| View previous topic :: View next topic |
|
|
|
 |
|
As an objective observer (ha, ha, ha!), Bernie, let me offer you a plausible theory for the final supremacy of English.
A bunch of Vikings adopt Norman French to communicate with the locals they have conquered in Normandy. They then move into England but continue to occupy large chunks of France, which they consider their more valuable lands (because the painting and music is better - private joke with Mick).
Anyway, this new elite - only ever 7% of the population - lose their "ancestral" lands in France (King John) and gradually realize that they can't hang onto new lands they temporarily conquer back (100 Years War). England becomes increasingly the base of this dynasty. Meanwhile, the kings of England come into increasing conflict with the Roman Church (remember Henry II, then Wycliffe, Lollards, etc.).
So, Latin on the slide. The Black Death and the Mini-Ice Age in the 14th Century mean that the (surviving) English peasants are increasingly in a position to challege their role as food producers and cannon fodder. All these tendencies come together so that the aristocracy have to increase their ideological ties to the general population. So, increasingly parliament starts to use English (c. 1360), court and country writers begin to use English (1350-140) and finally the king (Harry V) uses English.
Simplistic, deterministic but, I hope, plausible.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| DPCrisp wrote: | | And how did they develop a Latin alphabet written form if the Latin tradition was already dead? |
Yes, Dan. I think you have hit it.
It was the Brits who knew about writing (in Latin). They taught the new Anglo Saxons how to do it. The AS could understand the technology (a v. good point that you make in another post) but knew no Latin. Voila - written AS. Which also explains why there is none to be found in whatever was their continental ancestral hunting grounds.
At this point I formally revise my earlier theory from "English is the bastard child of AS and Ancient Woopwoop" to "English is the bastard child of Ancient Woopwoop and written AS".
So underneath we have the abiding syntactic-morphology of Ancient Woopwoop allied with quite a bit of lexical input and some grammatical structures of the good written stuff - "good" because (a) it has now been around for a few hundred years, (b) it was not that rotten old Frenchie stuff and (c) the nice monks had been using it for ages with no ill effects so it was blessed by God, innit?
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nick, your model looks good for post-1066. Can you hang a convincing 400-1066 section onto the front?
Funny about the Norsemen and their just swapping languages in France. They did the same in Southern Italy and Sicily. I wonder why? Maybe they were just like today's Norwegians all of whom, it seems to me, speak better English than most English people.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
OK. A few Saxons arrive to join their brother Saxons already in Britain before the Romans left. Later more Angles arrive bringing with them Beowulf, blood-pudding, whippets and fried Mars bars.
This new elite is determined to act like an elite and the one thing we all know about the Romans - apart from the straight road thing - is they wrote. So, the Angles and the Anglo-Saxons (nobody remembers the Jutes - they just arrived and then disappeared) wrote down a few things in their already archaic dialects.
Knowing and reading these bits and pieces of writing - along with having daft names - was the only way of marking the elite off. After all, they looked like the locals and were probably speaking English after no time at all. After all, you have to be able to order someone to milk your cow and plough your field. Today we are more sophisticated and mark off the elite by giving them MBAs.
Anyway, generations of Anglo-Saxons and Angles learnt to write their ancestral language in a getting-back-to-my-roots nostalgia trip. We know that they weren't actually speaking Anglo-Saxon/Angeln because the regional varieties of western Germanic in English don't evolve. They stay as they are, dead in the water. All this despite the fact that we have a time-line to compare at least the Wessex variety to (called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
A bit later the Vikings come along, bless 'em, and nobody cares except for the elite 'cos the Vikings speak a northern germanic variety which is, in fact, more intelligible to the locals than the horrible noise the scops make while the local toffs get drunk.
Anyway, bit of Saxon-Viking argy-bargy, toing and froing from 850 to 1042 doesn't affect the fact that everyone is speaking English to each other, including everyone in Lowland Scotland (but don't tell the SNP).
