Talk:Gronings dialect

Grunnengs

Is it appropriate to have this under the name Grunnengs which would be the native name ? Gronings is a word from the Dutch language, which is not the dialect of this encyclopedia. Sarcelles 06:55, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the correct name is in English. In Dutch, it's Gronings, and in Low Saxon and Gronings itself, it's Grunnengs. What you could do is create a new article Grunnengs which is a #REDIRECT to Gronings and use the template {{R from alternate language}} in the #REDIRECT page. Ae-a 19:46, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I suggest to move it to the Gronings name. The current name is a bit strange. Sarcelles 02:01, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think some examples should be added in to see how Gronings can be seen as a intermediate dialect between Low German and Dutch. It can be and is defined as both as it is stated in the Dutch wikipedia as well. --Lucius1976 11:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Then I'd rather say that this article should be Groningish or Groningan Language. 82.73.149.109 (talk) 21:08, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

We can't just make up names as we please. In works written in English, the Dutch name Gronings is the one most commonly used, so I'm moving the article back to Gronings. I can't find evidence that the name "Groningan Low Saxon" or even "Groningen Low Saxon" is ever used outside of Wikipedia. +Angr 07:52, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

'Grunnegs' is the name for the language in... Grunnegs. English has no agreed practice as Grunnegs is practically never discussed in English-language environments. Defaulting to the name used in the national language - Dutch 'Gronings' in this case - is the age-old cop-out contributing to the emaciation and enduring invisibility of regional languages. Preferring the Dutch form because the native form looks 'funny' (due to its unfamiliarity, perhaps?) does not convince me. Further arguments here. I suggest naming the article 'Grunnegs'. Ni'jluuseger (talk) 18:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

And "Deutsch" is the name for German in German. But we don't use languages' own names for themselves at English Wikipedia, we use the name most commonly used in English, which in this case is "Gronings". —Angr (talk) 08:26, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

-Angr, your comparison with the word "German" is not justified, in my opinion. The word "German" is a well known word in English, and thus should be used instead of "Deutsch" obviously. But the words "Gronings"/"Grunnegs" are not well known words in English. If you check the online dictionaries Google Translate, Babelfish, Dictionary.com, Dictionary.cambridge.org, Merriam-Webster online, Oxford English Dictionary, you will have trouble translating the words Grunnegs(Low Saxon)/Gronings(Dutch) to English. So that word does not have an adequate translation from Low Saxon or Dutch to English.

The second part of your reasoning is also not right: "correctness" is not a matter of most frequently used. The "truth" is not democratic. Following your reasoning, if Wikipedia would have existed a couple of centuries ago, you would have reverted someone adding an article about Copernicus theories about the earth rotating, iso the earth being the centre of the universe and the sun revolving around it, because the latter was the most commonly accepted theory. Another example, in Dutch there are two ways to spell the word for 'present': cadeau and kado. The correct way to spell it, is the former, as prescribed by the Taalunie, the organisation that determines the official spelling. But, a quick Google search learns that the word kado is used almost four times as often on Dutch websites. My point here is that you will probably find the word Gronings more often than Grunnegs on English websites, because it does not have an established translation in English, and authors looking for a translation will find more occurences of the word Gronings than Grunnegs, simply because the number of Dutch speakers is larger, but that does not make it correct.

Another argument for using the word Grunnegs instead of Gronings may be consistency in Wikimedia projects: there already is a Grunnegs on Wikisource.

To conclude: I am strongly in favour of using Grunnegs, being the native word for it, Gronings would be a 'Dutchification'. If Grunnegs is unacceptable, Groningish or Groningan Language as suggested above would be my second choice. Droadnaegel (talk) 23:24, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Five centuries ago there would have been very few reliable sources asserting that the Earth rotated around the Sun, and Copernicus's ideas about the layout of the solar system would have been considered a fringe view, so yes, if Wikipedia had existed in Copernicus's lifetime it's unlikely that it would have given much if any space to his theories. It's true that the term Gronings isn't as well established in English as the word German is, but if you check Google Books, for example (the most convenient way of seeing how commonly terms are used in published, edited writing), you'll see that on the rare occasions that Gronings is discussed in English, it's far more often called Gronings than Grunnegs, Groningish, Groningan or anything else. We have to follow what the sources say, not what we consider to be politically correct, and we cannot make up our own terms. —Angr (talk) 09:23, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I saw an old English map once in which Groningen was reffered to as "Groningue". Perhaps the word Groningan was derrived from "Groninguan"or something like that.... Gerard von Hebel (talk) 10:02, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Unmotivated tag

As far as I can see, there is no contradiction whatsoever between the content of this article and that of nl:Nederlandse dialecten, let alone a serious one. Who is responsible for this tag and on what grounds could it have been assigned? I am very curious to hear which reservations on whose side there possibly could be here. It looks like some unexplicable mystery. -- Ad43 (talk) 15:12, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

