| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
 |
|
Later we had a talking head, a Dr David Woolliscroft, who described the results of a ten mile radius aerial survey of ordinary dwellings instead of the usual 'Let's dig another iron age hillfort' approach. According to Ms Barraclough
| The story emerging here seems far more complex, nuanced and colourful than we once believed |
No, petal, the exact opposite. The bill of goods you and your gang have been selling us all these years is the colourful one. The one Woolliscroft was reporting was the one we describe in The Megalithic Empire. Dead boring. No change. People in 100 AD living where they were still living in 1000 AD and where they had been living in 1000 BC. In the same kind of numbers, doing the same kind of things, speaking the same kind of languages. There's maybe not another series in it after all.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
But then she incautiously strayed into our territory and started quoting a ballad from The Book of Aneurin kept at that ship of fools, the National Library of Wales. The manuscript is thirteenth century, they assured her, but
| the poems are thought to have been composed perhaps in the sixth or seventh century but through a process of copying over and over again by scribes was finally copied into the manuscript we have here. |
Or by professional Welsh bards working the system in the eighteenth century, as we would tell her if she was so incautious as to ask. Though if anyone was so incautious as to carbon date The Book of Aneurin manuscript she wouldn't have to.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
And then swiftly on to Offa's Dyke. And some splendid news! They have finally, finally, given up the idea that it is a fortification. You see! They can make progress in recognising the bleedin' obvous when they've a mind to. She and her old professor still think it's Anglo-Saxon but we can't expect miracles. Anyway Prof, why exactly did Offa build 'the single biggest archaeological monument in Britain', all hundred and fifty miles of it?
| I think he's building it initially when there is conflict with the Welsh but then there are other periods even in Offa's reign when he's actually collaborating with the Welsh so it's there as a marker but can then be used in different ways and be part of that kind of zone of contact where any kind of boundary moves to and fro across this sort of zone... |
And what did you do after lunch, Offa?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
It's not related to the programme on the Celts but I just read a tale about the Welsh in America so typical of Welsh tall stories that I can't resist posting it up. The hero is Prince Madog ab Owain Gwynedd. It's a bit long of course
A Welsh poem of the 15th century tells how Prince Madoc sailed away in 10 ships and discovered America. The account of the discovery of America by a Welsh prince, whether truth or myth, was apparently used by Queen Elizabeth I as evidence to the British claim to America during its territorial struggles with Spain. So who was this Welsh Prince and did he really discover America before Columbus?
Owain Gwynedd, king of Gwynedd in the 12th century, had nineteen children, only six of whom were legitimate. Madog (Madoc), one of the illegitimate sons, was born at Dolwyddelan Castle in the Lledr valley between Betws-y-Coed and Blaenau Ffestiniog.
On the death of the king in December 1169, the brothers fought amongst themselves for the right to rule Gwynedd. Madog, although brave and adventurous, was also a man of peace. In 1170 he and his brother, Riryd, sailed from Aber-Kerrik-Gwynan on the North Wales Coast (now Rhos-on-Sea) in two ships, the Gorn Gwynant and the Pedr Sant. They sailed west and are said to have landed in what is now Alabama in the USA.
Prince Madog then returned to Wales with great tales of his adventures and persuaded others to return to America with him. They sailed from Lundy Island in 1171, but were never heard of again. |
So all traces of the voyagers have disappeared but luckily not quite all
They are believed to have landed at Mobile Bay, Alabama and then travelled up the Alabama River along which there are several stone forts, said by the local Cherokee tribes to have been constructed by “White Peopleâ€. These structures have been dated to several hundred years before the arrival of Columbus and are said to be of a similar design to Dolwyddelan Castle in North Wales.
Early explorers and pioneers found evidence of possible Welsh influence among the native tribes of America along the Tennessee and Missouri Rivers. In the 18th century one local tribe was discovered that seemed different to all the others that had been encountered before. Called the Mandans this tribe were described as white men with forts, towns and permanent villages laid out in streets and squares. They claimed ancestry with the Welsh and spoke a language remarkably similar to it. Instead of canoes, Mandans fished from coracles, an ancient type of boat still found in Wales today. It was also observed that unlike members of other tribes, these people grew white-haired with age. In addition, in 1799 Governor John Sevier of Tennessee wrote a report in which he mentioned the discovery of six skeletons encased in brass armour bearing the Welsh coat of arms.
George Catlin, a 19th century painter who spent eight years living among various native American tribes including the Mandans, declared that he had uncovered the descendants of Prince Madog’s expedition. He speculated that the Welshmen had lived among the Mandans for generations, intermarrying until their two cultures became virtually indistinguishable. Some later investigators supported his theory, noting that the Welsh and Mandan languages were so similar that the Mandans easily responded when spoken to in Welsh.
