h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Exevalleyboy wrote:

>>English nationalists could argue that England’s real identity was destroyed by the Norman invasion, and this imposed an alien language and culture on their country, and that the original English language—which survives in so many texts—is the real language of England as opposed to the Latin-French patois which some might say masquerades as today’s ‘English’ language.<<

You may be interested in the book "The Rebirth of England and English: The Vision of William Barnes" by Fr. Andrew Phillips, published by Anglo-Saxon Books. Barnes was a Dorset poet and philologist who wrote poetry in, and two glossaries of, the Dorset dialect, which he claimed was a direct descendant of the Wessex dialect of Old English. He also tried to "denormanise" the English language, replacing French or Latin loan words with native English ones; some using existing words (such as "seafarer" instead of sailor), and some using Barnes's own inventions (eg, "sunprint" for photograph, "birdlore" for ornithology). Phillips book contains, for the first time, a complete word-hoard (glossary) of Barnes' coinages.

I could also add "Zeaxysch Vor To-dai: A Guide to New West Saxon" by Robert Craig, published by Joseph Biddulph. I doubt the Wikipedia folks would approve of this, as it really does appear to be a "conlang", albeit one based on the Wessex dialect of Old English.

Sorry for the multiple postings, but I have found this on Wikipedia:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglish

Incidentally, my use of "seafarer" for "sailor" earlier was a false example, since sailor comes from an Old English root. The Wikipedia article gives "brain" for "mind", which is a better example anyway, since "seafarer" is not that common a word.

Hmm

I am not sure Shakespeare benefits from the changes

"To be, or not to be: that is the ask-thing: is't higher-thinking in the brain to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous dooming..."

The problem with any "what if" analysis is that it is untestable. For example what words would English have adopted from French anyway (as the French are now doing with English).

At least Biddulph is trying to reconstruct an actual language with Westcountry Brythonic. We know it existed even though there is some uncertainty on its details.

Personally, I love the sound of Anglish, but different strokes for different folks.

I'm inclined to think that the Old English written form was quite archaic by the time of the Norman Conquest. This would mean that the Conquest had a less profound effect on English than one might assume; it may be that extra vocabulary was really the main way in which the language changed, and that an approximation to Middle English had in effect been spoken even before the Norman Conquest.

Einion,

My understanding is that the Norman conquest had a profound impact on the English Language. For almost 300 years the official language was French (with Latin for most ecclesiastical matters), and English virtually disappeared from written record.

English did not disappear of course as it was still spoken by the majority of the (common) people, but being "informal" it was able to change rapidly and its existence alongside French (and Latin) no doubt encouraged this.

If I recall correctly up to 85% of English words were "lost" over this period and words of "Old English" origin are only a small minority of the language that we now have. Having said that the Old English words that did survive are some of the most commonly used words, so that around half of what we use comes from OE.

Perhaps the written form in 1065 was archaic and that many of the words were not in common use, but they may still have survived had not William arrived.

It is interesting to conjecture that the Celtic language of Devon must have undergone similar changes alongside first Latin and then Saxon and Norman French. Certainly the records suggest Cornish degenerated into a doggerel in its last days, and I presume that happened elsewhere as well. Had it survived it certainly would have been substantially different from the original.

Ozzie Exile,

I think the last Old English was written in an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at around 1154; I'd have to look it up again but I think I remember that the first Middle English was written only something like twenty years later, and it was already very different, so as to appear rather sudden.

I've also read an article which has evidence to suggest that most even of the nobility were native English-speakers, but that it was still necessary to have a knowledge of French (I'll try and find the article and give a link). It also suggested that the Normans themselves fairly quickly learnt English as a second language.

But still perhaps it changed a little more than I originally suggested.

Einion

Almost there with the dates. When king Henry I died in 1135 he wanted his sole surviving legitimate child, Matilda, to be his heir for both England and Normandy. The Barons on both sides of the Channel swore fidelity, but when he died they brought in Count Stephen of Boulougne as king. Cue: Civil War (see Cadfael novels by the late great Ellis Peters for details). The reign of King Stephen was known as "The Time when Chirst and all His angels slept" In about 1136 the Anglo Saxon Chronicle ceased being written. There were about four ASCs, and only re-commenced after 1154 on the accesion of Henry II Plantagenet, son of Matilda. But you are right, upto Stephen the ASC retained its verb endings, gender mutations, positional mutatings. When it returned, they had pratically disappereared. As English had not been the official language since 1066, it was evolving from the classical saxon English of Alfred, to what we now speak. And in the intervening years the written form had fossilised. All languages fossilise when they become written as anyone who has tried to remember French spellings with silent letters etc will know. But also remeber after 1066, the spoken language was by and large the preserve of the peasantry and ordinary people, who had no truck with remebering the extraneous tenses, they would have prefered a simpler language and with no "Académie Anglo-Saxone" why not? The ASC finally died out in the later years of Henry II.

