Matters Arising (The History of Britain Revealed)

[Mick Harper]

More cut'n'thrust from Goodreads [It refers to The Secret History of the English Language, the US title of THOBR which is why I hadn't come across it before.]

Colin
What a trainwreck! This is one of the worst attempts at pseudo-linguistics I have ever read (and that's saying a lot). The main premise of the book is that English is not at all derived from Anglo-Saxon, but in fact is the indigenous language of Britain (in other words the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes never invaded Britain, they were from there), and linguists are involved in covering up this fact or choose to remain blind to it.

Shoddy history, extremely shoddy linguistics, and quite a bit of profanity for what claims to be a serious scientific investigation into the "true" history of English round out this awful book. I'm glad I borrowed this book from Borders rather than buying it. I encourage anyone with a firm grounding in linguistics to read it. You might want to drink heavily while so doing. junk-food-lit

Mat
How closely did you read the book? The book does not claim that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes never invaded Britain, nor that they were native to the island. The argument is that it's very unlikely that a few boatloads of invading rulers managed to convince nearly the entire population of Britain to stop speaking their native language and start speaking Anglo-Saxon - a language which, we know from the written record, is also unrecognizably different from the English that was written down only 500 years later (and which is nearly identical to the language that we speak today). It is a pretty reasonable argument.

Colin
I shall concede the point that my understanding of the author's hypothesis of the invasion was muddled. It didn't make a bit of sense to me given the historical and archaeological record. I thought that he was trying to prove that no invasion ever took place, but perhaps I just missed some crucial point. As I said, I found the whole book to be kind of a trainwreck.

It's not a particularly reasonable argument if one is familiar with the large corpus of Middle English works that show transitional stages from Old English. If you look at the record, you can *see* the evolution of Middle English from Old English happen - it's not as if scholars of English just made it up, or are part of a secret conspiracy to hide the true history of English.

I mean, I can read a fair bit of Old English. I can read a fair bit more of Middle English - but the earlier stuff is hard to tell apart from a form of Old English, and the later stuff clearly evolves from it. I should think that familiarity with the corpus of writings in English from the periods involved would prove the author's hypothesis incorrect. I'm not a specialist in English; I'm a Latinist with a strong background in linguistics. Old and Middle English are just a hobby for me, and the evidence seems clear to me. I would assume that the author would have researched his hypothesis - and in so doing, ought to have come across evidence. I don't see how the hypothesis this book presents could be even vaguely justified by anyone who has studied the language forms involved.

This is me, now
Ol' Colin shows how a paradigm gets in the way of good story. He reads Anglo-Saxon so he must know it's a foreign language. He then produces Middle English from up his sleeve. He says the early stuff is just like Anglo-Saxon. He is presumably referring to the Peterborough Chronicle which is Anglo-Saxon-lite. The rest of 'Middle English' is just the ordinary English of Chaucer et al. But because they are both referred to as Middle English he is able to say the one 'clearly evolves' from the other. And have done with it.

[Mick Harper]

There's more! Sorry, but I need to collate these things for my own purposes.

Jordan
A long winded explanation of where the English language may have stemmed from. A sort of roundabout linguistic analysis that is interesting, but doesn’t provide enough evidence for the claims it makes. Still a good read and something that is interesting to think about.

Erik
For several centuries, linguists (and philologists before them) have taken for granted the long-standing theory that English has its roots in Anglo-Saxon – a language whose only evidence comes from such archaic documents as Beowulf and a few other odd poetic fragments. This theory has not just stood the test of time, but also modern academic scrutiny. Harper, a cheeky bloke who makes his home in London, blows many holes in this prevailing assumption about the roots of the English language by arguing that it is entirely ass-backwards.

Not only does he pointedly argue the applied epistemological viewpoint that is wrong-headed, but he also posits that the roots of English are in the language itself – whose pre-Chaucerian form has never been Anglo-Saxon. In fact, he fervently suggests that what we call Anglo-Saxon has no direct roots in German – as so much of the cultural and archeological remains in no way suggest that an “invasion” of a supposed Germanic horde ever occurred. He also makes the observation – one that I recently and casually did in my last review – that the language of Beowulf is not in the least bit English, and more Welsh. (Which give precedence to its possible roots or kinship with Gaelic.)

