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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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So why doesn't everyone in India speak English as a mother tongue by now? How come the Welsh have held out these eight hundred years? All you've done is point out exactly what THOBR pointed out:
1. that most of the time nothing much changes
2. that total language change only happens when the native population is pretty much wiped out
3. that language clines can move slowly in favour of the minority when that minority is culturally/politically/etc dominant
4. that language clines can move quite quickly when the majority language group is also culturally/politically/etc dominant.
Everything you say suggests that English was at least a minority and quite possibly the aboriginal language of Ireland. However, as THOBR tacitly concedes there is the possibility (alas, not testable by evidence) that English was introduced post-the Normans and marched across Ireland in the wake of very modern developments in emigration, education, mass media etc etc.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| The Normans were a special case. AE Principle: There are no special cases. |
An excellent precept. However, even AE accepts that Komori is free to argue that the Normans were the exception to the no-exception rule. So let's have a quick butchers at what he says on the subject.
| All those 'invasions' of England were bogus up until the Normans. |
What, even the Romans?
| There never were any Gaelic overlords in England before the Romans they were all English overlords. |
...er...apparently not. It is accepted (by me and I think everybody else) that Gaelic overlords in England might or might not have happened. There just isn't the evidence one or the other.
| The Anglo-Saxons and the Danes were never culturally dominant. |
This is slightly weird since the Normans were a variant of, in many ways a cross between, the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes.
| A few petty lords were educated by the Roman Church and life went on pretty much as it always had; fighting amongst themselves for a bigger slice of pie. |
A remarkably accurate description of the Normans under William Rufus, Henry I and Stephen. And life too under the Angevin/ Normans Henry II, Richard I, John and Henry III. Quite remarkable.
| The Normans were different. They brought a level of technology and strictly 'Top Down' organisational structure to Britain for the first time. |
Well...yes...they were remarkable administrators. Do go on.
| The Feudal System introduced for the first time in Britain, gave total control of land and resources to the King. The language of the Crown became the language of the people. |
So OK everyone switched over to Norman French...
| Norman culture controlled Britain. Commerce, Laws, Land allotment, Taxes and Trade and eventually Religion were controlled by the Crown. |
So Scotland and Wales went over to Norman French too...
| Up until this time Wales, Scotland and Ireland had remained culturally intact. The Highlanders managed to remain culturally and linguistically intact until the Clan system was destroyed and their culture and language was forbidden on pain of death. Less than 250 years later they all speak English as FIRST language. |
One might more temperately say the cline has reached the coast since there are still communities in the islands and (I believe) on the mainland that still speak Gaelic as a first language. After two hundred and fifty years of pressure from the major language English that is pretty eloquent. Of course we have little information about the previous cline between Gaelic and Lallans but no doubt that moved in the to-be-expected-ways. But what has this to do with the Normans? They weren't that big in Scotland to start with and surely all this happened post-Culloden five hundred years later?
| The same situation happened in Ireland. They were culturally intact for over 1000 years before the Normans invaded. And remained so for quite a while after the invasion as the Norman lords took up Irish culture and language and rejected the Norman Feudal System preferring the Irish Brethon Law. The Statute of Kilkenny was not just about the use of English; its primary content was about a return to the Norman Culture of Feudalism. |
I can't quite see what this is arguing.
| When people adopt a new dominant culture forcibly or willingly, Language is the first thing they jettison because the primary motivation is survival and survival in a foreign culture requires communication. |
This is quite, quite wrong. Everything we know suggests that, whenever a language is viable in terms of overall numbers and concentration, it survives indefinitely whatever is thrown at it. Basically Gaelic disappeared in Ireland because the Gaelic-speakers disappeared (starvation and emigration).
| It doesn't matter whether the dominant culture comes to you or you go to the dominant culture, it's the culture you live in that determines the language you speak. |
Couldn't have put it better myself.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Ish wrote:
| The Normans were a special case. AE Principle: There are no special cases. |
I don't think that is correct. You and Mick have a fatal flaw in your reasoning in that you 'See What You Believe' and you don't 'Believe What You See'.
Let's take the Romans. They were not so much a culture as a corporate entity with their own Trading Language, engineering technology and security force. They were first and foremost a resources based enterprise. They brought to the areas they conquered a new form of corporate governance, economic and social stability and technological infrastructure that was missing in the lands they eventually controlled. The peoples they conquered were disparate, tribal warring factions who in all cases were people with the same languages - Gauls, Germanics -- English -- Gaelics -- Spanish etc. The fairy tale of them somehow putting aside their regional differences to fight the common enemy is Archaeo-Historical hokum.
The great European Celtic Culture is a fraud. The notion of some distant utopian cultural group who all once spoke Brythonic with strong cultural bonds glued together by Druidic mystics is just so much drivel, it would be laughable if not for the fact that everyone in the world believes it including some on this forum.