Finally the Normans turn up accompanied by a load of Breton hangers-on. The Normans don't care what you speak so long as you milk the cows and plough the fields, the Bretons try to speak Cornish for a bit but then give up. The Church speaks Latin 'cos it sounds really hocus-pocus and the other 93% of the people carry on speaking English, as they have done since the Neolithic.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | | It is a remarkable step, turning one's own language into a written form. So remarkable that (according to us anyway) nobody in Europe did it before the Irish in the eighth century AD. But even according to orthodoxy, the only people to do it anywhere in Europe were the Romans, the Greeks and the Etruscans. That's not much given that writing per se had been around for several thousand years. |
I agree that it is remarkable. But I really don't understand why you want to exclude the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Jews etc. I can understand that you might want to take a position that says that written Greek or written Latin was not the real Greek or Latin. But it doesn't make any sense to me to simply deny their existence. Good God, the flaming Greeks did it twice. They adapted Linear B to Greek and then later they adopted the (probably) Phoenician script.
We also need to keep in mind that there is a four tiered structure of the use of written language:-
1. the writing is used for "laundry lists", accounting and some inscriptions,
2. the writing is used for also sorts of records and even for narratives and poetry but its knowledge is restricted to a "scribal" class - (the beginnings of primitive trade unions?),
3. the writing is in general use among the educated classes, and
4. the writing is in universal use among all classes.
The really remarkable thing about the Greeks is that once they got hold of the alphabet (around 750BC), within 50 years they had leaped into being a class 3 society and within another 150 years they were, at least in Athens, Sparta, Corinth and other leading poleis class 4 societies - all without the existence of mass media!!
And here is a little brain-teaser for you. Setting aside the Greeks for a bit, which society had a 90+% literacy level by the 15th century? A clue is that it was also the society that invented the world's first encyclopaedia.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Excellent Nick. Full marks except for the Mars Bar. Mars, after all, was the Roman God of War so that must have been a contribution from the Latinized Brits.
But I am a bit worried about the Viking bit of the scenario. I mean - I would have been very worried if I had been raped and pillaged whether I was one of the nobs or one of the plebs
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | | It is the same thing with Darwinian Evolutionists, they always presume an extinct ancestor, not that existing animals can evolve into one another. |
I confess that I have never even picked up The Origin of Species, never mind reading it but I had always understood that Darwin had demonstrated that the various species of Finch in the Galapagos had developed one from another. Yes, there was some earlier, now dead, ancestor but the ones now alive on the different islands were a "linear evolution" and, thus a refutation of your statement. But I stand open to correction if I have misunderstood.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Nick wrote: | | and the other 93% of the people carry on speaking English, as they have done since the Neolithic. |
A plot of the 200 or so don, dun, den and down places ( plus a meaningful English pre/suffix) in England show them ALL to be right next to Hill forts which were abandoned slowly from about 500BC to the arrival of the Romans. I imagine this would be the period that the Angles etc arrived in any serious numbers ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Roman_Iron_Age).
A few more may have arrived later when the Romans left ( the so-called Migration period on the north continent) who I suppose could have been the A-S speakers, although I haven't found any hard evidence for this movement into England.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| DPCrisp wrote: | There is certainly a misunderstanding and I'm not sure where it lies either.
People in Etruria now speak a dialect of Italian, but this bears no resemblance to Etruscan as known from inscriptions, apparently; so we can not tell from this whether we are talking about two peoples or one. We have to grapple with the problem of languages denoted by the names of peoples/regions by linguists who don't seem to understand the difference between rulers-who-could-write and peasants-who-couldn't.
Rhaetic is said to be non-Indo-European. This should be based on a surviving non-Indo-European isolate and/or non-Indo-European inscriptions. But if you don't think there are any inscriptions and de Cassagnac thinks they currently speak a dialect of Italian/Tuscan, then I have no idea what the position on Rhaetic really is. |
Dan, either my English is really bad, or you have read my posts too fast.
1. Granier de Cassagnac never mentions the ancient Rhaetic (because probably it still had not been discovered at his time). However, he recalls that Rhaetians were considered as Etruscans by classic authors, and, rather cleverly, he compares a text written in patois of modern Engadin (as spoken in the XIXth century), a part of ancient Rhaetia, and the same one in literary Tuscan (modern Etruria). If he had found the same text in one patois of Tuscany, of course he would have chosen it. He made do with what he had.
2. Before making this comparison, Granier has warned (and he develops later) that a great number of Etruscan inscriptions have been probably written in a secret sacred language. In Rome some priests also used some esoteric languages that still have not been deciphered. Of course, 1) this language was not spoken by ordinary people (not at all), 2) since it's not representative of what people would speak in Etruria, if we want to find what the Etruscan vulgar tongue eventually was, we can reasonably suppose it was near to the modern Tuscan dialect (which is modern Italian, in fact).
