Matters Arising (The History of Britain Revealed)

[frank h]

[Donmillion]

My first posting, and thanks to Mick for setting everything in motion.

I've got a lot of reading to do: the postings I've read so far, just in this thread (up to page 60), are fascinating, and there have been many points I've wanted to respond to. But I've got a specific "mission" I want to start with.

"English" (in some form) predating the Romans sounds plausible to me, but I'm having difficulty with the origin of Latin. I don't want to deal here with the idea that Latin derived from English (Mick's 'least unlikely case' on page 11), but with the contrary idea, on p. 131 of THOBR (1st edition--only one I've got), that

It seems a reasonable working hypothesis to assume that Latin was originally a shorthand compiled by Italian speakers for the purposes of written ... communication.

From this comes the wider notion, expressed by various posters here, that

Punic, Greek, Latin, Old Norse, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon [and also Sanskrit] ... are artificial languages concocted for the purpose of alphabetical/phonetic communication

(Mick, but I haven't got the page ref.). What puzzles me here is that when the Italian- (or French-) speakers who invented Latin from their grammatically much simpler language, and the Germans invented Gothic, and the Hindus invented Sanskrit, why did they all go for such extremely complicated grammars, nothing like their own? And how did their complicated grammars come to resemble one another in so many respects?

Alincthun wrote on p. 14 that:

the Latin endings in -us and in -um have been borrowed from the Greek ones in -os and -on.

Fair enough, though why Latin -um and not -un? But more to the immediate point: Why also Sanskrit -as and -am? Why Old Persian -a and -am? And how did these all come to resemble Hittite -as and -an?

What about the plurals? How did all these inventors of ancient artificial languages conspire to agree on -a to mark the plurals of neuter nouns? Come to that, given that the Romance languages only have masculine and feminine genders, why did they give Latin a neuter gender in the first place?

And cases. Look particularly at the accusatives: Latin -um, -um; Greek -on, -on, Old Persian -am, -am, Sanskrit -am, -am, Hittite -an, -an ...

But this leads to another important question: Italian, French, and Spanish have no declensions at all: no accusative, no genitive, no dative, no instrumental, no locative ... So why did 'they' put them into Latin when 'they' created it? Why (how) did they make the cases at least work in exactly the same way as Hittite, Sanskrit, and Old Persian, to which surely they had no access?

And how did they keep all this complicated grammar (in their 'simplified' artificial language) straight in their heads while they were working it out for thousands of nouns, not to mention all the verbal paradigms that also don't exist in any 'Romance' language?

Another important question: Why did they discard their common word for horse (caballo, cavallo, caval, cavall, cheval ...), and choose equus instead, not used in any of their languages? But it's recognisably the same word as Sanskrit ashvah, Old Persian aspa, Hittite ekkus, Mycenaean Greek i-qo, Aeolic Greek hikkos, Attic Greek hippos, Old Irish ech, and Old English (sorry) eoh. (The Sanskrit, Old Persian, and Attic forms reflect sound changes also found in other words.)

Similarly for other words found in Latin, but in none of the Romance languages. Why use ignis for fire? It's not found in any 'Romance' language, but it's obviously "the same word" as Sanskrit and Old Persian agni, Hittite aknish, Lithuanian ugnis, Latvian ungus, Old Prussian ugnis, and Old Church Slavonic ogni. Why not use their own word for "fire" (feu, fuoco, fuego, focu, fogo, and so on)'oh, that's right, they changed it to mean 'hearth' (Latin focus)! But why?

I could go on, but this posting is too long already. I'd be interested in the answers, guys'n'gals.
_________________
-- Don

"Eveything is deeply intertwingled" (thankyou, Danny Faught)

[Nick]

You seem to be asking Mick primarily but to give you a few things to chew on while he gets his act together.

If writing is a revolutionary new thing that gives you special power as a dominant elite, you probably want to use the model of someone else's writing to start the ball rolling. So whoever started it was likely to set a pattern that others would follow, hence the similarities.

The transformation from spoken word to written word is an enormous leap of faith with letters only serving as approximates for sounds, so you'd want a working model to base your first steps in writing on.

[Donmillion]

While Mick's getting his act together--though I'd be pleased to hear from anyone--here's a different query.

Mick says in THOBR that 1/3 of English words are cognate with French and 2/3 of French words are cognate with English words

(Rocky).

The way this word 'cognate' is used in these forums, and in THOBR, bothers me. Here's Mick in THOBR, p. 58 (1st edition):

English has tens of thousands of 'Latinate' words--i.e., cognate with Latin or French--the rest being ... cognate with German, Danish, Old Norse, etc. ('Cognate' words are either the same as those in another language or corrupted or evolved versions of them.)

In the History forum I see postings from Ishmael describing letters (or the sounds they represent) as 'cognate'--'p' is 'cognate' with 'b', for example, and 'D, J and Z are cognate'.

Now, I know what I think 'cognate' means. I've used it professionally for decades, in the context of 'cognate' products of tasks or processes. But I wonder what definition (or definitions) Ishmael and Mick are using, 'cos it don't seem to me to be the same. Anyone want to provide a definition of how it's used here, clearer and less ambiguous than Mick's informal description quoted above?
_________________
-- Don

"Eveything is deeply intertwingled" (thankyou, Danny Faught)

[Chad]

[Donmillion]

Hello, Chad, and thankyou both for the welcome, and the response.