The Norman nobility in England before about 1215 would probably know English as most of the nannies would have been English and you need to speak to the staff somehow. It was only AFTER John lost Normandy that they began to think of themselves as English first and take the language.

Now old English did not die out. Queen Margaret (wife of Malcolm III Canmore of Macbeth fame!) was daughter of the English royal house and introduced English as a court language to Scotland in the 1090s. Scots if it is considered a seperate language is the result, it is an older form of English that English. It retains more of the germanic edge than English does, "Auld Lang Syne" is Old English in a modern form.

My suggestion to what borrowings English might have taken from French if it hadn't been for the Normans, are if you have a DVD player and a DVD with Dutch subtitles, put them on. And count. Dutch/Flemish, Frisian and Afrikaans are our languages closest relatives, the Flemish, who speak Dutch, (Flemish is a dialect of Dutch) avoid Francisms for political reasons (the same reason the Québecois are paranoid about Anglicisms, living in a country with the other as an official language), but the Dutch are not and so take French borrowings into their form of Dutch. You will find a certain percentage of borrowings. I would say English, given the position French had from 1100 to 1900 in world affairs would be similar.

Must leave it there, I appear to be prattling. Hope this helps.

Oh, Ozzie Exile, the Devon flag is now hanging on our hallway next to a same sized flag of the country of the UK I am now in. If you have read some of my former comments, you might think the colours would clash, but they complement each other. I have a smaller one on my desk at work, and a lot of people have commented as a flag they quite like it!

Have a great Easter to everybody!

TB

Tivvyboy mentions the Scots language/dialect. There is a debate whether Scots is a real language or a dialect; with recent thinking, I believe, going towards Scots being considered a distinct language.

The Scots language seems to have evolved in a similar way to the Devon dialect. Like Scots the Devon dialect is based on Old English and is actually truer to it than modern English, and both also preserve elements of the older Celtic languages. Devon dialect also apparently contains later influences from Norman French.

“Indeed, the Devon dialect harks back to a much older variation of English than is spoken today. Much of it was derived from Old English and its Saxon roots.

The various dialects of the West Country are thought to reflect the territorial spreads of various Saxon clans.

Devon saw a slower rate of settlement by the Saxons, which means that traces of the area’s previous Celtic settlers can still be found in the dialect.

Devon was one of the last places to speak the Celtic language in England. It is reputed to have died out in Devon in the middle ages, but the traces are still there in current Devon dialects.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/southwest/series7/devon-dialect.shtml

The Scots seem to take a pragmatic approach to the issue of their speech by recognising Scots as being their predominant modern spoken language, rather than trying to impose Gaelic on lowland areas where it would be considered foreign. This does not detract from Scotland’s historical Celtic identity. The cultural reality of lowland Scotland, as is the case in west Somerset, Devon and much of Cornwall, is a long evolved mixture of Germanic and Celtic culture. Only in the west of Cornwall did a purer Celtic culture survive, up until the end of the 18th century, and as Ozzie Exile pointed out, nobody knows what the real Cornish language was like at the point of its extinction. If only someone had written it down.

I would love to know how similiar or different it was from the West Country speech used in Cornwall today, and whether it was spoken with a West Country accent or something different, more like the Welsh accent. I guess we will never know.

More about Scots can be found here;

http://www.snda.org.uk/

ExeValleyBoy

Dear all

Hopefully this will work (attempt three, computer posts without me asking it than I spend 20 mins drafting a reply only to have it crash)

Well,

ExeValleyBoy, most people in Scotland accept that Gaelic is the national language of Scotland, not Scots, Scots-English, Doric or Norn. The signs welcoming drivers to Scotland are in Gaelic and English. Sadly these are the only bi-lingual road signs you will see in most of Scotland due to arguments over language matters.

There is a fierce debate in Scotland over Scots. Is it a language or a dialect? Or even both? There was an Italian poet at the time of Italian re-unification when Italy was arguing over language who said "What is the difference between an language and a dialect? A language has an army."

And is Scots the language of the lowlands (Lallans) or of the North East of Scotland (Doric). The southern uplands (Borders and Dumfries and Galloway, spoke a version of Lallans but closer to Northumbrian English). Doric definately sounds foreign to an English ear.It sounds foreign to a Scottish one. Burns wrote in Lallans for those who are interested. At the moment it is probably safer to refer simply to "Scots" not as a dialect or as a language. But the concensus is if Scotland becomes officially bi-lingual, it will be English and Gaelic.

