Mat English

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Mattenenglisch (Berndeutsch Matten'änglisch, in the game language Itteme-Inglische ) is a special and secret language that was used in the Matte district in Bern and by the lower class of Bern in general.

The term is ambiguous. Partly it is both the highly Rotwelsch enriched special dialect of the mat quarter as well as on the secret language ( Game language used) (as Otto von Greyerz and Roland Ris, see bibliography), some only to the game language, by the representatives of mattenenglisch club ( see bibliography). In the latter case, the dialect is called Mattenberndeutsch or Mattedialekt .

The derivation of -English is controversial. In 1929 Otto von Greyerz thought of a corruption of Engi, a narrow street in what was then the Matte district, mentioned as early as the 15th century; Another assumption, first expressed in 1961, is that "English" generally stands for a (secret) language that is not understood.

The dialect of the mat (Mattenberndeutsch, Mattedialekt)

While the city ​​center of Bern is located on a hill on the Aare peninsula , the Matte district is located directly on the banks of the Aare and is clearly separated from the rest of the city, so that an independent culture with its own dialect was able to develop here. The Mätteler were originally day laborers, fishermen, carters and much more and thus belonged to the urban lower class. Foreign workers and traders brought with them words from French and Rotwelschen (and thus from Hebrew and Yenish ), and completely new word structures emerged from the German vocabulary through vowel changes, consonant exchanges and corruptions. The result was a sociolect that was clearly different from the upper class Bern German .

A well-known example of the matted dialect is the phrase Tunz mer e Ligu Lehm 'Give me a piece of bread'. Tunz comes from the French thunder 'give', Ligu is probably a Rotwelsch variant of the Hebrew lechem 'bread', and clay probably goes back to Rotwelsch Löben , which in turn comes from the Middle High German leip 'bread loaf'.

Mattenberndeutsch as a separate subdialect no longer exists today due to the changed social conditions in the district and in the city. Nevertheless, a number of expressions of the matted dialect have been preserved by being incorporated into Bern German , e.g. B. Gieu 'Knabe' or Chemp 'Stein'.

Mat English as a secret language

The Matt English secret language is a game language in the style of the so-called Pig Latin . It is formed from the words of the dialect as follows:

  • The first syllable up to and including the first vowel is placed at the end.
  • If the first syllable starts with a vowel, an h is inserted and then the syllable is placed at the end.
  • At the beginning there is an i .
  • The last letter (a vowel) is replaced by e .

So bear becomes Irnbe or stealing (stealing) becomes iuechle . In linguistics, this type is called an IE language.

Today there is a lovers club where you can learn mat English.

literature

  • Otto von Gruyerz : The Bernese Mattenenglisch and its branch, the Bernese boy language. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 29 (1929), pp. 217–255 ( page with a link to the online resource ); again under the title: E Ligu Lehm. The Bernese Matten English. Lukianos, Liebefeld 1967; New edition Fischer Media, Bern 1999 (with a foreword by Roland Ris ), ISBN 3-85681-437-X .
  • Matteänglisch Club Bärn: Matteänglisch. History of the mat, dialect and secret language. Bargezzi, Bern 1969; 8th edition 2001.
  • Ernst Marbach: Mattegieu history. With a contribution on the Bernese Mattenenglisch and a dictionary by Roland Ris . Emmentaler Druck, Langnau 1989, ISBN 3-85654-878-5 .
  • Hans Markus Tschirren, Peter Hafen: Ittu'me inglisch'e - Mätteänglisch. The mat and its languages. Weber, Thun / Gwatt 2016, ISBN 978-3-03818-105-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Otto von Greyerz: The Bernese Mattenenglisch and its outflow, the Bernese boy language. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore 29 (1929), p. 220.
  2. ↑ Matteänglisch Club Bärn: Matteänglisch. History of the mat, dialect and secret language. Bargezzi, Bern 1969, p. 105. "English" would have the same meaning as "welsch" in Rotwelsch .
  3. ↑ See Siegmund A. Wolf : Dictionary des Rotwelschen. German crooks language. Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1956, nos. 3170 and 3257. Otto von Greyerz traces Ligu back to rotwelsch Legow, Ligium , see Das Berner Mattenenglisch and its outflow, the Bernese boy language, in: Swiss Archives for Folklore 29 (1929), p. 226. Another derivation takes 100 seconds. The audio dictionary of December 13, 2013 in the article Mattenenglisch , where Ligu is traced back to the Greek oligo 'a little' and clay to the Hebrew lechem 'bread'.