Lunenburg English

Template:Use Canadian English Template:Short description Template:Template otherTemplate:Main other Template:IPA notice Lunenburg English is a moribund, German-influenced dialect of English, spoken in the town of Lunenburg and Lunenburg County in the province of Nova Scotia. It is sometimes called "Lunenburg Dutch".Template:Sfn 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

Lunenburg was founded in 1753. Troops from Braunschweig-Lüneburg settled in Nova Scotia as well as many Germans, some Swiss and French (from Montbéliard).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Although German emigrants at this time were mostly from the Electoral Palatinate and Württemberg, the town Lüneburg where the name originates from was in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg. That might be caused by some German veterans who had been in the King's service.Template:Sfn During the early years of the settlement German, French, and English were all spoken privately and in church.Template:Sfn However, French died out first, while German prevailed longer.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The majority of the Lunenburg settlers belonged either to Lutheranism or Calvinism.Template:Sfn 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Pronunciation in Lunenburg county "is known to be the only mainland White Canadian community to be non-rhotic."Template:Sfn That shibboleth, however, cannot be traced back to influence from German since in the 18th century, it was highly rhotic.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Pronunciation

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.Template:Sfn However, some homonyms and some smaller particularities are also limited to the region.

	Front		Central	Back
	short	long	short	short	long
Close		Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link
Near-close	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Open	Template:IPA link				Template:IPA link
Diphthongs

The accent is nonrhotic and so in terms of lexical sets, Template:Sc2 is merged with Template:Sc2, Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2 are merged with Template:Sc2 (making or, oar, and awe homophonous as ), and Template:Sc2 is merged with Template:Sc2 . and are the Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2 vowels, which are the long versions of Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2 (and so shared is differentiated from shed only by vowel length: ). Both Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2 are rendered , the long counterpart of as in foot : sure , curb . There is word-internal linking , as in story (compare store ).Template:Sfn

Not all people in Lunenburg still speak that way, especially since younger people tend to reintroduce the etymological .Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn That is caused by the influence of newcomers who come from other parts of the province or from Massachusetts.Template:Sfn

The ending points of the diphthongs (as in go ) tend to be fully close (), more similar to syllable-initial (as in yet and wet) than to .Template:Sfn

The accent features Canadian raising and so flight has a different vowel from fly , and the noun house has a different vowel from the verb house . The raising is phonemic in the latter case and so the stressed vowel in the former word belongs to the phoneme (), and the corresponding verb has : . In Lunenburg, the phrase about a boat contains two identical stressed and two identical unstressed vowels: , rather than the Standard Canadian English , with distinct stressed vowels.Template:Sfn

German influence

The non-rhoticity derives from the New England settlers (also proved by the fact that Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2 are monophthongs , rather that opening diphthongs of the 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 in witch (including the historical in which, which does not exist in Lunenburg) the same as as in van, which is particular to the Lunenburg County and probably rooted in German, which has only .Template:Sfn

Another example is the lack of the dental fricatives and , which are replaced by the alveolar stops and (rendering thank and tank homophonous as ).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

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

The few syntactical characteristics that are following are now very rare or have slowly stopped being used.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

One example is separable verbs, which are very common in German and used in Lunenburg as well.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn

Vocabulary

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.Template:Sfn

• get awake instead of wake upTemplate:Sfn
• all in the sense of all gone (as in German); for example: My money is allTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• from German "to eat greedily"Template:Sfn
• raised doughnuts have the name which comes from the German word FastnachtTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• : slices of dried apple, (singular) derives from the German word Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• means insipid and derives from the German Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

See also

• Canadian English
• Atlantic Canadian English
• Pennsylvania German language
• Rhoticity in English

References

Bibliography

Template:English dialects by continent