (from
Montbeliard
).
In addition, around 8,000 New Englanders settled in Nova Scotia between 1759 and 1768; they also had a great influence upon the dialect in the county.
Although German emigrants at this time were mostly from the
Electoral Palatinate
and Wurttemberg, the town
Luneburg
where the name originates from was in the
Electorate of Brunswick-Luneburg
. That might be caused by some German veterans who had been in the King's service.
During the early years of the settlement German, French, and English were all spoken privately and in church.
However, French died out first, while German prevailed longer.
The majority of the Lunenburg settlers belonged either to
Lutheranism
or
Calvinism
.
Several Lutheran churches used German for sermons and received German-speaking clergy from Germany or
Pennsylvania
,
United States
, until the end of the 19th century.
Thus, the Lutheran church helped to preserve the language in public use.
German was more commonly used in the countryside than in the town itself. Most families who used German in the town were engaged in farming or simple labour. It is no longer spoken in the town.
The ninth census of Canada, in 1951, revealed that 15,531 out of 33,183 of the population in Lunenburg show a German ethnic background. However, only 78 residents, all of whom presumably came from the oldest generation, listed German as their mother tongue.
Pronunciation in Lunenburg county "is known to be the only mainland White Canadian community to be non-rhotic."
That
shibboleth
, however, cannot be traced back to influence from German since in the 18th century, it was highly rhotic.
However, New England speech is non-rhotic, and one suggestion is that the New Englanders who settled seven or eight years after the non-English-speaking
Foreign Protestants
taught them English and so they greatly influenced the dialect.
Pronunciation
[
edit
]
There are several unique characteristics regarding the pronunciation. The most distinctive is that it is
nonrhotic
and so vowel length is
phonemic
, like in
Australian English
.
[1]
However, some homonyms and some smaller particularities are also limited to the region.
The accent is nonrhotic and so in terms of
lexical sets
,
LETTER
is merged with
COMMA
,
NORTH
and
FORCE
are merged with
THOUGHT
/?ː/
(making
or
,
oar
, and
awe
homophonous as
/?ː/
), and
START
is merged with
PALM
/?ː/
.
/?ː/
and
/?ː/
are the
NEAR
and
SQUARE
vowels, which are the long versions of
KIT
and
DRESS
(and so
shared
is differentiated from
shed
only by vowel length:
/???ːd,
???d/
). Both
CURE
and
NURSE
are rendered
/?ː/
, the long counterpart of
/?/
as in
foot
/?f?t/
:
sure
/???ː/
,
curb
/?k?ːb/
. There is word-internal linking
/r/
, as in
story
/?st?ːriː/
(compare
store
/?st?ː/
).
Not all people in Lunenburg still speak that way, especially since younger people tend to reintroduce the etymological
/r/
.
That is caused by the influence of newcomers who come from other parts of the province or from Massachusetts.
The ending points of the diphthongs (as in
go
/??o?/
) tend to be fully close (
[??ou]
), more similar to syllable-initial
[j
w]
(as in
yet
and
wet
) than to
[??
??]
.
The accent features
Canadian raising
and so
flight
[?fl??t]
has a different vowel from
fly
[?fl??]
, and the noun
house
[?ho?s]
has a different vowel from the verb
house
[?h??z]
. The raising is phonemic in the latter case and so the stressed vowel in the former word belongs to the
/o?/
phoneme (
/?ho?s/
), and the corresponding verb has
/??/
:
/?h??z/
. In Lunenburg, the phrase
about a boat
contains two identical stressed and two identical unstressed vowels:
/??bo?t
?
?bo?t/
, rather than the
Standard Canadian English
/??ba?t
?
?bo?t/
, with distinct stressed vowels.
German influence
[
edit
]
The non-rhoticity derives from the New England settlers (also proved by the fact that
NEAR
and
SQUARE
are monophthongs
[?ː
?ː]
, rather that opening diphthongs of the
[i??
e??]
type found in German), there are also characteristics in the pronunciation that probably come from the German settlers.
One example is the tendency to pronounce
/w/
in
w
itch
(including the historical
/hw/
in
wh
ich
, which does not exist in Lunenburg) the same as
/v/
as in
v
an
, which is particular to the Lunenburg County and probably rooted in German, which has only
/v/
.
Another example is the lack of the dental fricatives
/θ/
and
/ð/
, which are replaced by the alveolar stops
/t/
and
/d/
(rendering
thank
and
tank
homophonous as
/?tæŋk/
).
Sample of a conversation between two people: "De kids vere over der in da woods, gettin inda dis an dat." "Dey never did?" "Yeah, an now dey gone da get some of dem der apples you see." "You don't say?" "no foolin, dey over der now." "Dey brung some of dem apples over heera da day before." "Oh, dey vere some good eatin I bet." "Now look, you make no nevermind, dose vere da best apples I ever did have, dey vas some good." "Oh, here dey come now, dey bedda know da wash der feet off."
The "t" at the end of words is usually silent: "get" becomes "ge."
Syntax
[
edit
]
The few syntactical characteristics that are following are now very rare or have slowly stopped being used.
One example is
separable verbs
, which are very common in German and used in Lunenburg as well.
- German:
mitgehen
('to go with someone')
- Examples
: Will you go with? I am going with. Come on with!
- German:
Abwaschen
('to wash off')
- Example
: Wash your face off!
Thus,
use
,
once
, and
with
can be found at the end of a sentence.
Vocabulary
[
edit
]
Much vocabulary is from German stock, but a few extraordinary New England features are also rare or not used in the rest of southwestern Nova Scotia.
- get awake
instead of wake up
- all
in the sense of all gone (as in German); for example: My money is all
- /?fr?s/
from German
fressen
"to eat greedily"
- raised doughnuts have the name
/?f?ːsn?ːk/
which comes from the German word
Fastnacht
- /?æp?lsn?ts/
: slices of dried apple,
/?sn?t/
(singular) derives from the German word
Schnitte
- /?l?p??/
means insipid and derives from the German
lappisch
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Kay-Raining Bird, Kiefte (2010). "Canadian Maritime English". In Scheier, Daniel;
Trudgill, Peter
;
Schneider, Edgar W.
; Williams, Jeffrey P. (eds.).
The Lesser-Known Varieties of English: An Introduction
. Cambridge University Press. pp. 66?67.
ISBN
9780521710169
.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Boberg, Charles
(2010).
The English Language in Canada: Status, History, and Comparative Analysis
.
Cambridge University Press
.
- Chambers, Jack K.
(2010).
"English in Canada"
(PDF)
. Retrieved
20 July
2012
.
- Emeneau, M. B.
(1935). "The Dialect of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia".
Language
.
11
(2): 140?147.
doi
:
10.2307/408846
.
JSTOR
408846
.
- Orkin, Michael M. (1970).
Speaking Canadian English
. Toronto: General Publishing.
ISBN
9780773600140
.
- Trudgill, Peter
(2000). "Sociohistorical linguistics and dialect survival: a note on another Nova Scotian enclave". In Leung, Magnus (ed.).
Language Structure and Variation
. Stockholm:
Almqvist & Wiksell
International.
- Wilson, Harry Rex (1958).
The Dialect of Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia
. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan
.
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