User talk:LightPhoenix

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Again, welcome! Mglovesfun (talk) 22:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Limburgish

Hi, it's good to see you learning so quickly. A few things, however.

1. Please try and use 'glosses', for example by swing, do you mean the object found in a playground, or a change (swing in the polls)
2. Regional labels should only be used for terms restricted to one or more regions (that is, not used everywhere)
3. Does Limburgish use genders for nouns?

Thanks, Mglovesfun (talk) 15:16, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Hey Mglovesfun! Apologies, I will try to further elaborate on terminology in the future and add genders for nouns (which Limburgish does have yes). With regards to the restrictedness, I am at the moment in the process of (trying to) add(ing) the specific city vocabulary of Maastricht. Like most Limburgish dialects/variants, the Maastrichtian variant has a significant number of original words not common/not used in other variants. That is why the amount of words categorised Maastrichtian Limburgish is so proportionately high at the moment. Take care, LightPhoenix 15:24, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

veerdeg

Hi LightPhoenix! Why do you think that veerdeg is borrowed from Old High German? In the neighbourhood of Maastricht no-one ever spoke Old High German. Why not from Middle Dutch? --MaEr 16:25, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks MaEr, good point. In this case I am better off leaving parts of the etymology out alltogether as these words can then also simply be a) German loanwords or b) derived from something else. That being said, the map on Wikipedia concerning Old High German File:OldHighGermanlanguagearea962.png does not make it clear to me if Maastricht was or was not in fact in the Old High German area (the orange shade is awfully close to its location. In this case, I followed the etymology of the German cognates (perhaps not the smartest thing). Thanks for drawing my attention to this! LightPhoenix 16:35, 11 September 2011 (UTC).

This map is oversimplifying the linguistic situation: usually there are no sharp borders between dialects, which means there is a dialectal continuum. Besides that, the language of the Cologne region is not High German but Middle German (half High, half Low), and especially the old Aachen dialect is very similar to Maastrichts.

In the case of veerdeg there is also a Dutch cognate vaardig, from Middle Dutch veerdich/vaerdich, derived from vaart; so there is no reason to assume a borrowing.

If you live in Maastricht you may want to have a look at the local dialect section of the public library. There should be some dialect dictionary with etymology information.

Nog veel plezier :-) --MaEr 16:52, 11 September 2011 (UTC)