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The maps

The Frisian speaking area in the Southwest of the Province is rather exaggerated. As it stands it would encompass big parts of the Leek and Marum municipalities, including Marum itself! In reality there are only two or three small villages near the border in which Frisian is spoken as a native language. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 09:56, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

The map is still rather at fault when it comes to the situation concerning Frisian in the Southwestern Westerkwartier as I indicated about three years ago. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 20:43, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Official status

I don't think Gronings or Low-Saxon (whatever that may mean) have an official status yet, as claimed in the infobox. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 09:59, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Mistake in translation of "Luu" in the "Linguistic distance from Standard Dutch"

I think that there is an error in the translation of the word "employees". When translated in Groningen we would not translate this to a simple "luu". "Luu" originally translates as: "Lieden" or "Lui(den)" in Dutch. In the expample below it would be better to use the word: "waarkluu". It would cover the sort of people much better. (Erwin Greven from Stadskanaal, prov. Groningen)

   Gronings: Doe hest n hail ìnde luu dij scheuvellopen kinnen, pronounced: [du‿ɛst‿n̩ haɪ̯l‿ɪndə ly daɪ̯‿sxøːvəloʊ̯ʔm̩ kɪnn̩]
   Dutch: Jij hebt heel veel werknemers die kunnen schaatsen, pronounced: [jɛi ɦɛpt ɦeːl veːl ʋɛrkneːmərs di kɵnə(n) sxaːtsə(n)]
   English: You have a lot of employees who can ice skate  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erwin Greven (talk • contribs) 14:03, 8 December 2016 (UTC) 

I would say that Erwin is right. 'Warkluu' would be better. Or even better: adapt the translation to resp. 'heleboel mensen' and 'a lot of people' since 'employees' does not make sense anyway, and 'doe hest' also translates to 'there are'. 94.214.180.92 (talk) 19:39, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

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The phonology section

@Fdom5997: You can't indiscriminately revert editors without addressing the edit summaries, while putting things like "do not debate" [1] in the edit summaries yourself. Yes, we will debate this and I expect you to reply. You don't WP:OWN the article and the phonology section isn't yours. I know a thing or two about Dutch and the regional dialects spoken in the Netherlands and therefore I have a right to challenge your edits (and vice versa, as you know).

Can you give me a link to De taal van Westerwolde: Patronen en structuren in een Gronings dialect? Is it available to read for free?

Let's go through the issues I have with the Phonology section:

• Why on earth do you keep calling [m n ŋ] nasal vowels? These are nasal stop consonants. This is a strong cue that you revert my edits indiscriminately while ignoring the edit summaries. That's a no-no.
• In what context are they devoiced and preglottalized? Isn't that the effect of the preceding /p, t, k/ (which, by the way, are aspirated?) Please provide an exact quote from the source.
• What is the source for the table of monophthongs? The open vowels are definitely wrong as they're fully front (especially the short one!) The long close vowels could be correct, but I have a hunch that /ɪ ʏ ʊ/ belongs to the close-mid series, as in Dutch.
• Please tell me what exactly the source says about diphthongs. There's no way Gronings contrasts /ɑɪ/ with /ɑi/. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:45, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Also it seems highly improbable that "[w]ord-final nasal vowels can be either devoiced as [m̥, n̥, ŋ̊], or pre-glottal as [ʔm, ʔn, ʔŋ]". The sample sentence Doe hest n hail ìnde luu dij scheuvellopen kinnen is transcribed as [du‿ɛst‿n̩ haɪ̯l‿ɪndə ly daɪ̯‿sxøːvəloʊ̯ʔm̩ kɪnː], so it is obviously the plosive /p/ that is realized as [ʔ] before the nasal that is homorganic due to perseverative assimilation. And note that none of the diphthongs of that transcription is listed in the table of diphthongs. — If "[æi] is a allophone of /ɑi/" (as opposed to /ɑɪ/?), are they in free variation? — If "/ɡ/ only occurs in word-medial position" how come that it also occurs "in word-initial position" where "it is always pronounced as /ɣ/"? (Besides, /ɣ/ is not the same as [ɣ].)

This article has multiple other issues. For example, it informs readers of the following: “Some linguists classify Gronings to North Low Saxon, to which also East Frisian belongs. Both related dialects are characterized by an East Frisian influence.” So East Frisian is characterized by an East Frisian influence. Users are not informed that there is a difference between the East Frisian language and East Frisian Low Saxon, so they can understand what might be meant here. Something similar applies to the distinction between the West Frisian language and West Frisian Dutch when only "West Frisian" is mentioned. — I found more issues, but this discussion is about phonology. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 11:39, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Per [2] (according to which we can at least fix the monophthong table, which is unsourced here):