Okay, I can sort of see definition (3) ('allied or similar in nature or quality') applying in Ishmael's case, though I'll have to go back and try to see exactly the nature of the relationship between letters he proposes. Trouble is, the quote from THOBR looks like definition (3) as well. Or at least, it doesn't look like either definition (1) or definition (2):

[Ishmael]

Letters that are cognate are letters that are often substituted for one another and appear to represent the same or similar sounds.

Sorry to "bother" you.

[Nick]

Does that mean that A-E accepts Grimm's Law?

[Ishmael]

[Donmillion]

I was awake overnight thinking about how you'd invent written Latin from spoken Italian. Amusing as Bernie's playlet was, I think he set it too early and missed some different practicalities of the matter, so here's my attempt:

SCENE: Roma; a piazza. Enter from opposite sides, Marco and Tullio.
Marco: E�i, Tullio! Come stai? How's that new language of yours coming on?
Tullio: Marce, nice to see you.
Marco: Marce? What's that?
Tullio: It's part of my new language. I call it the 'vocative'; it's so you know I'm talking to you...or, well, writing to you actually.
Marco: What, you take the 'e' of ehi and put it at the end instead of at the front? That's ingenious, I suppose, but surely I'd already know you were writing to me if you just wrote, Caro Marco. What's the point?
Tullio [not at all defensive]: The Greeks use it --
Marco: Oh, the Greeks! That explains it, I suppose. Anyway, what else is new?
Tullio: Ah! I've been working on the numerals. Come back to my domum and I'll show you!
Marco: Domum? Is that, like, your cathedral (duomo)? You've gone up in the world! Did you sell your casa? ....
[His voice fades as they exeunt.]

SCENE: Rome; in Tullio's house. Tullio and Marco are at a table.
Tullio: Okay, I started with uno....
[They look at one another.]
Marco and Tullio together: Of course! [They both laugh.]
Tullio: Anyway, as you know, I've been using Greek as my model for nouns, and the Greek is oios, so I made it unus.
Marco: Wait a minute, I still haven't got the hang of that. We say un-o, the Greeks write oi-os, shouldn�t we write un-os?
Tullio: Well, I didn't want to copy them too slavishly.
Marco: Yes, well, I remember how you decided not to use fuocos for 'fire', but you didn't want to use their word either, what was it, pur? So you disappeared out east for about a year and came back with ugnus, ungus, or whatever it was, from some people nobody's ever heard of out Dacia way. Never saw the point of that, myself. Why'd you go for ignis and not ugnus, by the way?
Tullio: Never mind that now, I'm telling you about the numbers. Next was due, and I was tempted to make it duus, but I came up with duo instead....not sure why, now, but it's still easy to remember, you see: due, duo ... I perked up with tre, though...
Marco: Treos? I mean, treus?
Tullio: Well, tres anyway. The Greek�s write treis, you see, and�
Marco: And you didn't want to copy them too slavishly, right. What's their word for quattro? Must be quattros, right?
Tullio: Well, no, it's tetra, and I thought that was going a bit far, so I've come up with quattuor. Not sure why I didn't pick quattrus, but anyway, next was cinque....
Marco: Aha! You made it cinques, right, like your tres from our tre? And avoiding Greek cinqueis?
Tullio: Actually, the Greeks write penta for some reason. No, I didn't want to get stuck in a rut, so I went for quinque.
Marco: Quinque?!? I'm getting confused. I don't think I'll ever get the hang of this. Look [counting on his fingers], why not just go for uno: unus; due: dues; tre: tres; quattro: quattrus; cinque: cinques; sei: seis; sette: settes; otto: ottus; nove: noves; and dieci: diecis? Just stick an s on the end, and it'll be much easier for us all to remember.
Tullio [impatient]: That's not the point, and anyway, whose language is it? Mine, right? Just let me finish telling you what I've done. Sei I put a -c- sound into, secs...
Marco [suspicious]: Wait a minute...what was the point of that? I know! What's the Greek word?
Tullio: Alright, that's hecs. I sort of liked the sound of it, but secs sounded sort of, well, sexier. Anyway, having stuck in an extra sound there, I thought I'd do the same with sette and otto, so I made them septem and octo.
Marco [Trying to manage the successive consonants]: Sep-a-tem and oc-a-to? What on earth �? I can hardly say them! Why not sec-a-s, sec-a-tem, and oc-a-to? And where�s this �em come from anyway? I thought you were using -um! And why not oc-a-tus? I�m sorry, Tullio�oh, sorry, should that by Tullie, and how the heck do you say that anyway?�Sorry, Tullie, I think you�ve lost the plot! I think you need to come with me to the taverna for some vino.
Tullio: If you�re paying, you�re on!
[Exeunt.]
_________________
-- Don

"Eveything is deeply intertwingled" (thankyou, Danny Faught)

[Nick]

Shit you people are creative! Awesome.

[berniegreen]

Welcome O brave Don!
Although I still occasionally read the latest posts I gave up posting myself (until tonight) when it dawned on me that either this forum is one big glorious leg-pull ( a sort of Diner des Cons ) and I was being continually set up as one of the cons or alternatively several of its principal participants are seriously members of La-La land.

But do please go ahead. I will read with interest to see if you can get any sensible answers or admissions.

Best regards to all

Bernie

[DPCrisp]

[frank h]

[Donmillion]

Thanks for the welcome, Bernie. Everyone's being so welcoming! But you wrote: