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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| I think by definition (ie Romano-Greek definition) they [European barbarians] all were. |
In the days of Visigoths, Vandals and Vikings, I mean.
| Their tented cities pullulated with sedentary goodies. Why not books? |
Quite. But the sedentary goodies always come from someone else. So their books might have been in Persian...
| But perhaps you are right, and loyalty is inculcated in nomad societies to the degree you really can trust your underlings. |
'Flatness' of the social structure seems to be a hallmark of today's nomads.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| In the days of Visigoths, Vandals and Vikings, I mean. |
Ah well, I do have some news to report on this. Gothic is genuine.
| But on the other hand, today we have seen something, that Wiener has not seen. In March 1998, a C-14- analysis was made at Uppsala University of (among other things) the parchment of a leaf of the Codex argenteus. The material turned out to be from the early 6th century. . |
A nasty blow for yours truly so far as my Grand Design ("It's All A Bunch Of Bollocks") goes, but my Mini Design ("Swedish Gothland Is Not Swedish And Must Be Handed Back To Denmark Immediately")) survives.
| Quite. But the sedentary goodies always come from someone else. So their books might have been in Persian... |
Ah, now you've arrived at my next point-of-departure. Should we distinguish between literacy in one's own tongue (including one's own artificial alphabetical tongue) and just plain literacy?
In the Mongols' case I believe they did orthogracize ("Put that one in the OED, Norah") Buryat or whatever their main language was. Ulan Bator means Red Warrior and Yoghurt means Yoghurt but after that my knowledge is sketchy.
The Vikings had Old Norse and the Anglo-Saxons had Anglo-Saxon but they didn't do much better than, say, the Franks who didn't bother and were quite content to use Latin. The Normans curiously dropped their own native language (which was written, Old Norse) and adopted an unwritten one (Norman-French - at that time).
So although I can see no pattern there's certainly a lot to throw about in a provisional sort of way.
| 'Flatness' of the social structure seems to be a hallmark of today's nomads. |
I think this is incredibly important and completely unexplored by historians. After all it is the stuff of modern management theory.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Should we distinguish between literacy in one's own tongue (including one's own artificial alphabetical tongue) and just plain literacy? |
I thought we already acknowledged all the possibilities. A key difference is surely that foreign and artificial 'tongues' are sure to keep literacy formal; the break-out into ever-more-informal, vernacular use is the big known unknown. (It still requires schooling, so the vernacular is always laced with formality...)
| The Normans curiously dropped their own native language (which was written, Old Norse) and adopted an unwritten one (Norman-French - at that time). |
For writing, didn't they use Latin?
Vikings are characteristically assimilative, innit? Going French in France, Spanish in Spain, dot dot dot. Did they only use Old Norse in their 'home range'? What about the Danelaw: is there anything much in Old Norse? As we intimated before, is it significant that that's where we first see signs of English?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| In the Mongols' case I believe they did orthogracize ("Put that one in the OED, Norah") Buryat or whatever their main language was. |
Is there any evidence of Mongolian writing, the 'Secret History' aside (which seems to have been intelligible only to Chinese-speakers)? The Buryats, the largest ethnic group in Siberia, have their own language and use the Cyrillic alphabet; they don't appear to have their own writing system but since the 'russification' of the region it's hard to tell whether the native system was deliberately suppressed or never existed.
[Lake Baikal in Siberia is the holiest place; perhaps for relatively recent socio-political reasons rather than any inherent sacredness].
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| The Normans curiously dropped their own native language (which was written, Old Norse) and adopted an unwritten one (Norman-French - at that time). |
For writing, didn't they use Latin? |
There are 'bourgs' on Roman roads in Normandy; maybe some Germanic speech lingered on even to the 10th century Normans?
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| berniegreen wrote: | There are something like 13,000 Etruscan "documents" (i.e. all written records including epigraphic and numismatic inscriptions) discovered/collected so far. So I would say they do present a fair idea of what the Etruscans were speaking, at least about a limited range of topics.