3. You say: "But these are all dialects of Italian." Of course since it's always vulgar Tuscan! And you add: "What do they have to do with the, so they say, non-Romance Etruscan and Rhaetic languages?" The relation between esoteric Etruscan and vulgar Tuscan is the same one as between esoteric Rhaetic and Romanche, I suppose. This is very interesting because the discovery of ancient Rhaetic would be a late confirmation of Granier's proposition.
In the following pages, he tries to translate several words which have been found on graves principally, and that he considers as written in the vulgar Etruscan language. For instance, he puts together the Etruscan word avil and Tuscan avello, tomb.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| but I had always understood that Darwin had demonstrated that the various species of Finch in the Galapagos had developed one from another |
Perhaps he did. Founding Fathers of paradigms tend to understand these things; it is their pigmy ancestors that forget it all.
For the record, 'modern' biologists say that the uber-finch came from South America and is either extinct or cannot now be identified. A child of six would just take the current Galapagos finches and work out the evolutionary line by physical inspection of animal morphology.
A child of ten would do the same thing but using DNA. A child of fifteen would, using the DNA data, produce an irrefutable mathematical model of how evolution works in the real world. This model however would so undermine the theory of evolution-by-mutation that grown-up Life Scientists have taken an Eternal Vow never to do this apparently simple and useful experiment.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| berniegreen wrote: | | I confess that I have never even picked up The Origin of Species, never mind reading it but I had always understood that Darwin had demonstrated that ...there was some earlier, now dead, ancestor.... |
Another of the rules of Applied Epistemology forbids appeal to hypothetical forces or factors in support of a model. Hypothesis offers no support to theory.
This rule impacts evolutionary models in both biological and linguistic applications; for ancestry may thus only be traced to known entities (those that have been observed) -- and most of these are living. German can evolve from English -- or the reverse -- and a tiger can evolve from a leopard -- or the reverse -- but English and German may not evolve from an unknown, hypothetical root language and tigers and leopards may not evolve from an unknown, hypothetical common ancestor. Neither may finches.
This rule exists because Applied Epistemology is evidence based. Not to make a fetish of the scientific method but because the rigorous application of scientific principles produces results in which we can have far greater confidence. Knowledge worthy of the name requires higher levels of certainty than those generally tolerated by academia -- especially in the humanities and social sciences -- disciplines which currently depend almost entirely on speculation.
In linguistics, application of this rule does not exclude the possibility of Anglo Saxon being the ancestor of English (as the existence of Anglo Saxon is established). In fact... even Mick's work has not excluded the possibility that Anglo Saxon is the ancestor of English.
What Mick has demonstrated, by reference to real-world observation of the rates of change associated with English and other languages, is that Anglo Saxon could not reasonably have transformed into English in the space of the 300 years currently allowed for it. As Applied Epistemologists would put it: There is no observable evidence that language may change at the rate the current model requires; therefore, the current model fails epistemological critique.
Therefore, the appearance of English in the written record must reflect not a change in language but a change in technology (he has mentioned the development of dipthongs and standardized pronunciation) or the natural expansion to the commons of an existing technology (alphabetic writing) once exclusive to an elite minority.
If Anglo Saxon is the ancestor of English, the former must have continued to exist alongside its evolving descendent for millennia -- sufficiently long to make the two as unlike to one another as are modern English and modern German. This is not impossible if the ancestors of the English came from Saxony in the long forgotten past, leaving the Saxon language intact on the continental homeland.
However. We have no evidence for that proposition. There is no one anywhere in the world currently speaking Anglo-Saxon so we lack even an observation on which to peg our location for the ancient Saxon linguistic homeland. And even if Anglo-Saxon were still being spoken alongside English, there would be no obvious means by which to identify which language gave rise to the other.
Thus, while it is not impossible for Anglo-Saxon to be the ancestral language of English, the proposition currently fails epistemological critique.
