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| | Moreover some words have multiple forms or inflections. "Shall" can be in the region of Mecklenburg alone: salen, schallen, sælen, schalen and schælen. Some of these forms have several inflections. Some words have multiple plural forms. (p.e. land has 'landen' and 'länner', which could also be written 'länder') There are as yet no templates for Low German words, but upon future creation a plan on how to include either multi-dialectal inflection or mono-dialectal multiple forms would have to be worked out. | | Moreover some words have multiple forms or inflections. "Shall" can be in the region of Mecklenburg alone: salen, schallen, sælen, schalen and schælen. Some of these forms have several inflections. Some words have multiple plural forms. (p.e. land has 'landen' and 'länner', which could also be written 'länder') There are as yet no templates for Low German words, but upon future creation a plan on how to include either multi-dialectal inflection or mono-dialectal multiple forms would have to be worked out. |
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| | + | ==Getting it right: The IPA== |
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| | + | The importance of a good IPA-transcript cannot be underestimated, since Saxon/Low German has a (for a West-Germanic language) rather complex phonology. Under the influence of the national languages proper pronunciation becomes less and less common among speakers insufficiently educated in the language, spreading as wrong idea of Low German. |
| | + | Getting the pronunciation right means using more diacritics than commonly employed within Wiktionary. One must mark vowel quality, vowel length and vowel pitch, as well as aspiration. Also one must not get confused by texts on the matter which use different terms. |
| | + | ===An example for vowel length=== |
| | + | The word {{l|nds|de}} would be (dependent on dialect) '''/de/''' when an article and '''/deˑ/''' when a demonstrative pronoun. Both are usually written the same and an author speaking of "normal vowel length" could either mean the one or the other. While this is a simple example, it shows that preciseness is required. |
| | + | ===An example for vowel quality=== |
| | + | Low German does have very few vowel which are long or short and most often the difference is a difference of quality rather than quantity. Examples are the words ''<full>'' (full) and ''<ful>'' (foul). Their vowels have the same length, but different qualities. The "short" vowel (full) is actually '''/fʊˑl/''', while the other is '''/fuˑl/'''. They might be called long and short, but they are actually equally long. (They have the same ''quantity''.) This, only perceived, length is sometimes called ''unorganic length'' (unorganische Länge) or ''qualitative length'' (qualitative Länge). Apart from actual |
| | + | ===An example for vowel pitch=== |
| | + | Few notice it but Low German is to some extant a tonal language where the vowel pitch makes a difference in meaning. Apart from actual quality the pitch can make the difference in the perception of length and shortness. As for the example of ful/l above, they are actually '''/fʊ́ˑl/''' and '''/fùˑl/''', and this is the form they should be found in in Wiktionary. |
| | + | A minimal pair serving as an example would be (for the Low Saxon dialects) '''/dèˑl/''' (''part'') and '''/déˑl/''' (''attic''). This is also important for derivation of dialectal special features. In some areas of Mecklenburg the words would be '''/dɛ͡ɪl/''' (''part'') and '''/dɛːl/''' (''attic'') respectively. Another minimal pair would be '''/tón/''' (''sound'') and '''/tòn/''' (''to the''), and so forth. |
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