The Etruscan civilisation seems not so much to have disintegrated but rather to have merged with the Roman/Latin. It is well known that the first kings of Rome were Etruscan but, even after their expulsion and the proclamation of the republic, Etruscan nobility pop up amid the Roman patricians and an Etruscan identity continues to exist. For example even as late as the first century AD the Emperor Claudius' wife is noted as an Etruscan. In fact Claudius apparently wrote a multi-volume history of the Etruscan people which, unhappily, has not survived. |
I suppose you agree with me that the Etruscan nobles (and priests) are not, alone, representative of Etruria. Of course, after Etruria was romanised, some of them have integrated the Roman upper classes. Many others just learned to speak Latin, like the Spanish, Gaulish, British nobles did later. But, still leaving in Etruria, they continued to speak their polished Etruscan in their everyday life, while the peasants, the sailors, the shepherds, the servants, who had no reason to learn Latin, continued to speak their own Etruscan patois.
And you certainly cannot consider language as a minor aspect of a 'civilisation' (and languages have many shapes themselves : written/spoken, literary/vulgar, sacred/profane, etc.). So if really the Etruscan inscriptions had been more or less representative of what people would speak, if really this language had really completely disappeared, we could call that disintegration.
But history has recorded no catastrophic event, no displacement of population (except to the Rhaetia, according to Livy, Pliny the Elder and Justin, but it was before the romanisation), no ethnic cleansing. So it's logical to think that modern Tuscan is the continuation of the ancient one, i.e. Etruscan. Concerning the population living in Rhaetia, Granier de Cassagnac has compared one text (the 'prodigal son') written in the patois of Upper Engadin and of Lower Engadin (in Grisons, ancient Rhaetia) and the same text written in the literary dialect of Tuscany. This is the result :
ENGLISH
1. A man had two sons.
2. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.
3. Some days after, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.
4. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.
5. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.
6. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
PATOIS OF UPPER ENGADIN
1. Un hom avaiva duos fils.
2. E il p� giuven dschet a sieu bap : mieu bap, dom la part della fort�na ch'im tuocha. Dunque il bap als partaiva sia bain.
3. E poschs dis zieva partit il p� giuven, zieva avair raccollo tout, per �n pajais fich dal�usch, e el magliet allo s� tuot sia fort�na ligieramaing.
4. Zieva avair do our tuot, survgnit el fich fam in quel pajais ; e el commanzet da gnir in miseria.
5. Zieva giet el davent, e el intret in servizzi d'�n abitant alio chi l'ho tramis nella chiampagnia per ch�rer ils p�rchs.
6. E el avess gugent mangio avuonda dels fr�ts ils quels ils p�rchs mangiaiven ; ma �ng�n nun al det.
PATOIS OF LOWER ENGADIN
1. In hum veva dus filgs.
2. Ad ilg giuven da quels schett alg bap : Bap, mi dai la part de la rauba ca s'auda � mi. Ad el parchi� ora ad els la rauba.
3. Et daro brichia bleers dits ha il juven raspa insembel lot, et eis chiamina in �n pajais dalonsch ; a lou stigiett el tutta sia rauba, vivend lischiergius.
4. Et daro chia el a consume tot, eis vengtt in gronda fom in less pajais, et el ha cumeinza a ind�rar.
5. Et eis i, et s'hatachia ad un vaschin da lessa regiun, et el il tramettet in sea vilascha, chia el parch�ra ils porchs.
6. Et el gariava dad amplanir sieu venter cum las criscas ca ils porchs malgiavan; mo nagin na deva ellas a igi.
LITERARY DIALECT OF FLORENCE
1. Un uomo aveva due figliuoli.
2. E il pi� giovine di loro disse al padre : Padre, dammi la parte dei beui che mi tocca ; e il padre sparte loro i beni.
