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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A fascinating example of how people adjust their notion of language change to fit a pre-existing paradigm is set out in the Time Team thread which is discussing whether English was a pre-existing language in Britain or not. Here's the entry:
I was asked earlier for an example of the progression from Old English to Middle English. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was written for the most part in Old English. It was continued at Peterborough Abbey for nearly a century after the Norman conquest. I quote Michael Swanton, who has produced a recent translation:
quote:
Up to and including the annal for 1131 the Peterborough manuscript employed the late Old English standard literary language. But during the following hiatus, this conservative archival language ... appears to have fallen into disuse, and the new scribe chose to use the contemporary local colloquial speech. These latest entries are among the earliest examples of Middle English.. |
In other words, the Anglo-Saxon language stayed the same for several hundred years up to 1131 and then suddenly 'became' Middle English it would seem overnight.
THOBR claims a somewhat more believeable sequence of events:
1. For centuries up to 1066 the Anglo-Saxons were the ruling elite so the annals were written in Anglo-Saxon
2. In 1066 the Anglo-Saxons ceased to be the ruling elite
3. For a period after 1066 there were still people alive trained to write in Anglo-Saxon so the annals were written in Anglo-Saxon
4. But no new Anglo-Saxon scholars were trained so
5. By 1131 there was nobody left alive who knew how to write in Anglo-Saxon so
6. The English-speakers had a bash.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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I'd like to see some examples of these earliest examples of actual English -- and how they differ from the conservative archival language.
---
Where do we get this idea of colloquial speech as opposed to proper speech, anyway?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Well of course that's not the least fascinating aspect. This lingusitic authority seems to think he can just conjure a language (demotic Anglisch I suppose one would have to call it) out of the ether but not comment on it. Imagine that! A completely new and unreported English language! And he's not even interested (except of course as a throwaway remark to justify what would otherwise be, even to him, a somewhat extravagant shift in language morphology).
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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As you know, we Applied Epistemologists rely on experts for our raw material. Here's a classic example from the Time Team forum
| Apparently, 1066 only resulted in 0.3% of French loan words, the largest proportion came in the 14th cent, ie. 31.8%. |
On the orthodox reading of the situation -- that the one-third Latinate content of English derives from the Norman Conquest -- this is of course nonsense. On the THOBR reading of the situation -- that the English language is the origin of all French words but was only written down in the fourteenth century -- this is absolute manna from heaven. Thank you, experts, you know what you do.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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This question:
| Where do we get this idea of colloquial speech as opposed to proper speech, anyway? |
is related to this bit:
| the new scribe chose to use the contemporary local colloquial speech. |
Why local? The language previously used wasn't local or contemporary, it was old fashioned (they say). Who gets to do all this scribing? The people, in their respective positions in the administrative hierarchy, who are educated in the art of writing. Does anyone remember learning to read or write in their local vernacular, or was it book-learning, 'proper' English from the very first?
And that matter is related to this one:
| Up to and including the annal for 1131 the Peterborough manuscript employed the late Old English standard literary language. But during the following hiatus, this conservative archival language ... appears to have fallen into disuse |
There is no need to explain the hiatus: these things just happen. But lo, it is now evidence of the natural death of the dusty old archival language. And the new scribe gets to plump for the vernacular out of the choices available to him. These things just happen.
{Is it the drive towards a classless society?} Orthodoxy seems congenitally incapable of dealing with the ruling establishment as quite separable from the populace at large. That's not a hiatus in which the language fell into disuse: it's the language being withdrawn from service {probably because the last guy died at the age of 80 and there was simply no provision made for any more Anglo-Saxon scribes; but that was a decision}.
Then they faff around a while deciding to continue the chronicle and to do it in English... which probably means they resolved to invent written English. Before then, it was not one of the available choices.