On a related point, Harper also puts the spin on the equally long-standing assumption that the Romance languages of French (including Occitan in the southwest), Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Catalan, and Romansch are direct descendants of Latin. Which always sounded strange to me. Surely these indigenous people were speaking another, completely unrelated language prior to the arrival of Caesar and his troops? And why would they all so quickly abandon their mother tongues in quick order? (Never has this occurred with any other language – even with English in the past six hundred years after countless movement of peoples and eve- increasing industrialization. If it has happened with our language in the time of greatest human innovation and rapid change, then it sure as heck didn’t occur during the supposed “Dark Ages” when not much changed in the last half of the first millennium.)

Rather, Harper suggests that Latin came directly from these collective Romance languages, and was used as a lingua franca – one which has hasn’t changed a bit in two thousand years. (Which recalls to my mind the modern invented languages of Swahili, Hebrew, and Esperanto.) Why in the world would so many people and languages so quickly adopt the supposed language of the conquerors? (After all, Latin as we know it was never actually spoken on a day-to-day basis by anyone within the Republic. Rather it was a legal language used for formal occasions.) It makes much more sense that Latin is derived from them. But let’s get back to the main issue of Harper’s narrative.

Whatever the true history of English prior to Chaucer, several things can be confirmed. There is little evidence – if any – that Anglo-Saxon (if that’s what we want to call it) is the mother language of modern English. In addition, language change is typically very slow, even in these last two remarkable centuries in which English has spread far and wide. (Chaucer’s English being much more akin to ours today than his was to the Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf, which is much closer chronologically to his.) Harper does contemporary linguistic theory and history a number by calling them on their inaccuracies and stubborn refusal to question not just their methodologies, but also their long-held assumptions. (In effect, he also calls into question most historical research practices and prevailing paradigms. Does this guy just want to throw rocks in glass houses for the sheer joy of it?)

If you want to have your head spin, as well as muse on an alternate theory as to the true roots of the English, look no further. Harper is your man to get your blood roiling, and your mind swirling with the possibilities. (But I will take a pass on his idea – albeit tentative -- that English is the mother tongue of most European languages. One that even he admittedly believes is whacked. And, oh, how whacked it is.)

This is me, now
I found this last bit particularly interesting. Erik is clearly a fan but even fans have their limits. There is nothing 'whacked' about English being the ancestral form. If the current west European languages -- the Germanic ones and the Romance ones -- are closely related (which is not disputed even by orthodox linguists), one of them must be the ancestor.

I suspect if I had nominated ur-German, nobody would have turned a hair. It is just that English has a better claim since it is an agglomeration of both Germanic and Romance. People seem to prefer a mixture to be evidence of one impinging on the other (which just doesn't happen in the real world, save through the limited palette of loanwords) rather than as evidence of starting with both.

It is perhaps unfortunate that I am myself English. Although I marked the theory as 'speculative', I would have done better leaving this out, tactically speaking.

[Mick Harper]

And there's more but that's your lot. Or rather my lot.

Bryan
If The Secret History were not such an enjoyable read, it would only deserve two stars. I am disappointed that after plausibly arguing, albeit with little evidence besides his genius to offer: that English does not derive from Anglo-Saxon/Old English, that the Celtic peoples never occupied more of Europe than the rocky, western fringes; that English has always been spoken in most of Great Britain and Ireland; that the "Romance" languages do not derive from Latin; that there are some basic flaws in Darwin's Theory of Evolution; and that academics are a bunch of idiots, M.J. Harper fails to prove his final hypothesis, which I think is that the "Latinate" vocabulary in English is not, in fact, derived from Latin or even French, but was always present in our glorious mother tongue - long may she rule.

Mat
I couldn't put this book down - not surprising, given my interest in both linguistics and suggestions that things are not as they seem. Harper makes a convincing argument that many of the assumptions underlying our understanding of the development of English (and a number of other familiar languages) are fairly unreasonable, and offers a simpler explanation of how things might have actually happened. The claim that English, in a form that would be recognizable to speakers of the language today, has been spoken in Britain and Ireland for thousands of years is only the first of his iconoclastic hypotheses - and he saves the best one for the end. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in language and an open mind.