When the Romans conquered Britain did they install themselves as Kings? No they installed the local elites as go-betweens. Did they resume vast tracts of land for their own? No, property laws and inheritance laws were maintained. Some land was seconded for military base and new settlements but the land remained largely in the hands of those who originally laid claim to it. Did they immigrate en masse to Britain? No, only merchants, administrators and legates came, and even some of those were replaced with Britons.
Their primary goals were resources; grain, raw materials, luxury goods and manpower. They introduced better farming practices, and other technologies that made resource gathering more economically productive. They paved over the existing roads to enable them to accommodate the increased traffic that goes along with higher production of resources. They built new roads and infrastructures to newly developed resources or the expansion of formerly less productive existing ones. New Ports were established and canals dug to shorten the distance from resource gathering to point of export. In short the Romans were into economic development.
The formerly warring elites became rich beyond their wildest dreams going by the number of regional villas dug up all over Britain. They had no need any more for a warrior class to keep their domains intact; no need to feed, clothe or arm them. The Romans employed them as legionaries. The Romans pushed the extremities of their influence only as far as the Cost/Benefit (What's In It For Me) equation remained in their favour. What resources did Scotland and North Wales have that couldn't be had in southern Britain without committing massive manpower and valuable resources to the endeavour? Hadrian's Wall was just as much an economic barrier as it was a military one.
The Romans were different; vastly different to the society that had dominated Britain before they arrived.
Did the Romans change English culture? No, because there were never enough Romans there to start with and Roman law precluded it. It's doubtful if more than a very small minority actually spoke Latin. It was a language (verbal and textual) exclusively for the upper echelons of society. Not even the soldiers spoke it. So everyday communication was done in English in England and Welsh in Wales.
The Normans were different too.
English only was a legal policy but they weren't stupid. They realised you couldn't change the language WITHOUT eradicating the CULTURE that produced it. That is why the Statute of Kilkenny and various others right up to 1745, where the language of the law had become specific, were about CULTURAL CHANGE. The intent was to eradicate Highland CULTURE in all its forms including language. And they weren't above 'ethnic cleansing' to achieve it as the Tudors and Cromwell had proved in Ireland. The English would later use the same 'modus operandi' when they became colonists of the greater world.
This ENGLISH ONLY arrogance is ingrained in most English speakers whether they are in a foreign country or foreigners are in England. It has become a default feature of English culture.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | The Normans were a special case. AE Principle: There are no special cases. |
An excellent precept. However, even AE accepts that Komori is free to argue that the Normans were the exception to the no-exception rule. So let's have a quick butchers at what he says on the subject. |
To except one rule, one must appeal to another.
You can't just say the Normans were different because the model requires they be so. Do we see other groups elsewhere exhibiting identical behaviour patterns? Who? Where? What is the common variable that determines the nature of the variation?
That's testable. That's science. That's what makes AE different than normative historical enquiry (which is nothing better than story-telling).
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Komorikid wrote: | | You and Mick have a fatal flaw in your reasoning in that you 'See What You Believe' and you don't 'Believe What You See'. |
Well once or twice it would be good to read a Komorikid post that includes some reference to actual evidence, rather than just a litany of unequivocal assertions.
Some of your ideas are interesting but you have to tell us WHY you think as you do, not just what you think.
This is all just story-telling.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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The thing of it is the English don't have a culture; all they've ever had was a language. And nothing much has changed. At the grass roots level they are still the petty lords squabbling over territorial dominance. They still meet in combat on battlefields called White Hart Lane and Old Trafford complete with their foreign mercenaries. Horst and Hengst have been replaced by Balak and Henri.
They and their betters continue with their sad devotion to a foreign and Feudal Norman past. They fixate on the tradition and pomp of an alien Royal entourage of the privileged, complete with its 'real ladies' and 'proper gentlemen'. A tradition that 90% of their ancestors never benefited from. English culture is a myth, the only talisman they could cling to that had psychological meaning was their language.
The concept of Englishness is all about its language.
They have deified their greatest exponent of it: Shakespeare.
And invented a creation myth on it: Anglo-Saxon-ness.
England is the only country that steadfastly refuses to become bilingual even with its neighbours Wales and Scotland and forget about France. Most Europeans speak two or three languages, even in America a large percent of the southern states speak Hispanic. There isn't another nation in the world that doesn't have a significant bilingual population, especially the ones that share physical borders or were former colonies.
Only England (and Australia, who are all just a bunch of wannabe Poms) is the exception despite having three Gaelic languages as well as French, Flemish and Dutch on their borders. Only the English expressly forbade speaking any other language by law and rigorously enforced it for 500 years. The England of today is a product of almost 1000 years of Norman English feudalism.
Everywhere else in the world the language clines between neighbours are wide expanses of borderland even those separated by water. In the USA it has grown to around 200 miles or more in the space of 200 years. On the Russia/Mongolia/China border it's even larger.
Only in Britain is it a hard line where everything is English only on one side and bilingual on the other. Given the evidence the Norman English were different.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Komoro is asking us to believe a new theory, which is that the Normans introduced a novel principle to the world -- to deliberately erase conquered cultures and thereby turn them from native-speakers to English-speakers. [He is asking us to ignore the fact that the Normans were themselves non English-speaking, or rather that English governments post-the actual Normans used the Norman administrative model.]