3. E pochi giorni appresso, il figliuol pi� giovine, raccolta ogni cosa, se n'and� in paese lontano, e quivi dissip� le sue facolt�, vivendo dissolutamente.
4. E, dopo ch'egli ebbe speso ogni cosa, una grave carestia venne in quel paese, lai ch'egli cominci� ad aver bisogno.
5. Ed and�, e si mise con uno degli habitalori di quella contrada, il quale lo mand� a suoi campi, a pasturare i porci.
6. Ed and� egli a desiderare d'empiersi il corpo delle silique, che i porci mangiavano; ma niuno gliene dava.
Granier adds : It is certain that nobody, after having compared the two Rhaetian dialects with the Florentine one, will deny that they fundamentally constitute the same tongue, though the two first ones are rougher, harder than the last one.
(--)
The literary dialect of Florence says padre for father, whereas in Engadin they say bap. This word actually belongs to the popular tongue of Florence and to the dialects of Umbria, that say bappo.
A great number of dialects of Emilia, the first mother country of the Rhaetians, also say bap for father. Such are the patois of Faentino, Ravenna, Lugo, Forli and Rimini.
The Rhaetian writings use the word brichia (??) and they say el for he. Tuscan patois say briccica, and they use el for he in the dialect of Sienna.
It's impossible to seriously contest that the Rhaetians or Grisons in the two Engadins are Etruscan by their origin: their national language have kept among them, as Livy attests; and as that language, elegance and harmony excepted (but they had already disappeared at the time of the Latin historian), is visibly the same as the current (1872) tongue of the Toscans, one can say that the modern patois of Etruria are the continuation of its ancient idioms.
The location of the Rhaetians, nation which is almost in an out-of-the-way place, Velleius Paterculus says, had naturally contributed, by the effect of isolation, to preserve their language from any serious change. Separated from the Etruscans, their ancestors, by Lumbardy and Emilia, they couldn't have borrowed from them during the following times the words they have in common with the Tuscan dialects. So they have same tongue and same race.
(To be continued.)
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| Nick wrote: | | Your mate is an expert in "Old Dutch" in... Melbourne where he has access to the copious body of "Old Dutch" literature, I suppose. We will accept that he is, since he told you so. |
Not worthy of you, Nick! As a question of fact, he taught both Dutch and German and is the author of the "definitive" grammar of Afrikaans. He doesn't claim to be a specialist/expert in language history and certainly has not bothered much with Old Dutch/Old Germanic stuff since his Masters. But he is an intelligent, honest chap and his reaction was worth listening to and for me very interesting.
If what he was taught (and indeed accepts as a well founded paradigm) is right then Mick's proposition needs to be re-examined.
What I have a real problem with, knowing as we do by now that you are an intelligent bloke, is your reaction. Your erudite friend said that all the Germanic languages experienced a jump in this period but English's was more pronounced because of the Normans.
Great. So, of course, you immediately asked "WHY?" Because of the mini-Ice Age 800-1000 perhaps? What the hell was happening across northern Europe to make all the languages that had remained practically unchanged (except for Gothic, which simply died out) have a spurt of change? Was there a Committee for Advancement & Change in Germanic Languages who had a sudden burst of success in the period? Maybe the consolidation of Christianity made the Germanic languages jump? . |
You are right. My reaction was/is WHY? But I don't leap to an answer.
Firstly, I would like to know whether or not the assertion can be supported.
Secondly, if it is supportable then what cause or causes could have generated this dramatic change.
Thirdly, which of these possibilities offers the most reasonable explanation.
Fourthly, if the assertion is insupportable by the evidence, how did the belief come into being in the first place?
You see, what I am wondering is this. The received position is that Middle English morphed from the Mercian dialect of AS. (I think we can all agree that the lineage from Middle English to Early Modern and to Modern is all of one piece). Mick's position is that AS was not the father of Middle English at all but that written ME emerged when the local inhabitants got pissed off with writing in Latin or Norman-French or Anglo-Saxon and applied what they had learnt about alphabets and writing to putting down the language that they had been speaking (just between themselves, like) for the previous 1000 years.