Unfortunately the tribe was virtually wiped out by a smallpox epidemic introduced by traders in 1837. But the belief in their Welsh heritage persisted well into the 20th century, when a plaque was placed alongside Mobile Bay in 1953 by the Daughters of the American Revolution. “In memory of Prince Madog,†the inscription reads, “a Welsh explorer who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language.†|
It may be the perceived (by Europeans) connection between the Mandan and Welsh languages gave rise to this tale though making sure to provide various reasons why no evidence can be produced.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
What happened to the other five suits of armour with the Welsh coat of arms on? One must be in the National Library of Wales else we wouldn't know what this fabulous armorial extravaganza looks like.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
The armour with Welsh coats of arms discovered in 1799 has also disappeared
| The present-day location of this armor is unknown, if indeed, it ever existed at all. |
The National Library (along with the National Museum) of Wales was established in 1907 allowing a century or more to lose the evidence though of course in antiquities/artefacts terms the time lapse is piffling.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
Our comrades on the light side are having some baffling exchanges about the age of languages. It started (I think, I still haven’t got the hang of Twitter) with this stridently technical outburst from a certain BenjaminCymru
Welsh has 45 sounds English has 36
Welsh has 14 vowel sounds English has 12
Welsh has 17 diphthongs English has 13
Welsh is phonetic English is not
Welsh is around 1700 years old English is 800 years old
Welsh survived the Normans Old English did not |
and resulted in an extensive and bilingual debate. By the way can someone enlighten me why anybody would speak or write in Welsh in a bilingual debate? It seems perverse to the point of – no, well beyond the point of – stupidity. Anyway we’re not concerned with them, it was only when our dear friends Levi Roach, Kate Wiles, Elaine Trehearne and others of that kidney took the matter up that things got interesting...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
The mighty Levi Roach is striding the corridors of righteousness
| Whatever else you may wish to claim, English is not emphatically not 800 years old. (And certainly did survive the Normans, as Elaine Trehearne and others have shown.) |
A somewhat obvious thing to say, even dare one say, trite but the Professor of Religious and Cultural Education at Glasgow University (they have to keep them separated in Glasgow) feels it ought not to go unacknowledged
Rokewood†Replying to @DrLRoach @ETreharne
Brilliant Levi! |
Aw shucks, says Levi
| Thanks! Though the really brilliant work is what Elaine and others have been doing on post-Conquest Old English over the last two decades. |
No, really, says our man from the north
Rokewood Replying to @DrLRoach @ETreharne
Yes indeed. Our understanding has been overhauled by works like Living Through Conquest, which is sitting on my iPad now. Re-read after seeing the AS Kingdoms exhibition last month |
You came all that way? But Levi, who is one of the most politically correct persons I have ever come across -- which is saying something when you're dealing with Young Academia -- is a worried man. Has he gone too far?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| I'm very sympathetic to the plight of modern Welsh, but have no time for ahistorical 'my language is older/better than yours' arguments. Even if it were younger than English - it's not - it would make no difference. |
Quite so, Levi, but you've inserted a technical statement of some importance in your anxiety not to offend. You say that Welsh is not younger than English. A bold claim. Do go on. Oh, you're not going to. Well, there's a reason for that, and it's a very obvious reason, but you'll have to wait to find out because it's quite clear that neither you nor any of your confrères have a clue why nobody can say which language is the older. Elder? No thanks, I find sycamore burns better this time of year, the pantomime season.
| Behind such arguments lurk the ghosts of nineteenth-century nationalism, replete with myths of origin and invented traditions. |
Yes indeedy, but if you don't mind my saying so, you're coming rather late to the party. Probably because you still believe the eighteenth century ones.
| And make no mistake, these are exactly the kind of arguments UKIP likes to marshal for English exceptionalism; once you start arguing this way, there's no stopping. |
The mind boggles. Though it looks as if UKIP is stopping. A pity really because I had no idea they were interested in philology in the first place. Rather like you and your mates really. But I'm here to help...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
I’ll just give the highlights of the rest of the discussion to demonstrate how these wonderful savants haven’t even grasped the basics of language morphology. Old hands will spot howlers that are dealt with in both THOBR and Forgeries
Kate Wiles
I'm not sure what the point of that is. Are more sounds better??
Levi Roach
Apparently so.
Kate Wiles
I think Hawaiian might have something to say about that. Also this is total nonsense.
IrishPhilosophy
I've seen "fewer letters" put forward as an argument against Irish. The bad arguments run both ways. Not a defence, btw! A comment on the odd ways people see language.
