Dutch-like language [OT]

As Jan said, it could have been Fries. To German's Dutch sounds like yet another low German dialect.

The historical reality is that Dutch was the dominant German dialect in northern Europe during the Dutch golden age, and high German is the Prussian dialect spoken at the court of Frederick the Great - he preferred to use French - which got enforced as the official court language in the countries Prussian came to rule. The other low German dialects still persist as local dialects.

I have listened to the Wikipedia recordings of Fries and Gronings (there doesn't seem to be one of Drents). Fries doesn't seem to have the frequency of typically Dutch pronunciation of the G and CH sounds that i heard in the QSO. Gronings had those sounds but many of the words are just slightly eccented standard Dutch words which weren't in the QSO. The mystery remains, so if I hear that language again, I shall have to record it.

It was like that here until I put a really good (3-wire inductive) mains filter right against the input to the receiver and then solidly earthed the receiver chassis with an independent earthing system of heavy wire soldered to spaced earth rods, using a blowlamp.

Boer?

RL

Is there a Dutch version of Yiddish?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

If you mean Afrikaans, I would probably have recognised that.

I can't imagine anything like that being available to the general public in the UK.

Perhaps you would be given a licence to use it after you had been on a series of Elfin Safety courses followed by a weeks training on how to fill in the appropriate forms. You would, of course, have to notify every fire brigade for 25 km around the work area in writing, in triplicate, at least 6 weeks beforehand, and send proof of insurance to the nearest police station (which could be up to 50 miles away, as most of them have closed now).

You would have to cease activites immediately if instructed to do so by a police officer in or out of uniform, any official of the local council (including the dog warden)or a minister of religion as long as he was wearing the robes of his office.

Your name would be added to a register of 'intertesting persons' and held there for 25 years. It could be removed earlier in the event of your death - but ony if you notify the authorities in person at least 10 working days after the event.

England. land of the free!

I thought Yiddish was an international language rather like Esperanto. The language I heard didn't seem to have any of the characteristics I associate with Yiddish.

There are some distinctive sounds in modern Dutch which can identify it to a non-Dutch speaker, particularly the accent in the NE provinces. They were present in this QSO but the words didn't sound like any Dutch I have ever heard (or German, or French or any other European language).

Here is an example of those very regulations. It does actually seem to be quite sensible!

Back in the day, I had a girlfriend from NYC, and I heard lots of Yiddish there. It sounds like German to my ear, but is not close to German in anything else, but is reportedly closer to Slavic languages like Russian and Polish.

Joe Gwinn

There's apparently a Portuguese version called (roughly) Lada~o, which sounds like Portuguese but is unintelligible to most Portuguese speakers.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

You need a phonetician.

The international phonetic alphabet lists about 200 distinct phonemes and human languages all use different subsets of them, lumping some together and treating them as if they were identical.

There are phonological contour maps of the Netherlands which show which provinces tend to make particular choices.

Looking for "distinctive sounds" is over-simplifying task.

As legg has pointed out there is a South African variant of Dutch, spoken by the Boers. It's called Afrikaans

You have intercepted a Chinese or Russian spy conversation. Through ai, sonants and consonants are transformed to typically Dutch like sonants and consonants. Make a recording and report to the autorities.

Groetjes Albert

From the photograph you linked to, showing your garden, it looks as though you are hemmed-in on all sides by houses. A long wire might work, but it also could act as a conduit for noise picked up from your neighbour at the distant end. You need to keep it as high as you can without attracting the attention of the local authorities.

Long lightweight alloy poles are sold for television aerials and one of those can be fixed to the shed or a fence post without needing guy ropes. as long as the wire isn't too tight. You can buy the plastic equivalent of 'egg' insulators or just use a length of monofilament nylon fishing line. With an ATU, the length isn't so critical.

The biggest problem is usually the lead-in. I managed to bring mine into the loft in the gap between two tiles and then used co-ax to connect it to the receiver. There is a mis-match at the aerial end, but the downlead matches the receiver input impedance, so the downlead doesn't form part of the aerial and doesn't pick up interference inside the house.

There were plans published for some of these in The Netherlands during WWII under the name "Moffenzeef".

There is an explanation of it, in English, on the Cryptomuseum website. I understand the expression was not intended to be complimentary.

Almost ...but the radiation pattern may not always be what you would like.

I used to be a technician in a language lab full of reel-to-reel tape decks. I was paid 65 cents per hour.

I did a lot of tape copying and some studio recording so I heard a lot of languages. Some of the slavic languages and Cantonese sounded awful to me. The most beautiful was Portugese, and the speaker was beautiful too.

It' hard to imagine some other-language speakers who want to sound like the Dutch.

Afrikaans maybe?

It can become really tough with slang. One guy was sure he had good fluency in Dutch and Flemish. Until we listened to this guy:

Don't want to but it happens when you live there and immerse. I lived in the south and spent much time in Belgium. After a while (until today) English-speakers no longer recognized where I really came from because my accent became all messed up. It just happens.

When you move a lot one of the not so desired consequences is that you are fluent or somewhat fluent in several languages but you speak none of them perfectly, including your native tongue.

I grew up in New Orleans, which has its own accent, nothing like the South. It's sometimes called "Yat", from the Aloha-like greeting "Where yat?" which is properly answered by "Where yat?"

And I married a Cajun girl. The Cajuns have their own language and accent. Two islands of weirdness that just happen to be in the south.