But what I am wondering is suppose that neither of these explanations is correct. Could it be that ME is the bastard child of both Anglo-Saxon and Ancient English?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| But what I am wondering is suppose that neither of these explanations is correct. Could it be that ME is the bastard child of both Anglo-Saxon and Ancient English? |
We often deal with this notion of 'two parents' because it is a standard way of 'saving the paradigm' -- essentially melding the old/false with the new/true. If you can point to a single example of a population adopting this bastard form and/or explaining how it can be done in practice, then it would certainly be worth exploring. But not otherwise.
In a general way of course it is otiose to consider the standard explanation of Mercian origins (either direct or via bastardy) because nobody has ever been able to establish any linguistic connection between any variety of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. (Save of course the family resemblance between all forms of "Western Germanic", to use their label.)
At present the orthodox connection between Mercian and Middle English is twofold
1. They were all living in the same place and
2. 'Cos we say so.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| if the assertion is insupportable by the evidence, how did the belief come into being in the first place? |
It is not merely the Germanic languages that have required this belief to come into existence but all languages. This is because linguists continue to insist that living languages are evolved forms of dead languages and therefore require a huge leap just before the modern languages get written down (ie when the evidence becomes unarguable).
As soon as the erroneous paradigm assumption is dispensed with so the supposition of the radical jump can be dispensed with.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| But, still living in Etruria, they continued to speak their polished Etruscan in their everyday life, while the peasants, the sailors, the shepherds, the servants, who had no reason to learn Latin, continued to speak their own Etruscan patois. |
That's assuming there was a rustic Etruscan patois. What if the Etruscans spoke a non-Italian, not even Romance, language because they were (merely) a foreign ruling elite? Etruscan might have died rather quickly if the swapped formalities into Latin.
| So if really the Etruscan inscriptions had been more or less representative of what people would speak, if really this language had really completely disappeared, we could call that disintegration. |
Or integration.
| Concerning the population living in Rhaetia, Granier de Cassagnac has compared one text (the 'prodigal son') written in the patois of Upper Engadin and of Lower Engadin (in Grisons, ancient Rhaetia) and the same text written in the literary dialect of Tuscany. |
But these are all dialects of Italian. What do they have to do with the, so they say, non-Romance Etruscan and Rhaetic languages?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| But what I am wondering is suppose that neither of these explanations is correct. Could it be that ME is the bastard child of both Anglo-Saxon and Ancient English? |
Advancing knowledge may seem more like laying a new path than following an old one, but, in the sense that the implication is a low level matter of logic, the truths to be discovered are already mapped out by the truths we already know. But someone still has to go there, and it's right and proper to stride in the direction that some established truth points.
The trouble is, it is rare for anyone to get an overview of the path and see if it is still advancing, heading in a sensible direction. (We were told on the Time Team forum that the fundamentals of archaeology are regularly scrutinised and reported on, although the reports are too turgid for anyone to read: archaeologists sleep soundly in the knowledge that their underpinnings are being attended to. But when asked for the definitive answer on some paradigm matter, they could not point to it.)
"The bastard child of both Anglo-Saxon and Ancient English" is a new way to hack through some thicket that you only encounter by heading off in an illogical direction. Why look for some exotic linguistic history when the evidence of real linguistic behaviour is as plain as day?
The linear process you describe
Firstly I would like to know whether or not the assertion can be supported.
Secondly, if it is supportable then what cause or causes could have generated this dramatic change.
Thirdly, which of these possibilities offers the most reasonable explanation.
Fourthly, if the assertion is insupportable by the evidence, how did the belief come into being in the first place? |
is not applicable when the paradigm itself, the base camp, the direction of the implication, is what is at issue.