That is, proper <insert language> is written <insert language>: it belongs to the regime and comes and goes with it. Literacy filtering down to the hoi polloi is the very same process as the devolution and integration of the power structure. {I'm tempted to say it's the same thing as the forging of the nation-state: at any rate, the modern, literate nation-state.}
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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There are three types of language:
1. Pure demotic. What we speak to one another. Every writer (and especially every dramatist) will tell you that it is virtually impossible to write this down. It doesn't matter whether you speak an obscure rustic dialect or the purest Queen's English, you have to use all sorts of conventions (and ultimately rely on the good sense of the reader or the interpretative skills of the actor) to convey it in writing.
2. Literary language. Look pause thizis only slight hesitation for emphasis a napproximationof what we speak but quite faithful for all that because we've (or we have if it's formal) all been taught to write the same way. And of course we can only learn it so well because of this fidelity with the demotic form.
3. Artificial/archaic/non-spoken languages. Usually these are literary eg Latin but may be theoretically for speaking eg Esperanto.
The idea that for several hundred years you would have a population speaking demotic Anglo-Saxon, galloping from classical A/S to Middle English, and a bunch of scribes having to be taught an increasingly archaic language (classical Anglo-Saxon) for the sole purpose of...well, what exactly? They already had Latin if they wanted a special for-our-ears-only scribal language, so why would they go to all the trouble of learning a second artificial language?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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There are three types of language
Actually, there are more.
| you have to use all sorts of conventions (and ultimately rely on the good sense of the reader or the interpretative skills of the actor) to convey it in writing. |
This runs parallel to the matter of pronunciation guides. "kh: as in Scottish loch" is all very well -- provided you know how loch is properly pronounced in Scottish.
| 2. Literary language... And of course we can only learn it so well because of this fidelity with the demotic form. |
Or is the spoken language faithful to the written? We have seen there is a lot of this. And to that very degree, the spoken language is artificial. {Do they give any consideration to where we Received Pronunciation from?}
But on the whole {Is it on the whole? I don't know how to judge}, the written language is faithful to the spoken. In fact, recognising that there is far more that can be uttered than written, we put a fair bit of effort into writing what we would say. At the same time, we recognise that some things only work in writing: like a double entendre on the phrase "Received Pronunciation".
Writing and speaking are, for us, interpenetrating. Gesticulation accompanies speech, sometimes mimicking punctuation... or intonation can express the way something is written... and not necessarily because that's what the manner of writing was meant to convey...
| They already had Latin if they wanted a special for-our-ears-only scribal language, so why would they go to all the trouble of learning a second artificial language? |
Whose-ears-only is surely the key. It seems to be an ordinary matter of expediency: which sectors were better off using what?
But don't imagine that being artificial made it especially hard to learn: all written languages were artificial and learning multiple languages is commonplace. Inventing the written form of a hitherto unwritten language, e.g. English, is the serious undertaking, but still a practical matter. And we will never know how many abortive attempts there were.
The analogy with software writers learning or inventing multiple programming languages is very close.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| But on the whole {Is it on the whole? I don't know how to judge}, the written language is faithful to the spoken. |
This is true of some languages, such as Spanish, but not surely of English whose spelling causes so much confusion, especially combinations like ough (bough, cough, hiccough, etc.). Written language is more formal, leaving out the 'er', 'umm', 'you know' bits or their equivalents and tends to lag behind spoken language. In a sense written language is inevitably artificial because it can't reproduce the spoken word.
If people spoke the same way as they wrote, their speech would appear very stilted and unnatural; writing doesn't replicate speech rhythms. [Not everyone learns how to write and certainly not how to spell - even their own names can present a problem].
| Do they give any consideration to where we Received Pronunciation from? |
Someone has to set the standard, your social superiors presumably - but they in turn might be following a fashion set by the court. Shakespeare, and other dramatists, have a lot of fun parodying aristos yet he gives lowly characters magnificent speeches, like Caliban, a 'savage'. People in Tudor times didn't speak Shakespearian verse obviously but he is credited with enriching the language.