We do not know the "origins" of English. At the time of its appearance in the historical record it emerges fully-formed with no obvious parentage. Anglo-Saxon might just as well be its offspring as its ancestor.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| It was the Brits who knew about writing (in Latin). They taught the new Anglo Saxons how to do it. The AS could understand the technology (a v. good point that you make in another post) but knew no Latin. Voila - written AS. Which also explains why there is none to be found in whatever was their continental ancestral hunting grounds. |
Yes, that's fine. Except for the contradiction: you can't teach someone to write Latin without teaching them Latin. (It's not like the Anglo-Saxons, uniquely in umpteen centuries of European history, needed to know some Latin before they could learn to write it.) And isn't there some runic Anglo-Saxon?
We certainly need to get to grips with the absence of signs of Anglo-Saxons anywhere else. Being here at the same time as the Romans* is surely something to do with it. It may even be that the Anglo-Saxons, not the 'Romano-British', maintained the Latin tradition until they're sufficiently advanced/in charge that the advent of written Anglo-Saxon can make it clear in the records who is in charge.
* Speaking of which, the Anglo-Saxons 'holding the North Sea franchise' while the Celts 'held the western Channel franchise' probably explains why the Anglo-Saxons never took Wales and Cornwall.
| At this point I formally revise my earlier theory from "English is the bastard child of AS and Ancient Woopwoop" to "English is the bastard child of Ancient Woopwoop and written AS". |
Yes, that's fine. Except for showing how written AS would have any effect on illiterate English peasantry.
Someone check Bede again: was he only talking about the written languages used in Britain?
| Nick, your model looks good for post-1066. Can you hang a convincing 400-1066 section onto the front? |
Huh? Written English didn't emerge until after the Conquest. We assume it was spoken before then, but there's nothing to explain about the life of written English when it wasn't written.
| I really don't understand why you want to exclude the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Jews etc. I can understand that you might want to take a position that says that written Greek or written Latin was not the real Greek or Latin. But it doesn't make any sense to me to simply deny their existence. |
Not with you. Who denies whose existence?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| Later more Angles arrive bringing with them Beowulf, blood-pudding, whippets and fried Mars bars. This new elite is determined to act like an elite |
Flippancy aside, there is a serious problem with the orthodox picture of poor Angles being in such dire straits that they have to bugger off and colonise a neighbour. Apart from the rising sea level story applying just as well on the other side of the same sea, how guttersnipes and mudlarks to mount such an expedition and assume the mantle of ruling elite?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| Dan, either my English is really bad, or you have read my posts too fast. |
Si, M. d'Alincthun, je comprends.
| 2. Before making this comparison, Granier has warned (and he develops later) that a great number of Etruscan inscriptions have been probably written in a secret sacred language. |
This would certainly explain why Etruscan is undeciphered, maybe non-IE. Can you give us his argument briefly?
| In Rome some priests also used some esoteric languages that still have not been deciphered. |
Interesting. More information?
| since it's not representative of what people would speak in Etruria, if we want to find what the Etruscan vulgar tongue eventually was, we can reasonably suppose it was near to the modern Tuscan dialect (which is modern Italian, in fact). |
True. But (I thought) this is not the interesting question. We would start from the assumption that the way to find the vulgar tongue anywhere in ancient times is to look at the vulgar tongue in the same place in modern times. They will be different only in exceptional circumstances. The Etruscan language as known from 13,000 inscriptions, etc. is the unresolved mystery.
| The relation between esoteric Etruscan and vulgar Tuscan is the same one as between esoteric Rhaetic and Romanche, I suppose. |
Perhaps, but that is what I said: that there may be no relationship between the surviving scraps of writing and the vernacular language; while the linguists can not come to terms with this.
| This is very interesting because the discovery of ancient Rhaetic would be a late confirmation of Granier's proposition. |
This is what I do not understand. If ancient Rhaetic is not known from surviving evidence and modern Rhaetians speak a dialect of Italian, why do they say ancient Rhaetic was a non-Indo-European language?
| In the following pages, he tries to translate several words which have been found on graves principally, and that he considers as written in the vulgar Etruscan language. For instance, he puts together the Etruscan word avil and Tuscan avello, tomb. |
Sounds like a sensible equation. But maybe Granier {Is that a surname?} makes the same mistake of assuming the written language to be the vulgar language.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| In fact... even Mick's work has not excluded the possibility that Anglo Saxon is the ancestor of English. |
An important point (Anglo-Saxon being artificial and therefore not the ancestor of anything notwithstanding). It's tempting to think that English having unknown origins means it has very ancient (say, neolithic) origins. But we mustn't.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