He instances Ireland as a case in point, but this point is gravely weakened because of course Ireland is the point -- we are trying to explain why it is presently English-speaking. He also instances Scotland but this too is gravely weakened by the fact that though, yes, 'Norman' methods were used with success after 1745, the orthodox explanation -- that it was a semi-natural cline shift brought on by denudation of Gaelic-speakers -- is fairly strong too. But what makes the whole business thoroughly non-'Norman' is that everybody agrees that it wasn't the 'Norman' government in Edinburgh/London that was responsible for the de facto ethnic cleansing but the clan chiefs themselves. Komoro will have to show that the Normans 'knew' this would happen.
Wales is completely anti-Komoro. The Normans (and they were almost real Normans) achieved total political dominance of Wales by the thirteenth century and yet the Welsh-speaking population still occupies most of the traditional Welsh-speaking areas. This is simply not possible if Komoro's theory is correct.
We have already observed that Komoro-type 'Norman' language policies were entirely unsuccessful in the various English enclaves of France so we now come to the British Empire proper. Norman-style language monopolies were certainly achieved in Australia and North America and Komoro is free to argue that this was done via Norman-style government. But I don't know of anything beyond the usual lasissez-faire-tinged-with-hostility attitude to natives held by all colonial governments all the time.
And the 'Normans' were clearly unsuccessful everywhere else, in Africa and in Asia; in big (India, East Africa) places as well as small enclaves (Singapore, Hong Kong). Though I suppose we'll have to give Gibraltar to Komoro. But not the very similar Malta. All in all, the case is not only not-proven but stubbornly refuses to fly anywhere.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Komorikid wrote: | | The thing of it is the English don't have a culture; |
He then proceeds to describe it.
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In all this nobody has mentioned how it is the Normans themselves gave up speaking Norse and started to speak French and how long that took and whose theory that supports. Would be interested to know what you all think.
cheers, Oliver
_________________
Oliver
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| Komorikid wrote: | | Only in Britain is it a hard line where everything is English only on one side and bilingual on the other. |
Yes, but suppose the US had been successfully settled by the French, all Americans spoke French, and French was the global lingua franca. There would be fewer people in the world who speak English as a second language, and more who speak French as one. I bet England would have a lot of French speakers. I bet France would have fewer English speakers.
There are more bilingual speakers in Quebec than there are in Alberta. There is more to be gained for a Quebecois by speaking English than there is for an Albertan speaking French. Most western Canadians have no interest in learning another language.
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| Komorikid wrote: | | England is the only country that steadfastly refuses to become bilingual even with its neighbours Wales and Scotland and forget about France. |
But France hasn't exactly supported and embraced the Breton language.
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| Oliver Gillie wrote: | | In all this nobody has mentioned how it is the Normans themselves gave up speaking Norse and started to speak French and how long that took and whose theory that supports. Would be interested to know what you all think. cheers, Oliver |
Yes, I'd be interested to know.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Clearly an important matter in this context, so let's see if we can at least agree on the orthodox version. Which is that Rollo and his Viking (presumably Old Norse-speaking) chums were given Normandy in 911 by the French king. Even at that time the locals spoke a slightly different (though perhaps not mutually unintelligible) version of French to the French French..
By 1000 AD it would seem that everybody was speaking this Norman-French, though we cannot be certain because Old Norse was not a written language at the time (I am assuming that it wasn't written until Icelandic saga times...is this correct?). A ruling elite would not normally switch language in this short a time so it is reasonable to assume that it was a conscious policy decision on the part of the (Viking) Normans.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| EndlesslyRocking wrote: | | Australians are quite similar to everyone else in the world. They don't like any culture but their own. |
Guess where Komori is from.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| I am assuming that it wasn't written until Icelandic saga times...is this correct? |
Wiki says Old Norse was written with runes from the 8th century (and runes continued to be used at least until the 15th century).
Old Norse in the Latin alphabet is attributed to 11th century Christianisation (texts surviving from the 12th). The Icelandic sagas are said to refer largely to events of the 10th & 11th centuries, but I didn't see when or what in they were written.
Were the Normans instrumental in this Christianisation? Did they drop the runes and pick up Latin letters straightaway in France? Assuming they weren't Christianised immediately, was that their special contribution: taking Roman writing out of the hands of the Roman church and turning it to general bureaucracy?
The Anglo-Saxons became literate in England, right? Under the Church. The Vikings were already literate before taking Normandy, innit?
Domesday was written in Latin coz English wasn't an option, but the vernacular started to appear soon after.)
There were Vikings in Ireland, too, where the written vernacular got going first... Were they ever kicked out of Ireland, or did they sink in, per the Normans who never left England?
| A ruling elite would not normally switch language in this short a time so it is reasonable to assume that it was a conscious policy decision on the part of the (Viking) Normans. |
Or: it's normal for the ruling elite to be in a position to decide. Once the choice is made, it can be all over in one generation.
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