(I can't believe that the population spoke like the BBC or aped actors in 1940's films, even though the Beeb and the cinema must have exerted an enormous influence - presenters have of course long since dropped the clipped accents, but current pronunciation varies and is therefore unreliable)
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| ...English whose spelling causes so much confusion, especially combinations like ough (bough, cough, hiccough, etc.). |
But people say "bow" ("bau"), "coff", "hiccup" when speaking spontaneously and when reading aloud: what is written does represent what they say. How easy it is to learn the pronunciation rules and exceptions... and whether people have a sense of the history of spelling and overlaps with foreign spelling conventions... that's another matter.
And the answer, in my experience, is that they have no idea. Instead we circulate the myth that English spelling is nonsensical. But I haven't yet come across a single example that doesn't make sense.
G = U. -OUGH is a vowel sound. Bough = "bow/bau".
U = V. V = F. Cough = "coff".
F = P. Hiccough (kind of a kind of cough) = "hiccup".
When we say X = "Y", we're just equating one spelling convention with another. We think of the default conventions as simpler, more intuitive, but they're still only conventions and the alternatives are just as valid. Which ones we actually use are just a matter of historical fact(s). English spelling is standardised but not (fully) rationalised.
| Written language is more formal, leaving out the 'er', 'umm', 'you know' bits or their equivalents and tends to lag behind spoken language. |
"Lagging behind" is an intriguing turn of phrase: as if writing tends to represent conversation and follows speech, going in the same direction... as if spoken language goes in some direction at all...?
| In a sense written language is inevitably artificial because it can't reproduce the spoken word. |
Worse than that, what we say is, in large measures, determined by what is written. {Not "what we write" but "what is written": the standardised language is by and large an immutable, objective fact of life.} So the relationship between written and natural language is skewed in two directions.
| If people spoke the same way as they wrote, their speech would appear very stilted and unnatural; writing doesn't replicate speech rhythms. |
I often find my technical writing has a rhythm that I find less comfortable to reproduce out loud... but then, the purpose of reading it aloud is to make a connection between someone understanding what it means and being able to check what it says.
This was the problem with earlier suggestions about rigorous and formal phonetic representations of foreign languages as the original purpose of alphabetic script: even the International Phonetic Alphabet fails to convey the subtleties of regional variation, 'frinstance, and no script has ever been able to record the meter of speech, so far as I know. But that doesn't stop the linguistics industry carrying on as though the IPA does. This is the burden of "linguistic rectitude", I reckon: the whole thing revolves around this technical notation... you're excluded from the conversation if you're not versed in it (in the sense of not being equipped to join in, or in the sense that they outright tell you to bog off)... and they carry on as though every variation in spelling is a variation in pronunciation.
On the other hand, I often find TV ads irritating when the meter of their speech gives away that they don't understand what they're reading out. But to recognise the errors, I must be able to get the right meter out of the words. It's not a hundred percent reliable, but we must be pretty good at picking up the meter and intonation together with the meaning: and meaning is, after all, what it's all about. Picking up meaning from context is familiar enough (even though there can still be ambiguities).
The way people do speak is also an objective fact of life and knowing a bit about it illuminates what the scholars seem to miss: that even getting each letter "right" doesn't give you its intonation. For instance, the change from brenn to burn needs some lazy (if not exotic) account of language change since in RP they are distinctly different. But if you over-enunciate it to expose the vowels between the consonants (roll the R if that helps) and then realise that someone had to decide which sounds get their own letters (and which "go without saying", or rather "go without spelling"), you can see that these are just two alternative spellings of the one word.
"What is the right letter to put in here?"
"Say it long and slow so we can really hear it."
Now you're deciding how to spell a caricature of the word you originally meant.
And this is different from enunciating a word that has an established spelling. And proper enunciation is part of proper speech!
Go to a place with an unwritten language. Try to say the village headman's name: you both repeat it a few times and he says that's close enough. You write down your version of it and then treat it as an accurate representation of the name. Orthodoxy will never say "his name was something like..."
The ability to misspell now (to enunciate incorrectly to yourself) is equivalent to the ability to select a different spelling before the matter was standardised: before there was such a thing as the correct or incorrect spelling.