Firstly, can the assertion about Germanic shifts be supported? Obviously, yes, in the sense that it has been: in the sense that A and B are held to be known and the route between them is to be deduced. But in common sense terms, (e.g. where changes in spelling can not faithfully connote changes in pronunciation; or where there are reasons for written and spoken languages to differ), the assertion can not be supported without the cause making sense.
Linguists reach the second stage and look for reasons for exotic behaviour, which the academic system guarantees they will find. Even where they offer no explanation at all, e.g. for the Great Vowel Shift, they go right on asserting that the change self-evidently took place.
It's the ground for this self-evidence that we dispute; and they have no answer save to repeat that they are right. They forgot to relegate the unsubstantiated hypothesis to the also-rans when no cause could be found.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A brilliant exposition of the general situation.
| But these are all dialects of Italian. What do they have to do with the, so they say, non-Romance Etruscan and Rhaetic languages? |
Here is a beautiful example of the sticking-true-and-false-paradigms-together I mentioned above. Originally Rhaetic was confidently put forward as one of the various 'Celtic' languages that infested pre-Classical Europe; then it became (from memory) a kind of orphan Indo-European survivor (which also infest linguists' maps from time to time); now it is confidently described as 'Italic'.
This is terrific for telling first year students (and each other) but of course some of us might wonder (aloud) what kind of magical language starts off Italic then becomes Latin and then becomes Italic once more.
PS It wouldn't surprise me if the Engadinian locals start referring to their own language as Rhaetic soon. People rather like being famous in this way.
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Bernie, I wasn't questioning the fact that your venerable friend was a university professor in all things Germanic, just the notion that he could be some sort of expert in "Old Dutch" since the pre-mediaeval evidence of any of the Germanic languages is pathetic and an awful lot of conclusions come out of awfully little evidence.
I could set myself up as an expert in Old Jutish 'cos I wouldn't have to study anything, it not existing outside linguistic fantasy. I don't see the need for your softly-softly approach. Your venerable friend offered common jump hypothesis, he must have some sort of explanation for it - what is it?
By the way, and this is a personal recommendation - not from the official "Harper mob" booklist. I recommend you read Stephen Oppenheimer's The Origins of the British [Robinson] for the tortured origins of English using methodology that do not start from the usual linguists assumptions (especially pp. 340-356). He is not an Applied Epistemologist but comes to remarkably similar conclusions.
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In the Cambridge Encyclopedia of dead-in-the-water languages I mentioned a week ago, we are confidently told that Rhaetic is related to Etruscan but also that it may be Indo-European. The evidence available is 'very few inscriptions'. In fact, only one is mentioned. They can't even agree on how it's spelt (with or without "h"). Still, R(h)aetic fares better than Picene, which is a name on a map. There is literally no other mention of it.
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| Nick wrote: | | Bernie, I wasn't questioning the fact that your venerable friend was a university professor in all things Germanic, just the notion that he could be some sort of expert in "Old Dutch" |
I have got a lot of answering to do this evening, but I will start with you, Nick.
No he is not "an expert in 'Old Dutch'". He is merely an average/good run-of-the-mill academic that happened to do an M.Phil on the history of the Germanic language group. So his perspective is interesting to me. My questions to him were more along the lines of - "to what extent is the history of Anglo-Saxon development different from its cousins?". And I was quite surprised by his immediate response of "very little". To which I responded with "are you saying that the whole of the language group went through the dramatic changes that are represented by the "OE to ME" transformation?" "Indeed, yes" was the reply, "it is just the intervention of Norman French that makes the AS to ME seem so very marked".
| he must have some sort of explanation for it - what is it? |
Quite so. But for me at that time to have taken it up would have turned a social occasion into an interrogation. I will indeed pursue it with him in due course. In the meantime I did hope that the assembled company might have some constructive comments rather than simply taking a contrarian position,
| I recommend you read Stephen Oppenheimer's The Origins of the British [Robinson] for the tortured origins of English using methodology that do not start from the usual linguists assumptions (especially pp. 340-356). |
Thank you. I will chase that up.
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