Levi Roach
Absolutely! The English are just as guilty of spouting such rubbish.
IrishPhilosophy
Am sometimes tempted to suggest tonal languages are the only "proper" languages in these cases ;-)
Levi Roach
Or if we are going to fetish antiquity, only dead ones!
Björn Weilerâ€
It's that bizarre trope about Welsh being the oldest living language (you can buy tea towels with that in Aber). Leaving aside Arabic, Chinese, Persian, Greek, Icelandic, etc. pp, it also misses the point about modern Welsh being a modern concoction. Nationalist balderdash.
Dylan Llyrâ€
First half is correct. The 'oldest language' thing is gibberish. But then the rest of your tweet is also gibberish.
Björn Weilerâ€
Thank you for your informed and constructive response. Have a good day!
Dylan Llyrâ€
I meant that the first half of your tweet was correct, not the one quoted at the top of the thread, which is 100% stupid and unhelpful. But yes, so is the idea that modern Welsh is any sort of 'concoction'.
Levi Roachâ€
I'm not an expert in Welsh, but surely it comes down to how you define concoction? Björn would be the first to admit that Modern High German is also a nineteenth-century concoction: not one based on nothing at all, but one artificially constructed nonetheless.
Dylan Llyrâ€
I'm not an expert in any aspect of linguistics, but I'm not really sure what it means for a language to be artificially constructed. But I think I see now that he intended it in a far more mundane and banal way than I interpreted it, so sorry for the aggro.
Levi Roachâ€
Well, it can be more too: it tends to involve a kind of standardisation that by definition prizes certain dialectical (and class) forms etc. German had many French loan words removed, I gather Björn has in mind similar processes in Welsh. But as I say, I can only speak in informed terms of a relatively small number of languages, Welsh (sadly) not being one of those.
Don’t be sad, get mad! Or rather imbibe at the wellsprings of wisdom which I shall be serving up shortly.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
OK, Levi, new year and, for you, a new life. And here's the sentence that is going to usher it in for you. Every language is exactly as old as every other language. Now I understand you're feeling bewildered so let's straightaway acknowledge that there are some trivial exceptions to do with artificial languages and multiple inventions of language but basically the rule is, the Iron Law is, the unavoidable fact is that all languages are exactly the same age.
You're still bewildered, I know, so let's illustrate why it must be true by looking at the case you've been discussing: English vis à vis Welsh (a little linguistic joke there to lighten the atmosphere). Now you'll agree that the Welsh arrived in Wales speaking a language. It must by definition have been some kind of proto-Welsh, Old Welsh, precursor Welsh, call it anything you like but it stands as ancestral to the language Welsh-speakers speak today.
Going back further in time, wherever they came from when they arrived at the place they took off from to get to Wales they must, also by definition, have been speaking a language and that language must either have been proto-proto-Welsh or (as some of them have done in Wales) they ditched the language they arrived with and took up the language of people in or perhaps next door to their new place of abode. But those people would be merely shifting from one branch of the language tree (Welsh, proto-Welsh, proto-proto-Welsh) to another branch of the language tree (in modern times it was English, proto-English, proto-proto-English) which had been developing elsewhere.
At some point in the dim and distant past, those two branches budded off from one another (or as we say, developed differentially via separation) because, again by definition, they were before that point the same language. This applies to every single language spoken in the world today and every language that is no longer spoken in the world today. (Unless language was invented twice in which case we would have two trees but the same argument applies.) We don't know when language was invented but however long ago that was, Welsh is as old as that period and so is English.
Next I will deal with what we call those languages.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
The funny thing is (and this is entre nous) Levi is already under the impression that he knew this all along. We call it Old Hat Syndrome and is the way the brain incorporates radical new ideas without having to make wholesale changes to the synapses. In fact he's already ditched that and is well on to the "It's a truism" stage. And before you know it, he'll be onto the "I'm not going to waste any more of my valuable time on this sort of metaphysical how many angels can dance on a pinhead sort of argument" and he'll be lost to us. But always remember there is that one Levi in a hundred that can stick it out to the bitter end.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | | Every language is exactly as old as every other language. |
Yes yes yes. But what they mean by this is a kind of short-hand for the question of what living language is least changed from the first? Seems a reasonable question to me.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
You are so naive, Ishmael. These people know absolutely nothing. However I will be addressing your point en passant shortly.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
| Ishmael wrote: | | Mick Harper wrote: | | Every language is exactly as old as every other language. |
Yes yes yes. But what they mean by this is a kind of short-hand for the question of what living language is least changed from the first? Seems a reasonable question to me. |
It seems the wrong question to me. This variant of "what was the original starting position" like question never helps you understand what comes later.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