Paula
What's great about this book is the logic behind the author's claim that English is the original language spoken by the people in England way before the Anglo-Saxons ever showed up. Harper's argument also claims that French and German are versions of English. Ha! And the commentary on academia is right on. So far I've read the book twice, the applied epistemological approach is a challenge to understand. I would love to hear a linguist's viewpoint on this.

Blair
Entertaining, if you're interested in language history. Harper has many very novel ideas about the development of English, but unfortunately they are rather unbelievable.

Molly Brodak
Talk about having a chip on one's shoulder. Still, some interesting theories here, even if a bit radical; I'm glad I read it.

This is me, now
THOBR is the gift that keeps on giving. If only my other works had stirred up a tenth of these reactions, for or against. I should have bottled it.

[Ishmael]

I love seeing all this!

[Mick Harper]

There are all kinds of AE treasure there, that's for sure. For example, nobody seems able to say, "Yeah, I see what he's driving at, and he marshalls his material well enough, but in the end I went for 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' and he didn't clear that hurdle." Even though that's pretty much the plain truth.

No, I gotta be some loon, a total ignoramus, the devil incarnate. I don't think I've ever read a book by a loon -- you give up about page twenty-five. My critics seem to manage it effortlessly. And don't forget, my proud record of not having a single argument refuted still stands after twenty years. There's not even been a wrong fact pointed out in all that time either -- save St Ann not being John the Baptist's mother or somesuch.

My fans are OK but they are too insignificant (save you, Ishmael as editor of Hancock's site) and too few in number to create anything more than unconnected dots in the cyberverse. But I guess the secret is to still be in there pitching when... what exactly? I wish to hell I knew. No, the real secret is to enjoy doing it. Then it's just plain WTF.

[Mick Harper]

There was a huge discussion on the origin of English on Reddit starting with a pooh-poohing of orthodoxy and followed with 143 posts for and against. Since my Google Alert had sent me there I waded through them to see how I was faring. Not a sausage until near the end came

[Mick Harper]

I have sold a copy of THOBR entirely thanks to my own unaided efforts. It was in the course of a fairly standard contretemps about an Anglo-Saxon church when my opponent rather lost it and started demanding answers to some quite general questions. I protested by pointing out that I had written three entire books touching on the questions so I could hardly be expected to do the same in a post on medium.com.

I don't think he entirely believed me and wanted to know the names of these books. It is not often you get the chance to puff your own books so I listed THOBR, Forgeries and Revisionism and even added that Megalithic Empire has some relevant things to say. I thought I had won that particular argument but he did the dirty on me

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

I decided to (I thought) close down the exchange with a bit of (slightly misplaced) sarcasm but it unleashed a mildly interesting exchange

[Mick Harper]

You can't keep a good man down

[Mick Harper]

John Welford:
Can we agree that there are place names (rivers and hills) in England that bear elements that suggest a common root with Celtic names? Afon/Avon an obvious one - it just means "river" in Welsh - and look at all those "Bens" in Scotland! It is surely because they are widely dispersed that a judgement CAN be made!

Mick Harper:
Let’s keep pears away from apples, John. Bens are not widely dispersed, they occur only in the highlands and islands of Scotland. Present or immediately past Scots Gaelic-speakers live(d) in these areas. That supports my argument. The cognate term 'pen' is not so clear-cut. There are three avons in England, two in Scotland and one in Wales. The Welsh term for a river is, as you say, afon. This is thin gruel but could be said to support your argument.

Since Celtic-speakers were politically dominant at some periods over the whole of Britain and geographical features often get named by outsiders for administrative purposes (not to mention loan-words) it just isn't possible to conclude very much from the distribution of specific geographic terms. Though I am sure that will not stop you trying. But remember I do know my onions in this area so I would urge you to move on.

[Grant]

Who are the Celts?

[Wile E. Coyote]

avon=avenue arrive approach.

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]