[/rant]
| Someone has to set the standard, your social superiors presumably - but they in turn might be following a fashion set by the court. |
All I think I can say is that Received Pronunciation is the English of education -- which in turn used to mean the English of the upper class -- but where it evolved... I don't know whether anyone knows. They say Oxford, but they say it's a version of the South Midlands dialect {East and West Midlands I've heard of: have they made up the South Midlands, too?}; but RP is not the same as any regional accent I've ever heard; I'm not sure that there is even an accent most like RP.
| People in Tudor times didn't speak Shakespearian verse obviously but he is credited with enriching the language. |
They are absolutely fixated on written records as representative of what is spoken.
| I can't believe that the population spoke like the BBC or aped actors in 1940's films, even though the Beeb and the cinema must have exerted an enormous influence |
We know for sure that they did not speak BBC English -- unless we think all the regional accents sprang up as they appeared on telly -- but the question of influence is tricky. Showing how the other half lives doesn't necessarily make you want to live like the other half. Early television was an artificial affair, with presenters invited into living rooms and on best behaviour. If the contrast with normality is great, is it any inducement at all to emulate what's on screen? {I think of tempting a cat to chase a string: if it's too far away, it won't go for it: the lure has to be at the right distance, seeming to be within reach.}
I suppose we could have said "if we want to speak well, that is how to do it"... but do we want to "speak well"?
Leaving alone the question of how aspirations are passed around by the media, it could be that TV now has a greater influence towards "proper" speech (and behaviour) by showing regional and international accents alongside each other. If you feel you are in any way shown up by your peers on telly, you might want to distance yourself from them. (I have no idea whether that happens. I'm just saying 'influence' is not necessarily straightforward... though it takes up a large space on Orthodoxy's palette.)
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Instead we circulate the myth that English spelling is nonsensical |
No-one is accusing spelling of being nonsensical, just of being difficult because English isn't written phonetically - and most people do have problems with spelling whether aware of the historical rationale or not.
| "Lagging behind" is an intriguing turn of phrase: as if writing tends to represent conversation and follows speech, going in the same direction... as if spoken language goes in some direction at all...? |
I meant that written language develops slower than the spoken variety, new words or meanings are adopted in speech before being put in writing.
Writing does not usually "represent conversation"; literary English uses a wider and more carefully chosen wordcraft than the colloquial equivalent.
| Worse than that, what we say is, in large measures, determined by what is written |
What we say is determined by what other people say, we imitate consciously or not not only words but accents and inflections. It's quite hard to read aloud in a way which makes sense of the words, not sure if it's due to the word order or the way the sentences are broken up. [Meaning in written language is conveyed not by words alone but by punctuation, which can be unreliable or missing entirely].
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Any of you following the debates between Me and Dunc on the one hand and the Dark Forces of Reaction on the other over on the Channel Four Time Team website
http://community.channel4.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/8896096411
will know that it is vital we come up with a Modern English version of the following slab of Chaucer:
Take Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed euery veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in euery holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nict with open ye,
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages; |
so get to it!
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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I posted Dan's version. Which goes like this:
1: When that April with his showers suit
2: The drought of March has pierced to the root,
3: And bathed every vein in such liquor
4: Of which virtue engendered is the flower;
5: When Zephirus eke with his sweet breath
6: Inspired has in every holt and heath
7: Tender crops, and the young Sun
8: Has in the Ram his half course a-run,
9: And small fowls make melody,
10: That sleep all the night with open eye
11: (so pricks them Nature in their courages);
12: Then long folk to going on pilgrimages,
13: And palmers for to seek strange strands,
14: To far hallows, known in sundry lands;
15: And specially from every shire's end
16: Of England to Canterbury they wend,
17: The holy blissful martyr for to seek,
18: That them has helped when that they were sick.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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BTW -- any chance that "palmers" is just "Farmers?"
P = F and L = R
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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No, I've got a feeling that palmers are Churchpeople -- after the reference to pilgrimage. Pallbearer? They take the collection?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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palmer = a pilgrim, esp. one returned from the Holy Land with a palm branch or palm leaf. Also, an itinerant monk travelling from shrine to shrine under a perpetual vow of poverty.
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