OT: linguistic q' for Beo and others

S

stevomiller

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May 4, 2001
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Beoram, I've got a strange one for you (well, maybe not). My grandmother was born in Silesia, as was my mother. My grandmother spoke both a dialect of German, and another language that I'm trying to peg; unfortunately, by the time that I became interested in such things she had passed away. The only thing that I remember from when I was little is that many of the words ended in "la". I know that this is not much to go on but maybe you will have an epiphane:confused: Thanx, stevo
 
Interesting. My parents are from Silesia, also. Steve, I believe that the language you are referring to is called 'Platt Deutsch', or Low German. Pretty much indecipherable to me.
 
Steve,

There are two languages we're talking about here, is that right?

As Aardvark says, in this area there are some 'low german' dialects. (note, despite what many people believe 'low' german and 'high' german (or 'platt deutsch' und 'hoch deutsch') don't refer to prestige, but simply the fact that high german is spoken in areas at a higher altitude, and low german dialects are primarily in the 'low countries' and environs). But that would probably be the german dialect you refer to.

The other language, ending in 'la'....I'm not sure. Here is a useful page on languages of Poland (as Silesia is now part of Poland):

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Poland

The languages which seem like possible candidates are:

'Belarusan' (a Slavic language - 'White Russian')
'Kashubian' (another Slavic language)
'Lower Silesian' (a dialect of German)
'Ukrainian' (another Slavic language)


unless you have Gypsy ancestors? This site also lists a number of 'Romani' dialects, but those are spoken by the Gypsies. (Interestingly though, the Gypsies are originally from India, and so the Romani dialects are closely related to languages like Hindi and Nepali).


a few more sites of interest:
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cach...wiki/Silesia+Silesia+languages&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

http://www.polishroots.org/genpoland/sil.htm



this may not be that helpful as yet. let me know if any of the language names sound right to you. I'll keep thinking about it.

cheers
--B.
 
Beo, thanks for the links, I will definitely check them out. My guess is that there is no gypsie blood in the family. Our extended family is very fair skinned, blue eyed exclusively, with blond or light brown/auburn hair. I do know that my grandfather's family was of French descent; they were Huguenots that had fled France do to persecution in the late 1600/early 1700's. His family name was originally "La Mar", but was germanised (is that a word?!) to "Lahmer" (which unlike it's french root "the sea" means nothing).
Unfortunately I know next to nothing about Oma's side.

Aardvark, cool that your folks are from Silesia too. My mom's family fled the area as the Russians came through. They eventually ended up in Germany proper by way of Austria. My mother speaks hoch deutsch, and as a small child I would converse with her. I have unfortunately forgotten most of what I knew.
 
Beo, thanks for the links, I will definitely check them out. Yes, we are talking about 2 different languages. One was definitely a german dialect, the other maybe a slavic tongue. My guess is that there is no gypsie blood in the family. Our extended family is very fair skinned, blue eyed exclusively, with blond or light brown/auburn hair. I do know that my grandfather's family was of French descent; they were Huguenots that had fled France do to persecution in the late 1600/early 1700's. His family name was originally "La Mar", but was germanised (is that a word?!) to "Lahmer" (which unlike it's french root "the sea" means nothing).
Unfortunately I know next to nothing about Oma's side.

Aardvark, cool that your folks are from Silesia too. My mom's family fled the area as the Russians came through. They eventually ended up in Germany proper by way of Austria. My mother speaks hoch deutsch, and as a small child I would converse with her. I have unfortunately forgotten most of what I knew.
 
Steve, pretty much the same story with my parents. They wound up in central West (at the time) Germany. We all sort of wandered over here in '56.
 
Aardvark, my mother settled and lived in a town by the name of Shoningen. It was about 12 kliks from the now defunct border of East/West Germany. She married my father (US Army) while still living there, and mom, dad and my oldest sister came to the states in I believe 1958.
 
There are actually lots of fairly pale skinned, blonde-haired Gypsies, as they have intermixed for so long with Europeans. But if you had Gypsy ancestors, you would probably be aware of it. Anyway, Romani probably wouldn't really have lots of words ending in '-la'.

Likewise, the various Germanic dialects wouldn't really sound like they had lots of words ending in '-la'. So I imagine this other language must be some Slavic language. Unfortunately, I really don't know any Slavic languages myself. But impressionistically I imagine some of them might sound like they had words ending in '-la'.

I tried to find some example texts in some of these Slavic languages listed for Poland, but everything I could find was written in Cyrillic script, which again unfortunately, I do not really know.

I'll keep my eye out though.

cheers,
--b.
 
Hello,
were they from the then austrian or the prussian part of silesia? It might be Kashubian as beo writes but I would think it is a language that is spoken in the north of Poland - west of Gdansk or former German Danzig - that used to be "Pommern" and not "Schlesien" (Silesia).
A language not yet mentioned but used in "Niederschlesien" (lower silesia and south saxonia (Oberlausitz) is "sorbisch" (sorbian) - a link is here:

sorbian institute

So I would throw out the kashubian possibility and replace ist by sorbian... no help at all I guess.

Bye, Andreas
 
Steve, we're from a flyspeck close to Goslar, which is very near, I believe, to Schoningen.
 
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