• /eː/ and /oː/ are diphthongized to [ei] and [ou] (I guess the same is true of /øː/: [øy]). Naturally, this implies special allophones before /r/: [ɪː ʏː ʊː].
• /ɔ/ is an open vowel [ɒ], the rounded back counterpart of /a/ ([a]) which is open front like /aː/ ([aː]).
• /ʊ/ is phonemically close-mid, as in Standard Dutch because it is the "closed O" that occurs before nasals in Standard Dutch. Presumably, /ɪ/ and /ʏ/ are also close-mid as far as phonemic classification goes.
• /p t k/ are aspirated; /t/ is also affricated: [pʰ tsʰ kʰ].
• /r/ is dropped in the word-final position before consonants, presumably without turning [ɪː ʏː ʊː] into [ei øy ou]. Dutch WP says that Waardoor hoor jij dat woord maar niet? corresponds to something like [ʋadʊː ɦʊːjæi datsʰ ʋʊːtsʰ manitsʰ] in Gronings, but I don't know whether this is a proper dialect translation of the Dutch sentence.
• The ending /ən/ is phonetically a syllabic nasal that's homorganic with the preceding sound consonant.

Per The Phonetics of English and Dutch (2003), which describes some aspects of both Groningen Standard Dutch and Gronings:

• /aː/ is front [aː]
• /eː øː oː/ are diphthongized to [ei øy ou], except before /r/ where they're realized as [ɪː ʏː ʊː] or perhaps [ɪə ʏə ʊə]
• /ən/ is phonetically a syllabic nasal that's homorganic with the preceding sound consonant.
• /h/ is dropped in East Groningen.

Someone who can read Dutch fluently should check Reker (1999), listed in the further reading section. I think the author says that /a/ is front and that /iː/ is long (rather than short as in Standard Dutch), but that article probably features more information.

Last but not least: Gronings isn't a uniform dialect. There are regional differences in the pronunciation of vowels (and consonants too) and we should list them. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 15:10, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

1. Reker (1999:25–36) doesn't treat phonology, except for a rough orthography-based sketch of how some Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) presumably pronounced the word humanisme on page 34. The author then observes that it is improbable any present-day speaker uses such a pronunciation, but he doesn't say what has changed.

2. Right, Gronings is not a uniform dialect at all, see nl:Gronings-Oost-Friese dialecten for an enumeration of its principal varieties. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 16:10, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

That's the dilemma if we want to contest sourced content which may look odd/dubious to us upon first inspection, and we cannot access the source to verify the material. Assuming good faith and always open for surprises, I would boil it down to two collegial questions to Fdom5997:

• What's the original wording for the passage: "Word-final nasal vowels can be either devoiced as [m̥, n̥, ŋ̊], or pre-glottal as [ʔm, ʔn, ʔŋ]"?
• Are there examples of words which contain /ɑɪ/ and /ɑi/?

–Austronesier (talk) 16:27, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

@User:Kbb2 okay so to answer all of your questions, I want to first start off with saying that I did not obtain the source De taal van Westerwolde: Patronen en structuren in een Gronings dialect for free. I found it located in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands), and then, I requested them to do a page scan within the book. The book itself is all in Dutch, but it does help when it is slightly translated if possible. Also, the Gronings language is not a Dutch dialect (unless you are talking about the Dutch language dialect spoken in the Groningen region), it is simply a dialect continuum of the Low Saxon dialects of Low German. And yes, that was a careless mistake on my part to say "nasal vowels", because obviously that is not true. But you are incorrect when calling the plain stop consonants aspirated. Now I don't know for sure, maybe in some cases of Gronings or Dutch Low Saxon, the stops could be aspirated, but for the most part they are either voiceless or voiced. Now about the vowels, both the monophthongs and the dipthongs were cited from that same source. And yes, it does display a short back vowel of /ɑ/ for /aː/. You may actually be right about the vowels /ɪ ʏ ʊ/ being close-mid, as in Dutch. They are listed as "half high" in the book, so I would agree with your take on them being close-mid. It does (believe it or not) say something about [æi] being an allophone of /ɑi/. /ɑɪ/ is also listed as an allophone as well. Fdom5997 (talk) 02:35, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fdom5997: Can you still help us out with an explaination from the source in what kind of environment word-final nasals appear "devoiced as [m̥, n̥, ŋ̊], syllabic as [m̩ n̩ ŋ̩], or pre-glottal as [ʔm, ʔn, ʔŋ]"? –Austronesier (talk) 18:05, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

@Sol505000: Look at my final question, which remained unanswered. Thank you for translating this silence into action. –Austronesier (talk) 14:57, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I'm not sure about the devoiced/voiceless allophones, but the syllabic ones appear in the same environments as in German and Danish. The glottal stop has nothing to do with the nasals, it's an allophone of /p t k/ (not sure about the last one tho). This isn't unique to Gronings, it's a feature of many if not all Low Saxon dialects. Sol505000 (talk) 09:22, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I know. I do nasal release with both voiced and voiceless medial stops, and I am conditioned to hear [ʔm̩, ʔn̩, ʔŋ̩] as my [pm̩, tn̩, kŋ̩]. Like you, I am still curious about the environment for devoiced nasals. –Austronesier (talk) 12:20, 17 September 2021 (UTC)