I had more prpared but the crashing of the computer means I have to try and find it, so I'll leave it there.

Hope this helps.

TB

I've read some more on English and the Norman Conquest, and early Middle English was very distinct from Old English in structure but interestingly, there were few French words initially, so it does seem that the difference between Old and Middle English may not necessarily have much to do with the French influence.

I have also read previously on the number of Celtic words, and there seems to be a sudden increase in the number of such words when Middle English came about. So it seems to me that there may well have been an accumulating Celtic influence (during the Old English period) on the vocabulary and structure of the spoken form, but which was not evident in written form, which I hypothesise was becoming increasingly archaic and less reflective of the common speech; this frequently happened in ancient times. But after the Conquest, it may be that the written form was revised and as such, became reflective of the spoken language which had already been used for some time.

Concerning the Normans themselves, it was really only the very uppermost level of society which was largely (there were quite a few exceptions) replaced with Normans; mainly it seems to have been the "tenants-in-chief", holding land directly from the crown, who were Normans.
So most of the post-Conquest nobility were actually still English, even though supplemented by a Norman element, so although English was'nt a true 'official' language, it remained, even so, more than just the language of the 'common people'.

Tivvyboy,

Thanks for the information about language in Scotland. It is much more diverse than I knew. I feel it would be a shame, if Scotland does go bi-lingual, that the only choice would be between regular English and Gaelic, given that Scots dialect-language is what many people in the country speak. Scots does have its own special characteristics, and may be recognised as a language one day. After all the Scandinavian languages (apart from Finnish) are all very closely related, but all are seen as separate tongues, not as just as dialects of the language of one dominant country.

Einion,

There is another interesting slant on the Norman Conquest. The conquest is often talked about as a ‘French’ invasion, when there was a substantial Breton component in the invasion force. The decision to join with their former enemies, the Normans, was taken by the Breton king Conan II.

The Bretons who came over with William were Breton-speaking Celts and the direct descendants of the people forced out of Cornwall and Devon 300 years earlier.

I’m sure the Bretons had not forgotten what had happened to their ancestors when they joined William in his invasion.

Unlike their beleaguered counterparts left behind in Cornwall and Devon, the ex-pat Britons had gone from strength to strength since setting up their new country in Armorica. Brittany ceased to be an independent country only in 1532, when a treaty of union was signed with France.

Many of England’s great estates were given to Bretons, many of them in Cornwall and Devon.

Maybe the Bretons were motivated to join their former sworn enemies by the prospect of getting back their ancestors’ lands in the ‘old country’.

I would be interested in knowing where you read this;

“I have also read previously on the number of Celtic words, and there seems to be a sudden increase in the number of such words when Middle English came about.”

If so, then the words could either have been imported into England by the Bretons themselves, or the Bretons, now back in a position of power in their old country, could have facilitated the assimilation of surviving and formerly excluded Celtic languages and Celtic influenced English dialects (as still spoken at the time in areas like Cornwall and Devon) into the general language; or, of course, it could have been a combination of both.

The Breton influence seems probable, as the Normans alone would have been no more sympathetic to the British Celts and their language than the Saxons had been; seeing as Brittany had been at war with Normandy on numerous occasions before they joined forces for the invasion of England.

ExeValleyBoy,

I am not so sure about the Bretons, who accompanied William, being the descendents of people who were forced out of Cornwall and Devon in the 8th century. From what I have read, the main migrations of Britons from Dumnonia to Armorica occurred during the 5th and 6th centuries. What we do not know, are the numbers involved and the reasons for the migrations. As this occurred at least a century before the first Saxon incursions into Dumnonia, this can almost certainly be ruled out as the motivation. However, it has been postulated that Irish migrations into North Cornwall and North Devon could have been the real reason.

ExeValleyBoy,

Here is a website from where I got some of my information on the number of Celtic words:

http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/dialect/celtlang.htm

I have a hypothesis on this actually (which I've posted on this message board). It seems unlikely to me that this Middle English Celtic influence is due to Breton; I think that it might be due to pre-Norman Celtic influences in the spoken, as opposed to written, English.

There was also a sudden increase in the number of Viking words when Middle English came about. I think I remember reading that there were about 150 such words in Old English but something like 8 or 9 hundred in Middle English.

Plymouth Exile:

"I am not so sure about the Bretons, who accompanied William, being the descendents of people who were forced out of Cornwall and Devon in the 8th century. From what I have read, the main migrations of Britons from Dumnonia to Armorica occurred during the 5th and 6th centuries. What we do not know, are the numbers involved and the reasons for the migrations. As this occurred at least a century before the first Saxon incursions into Dumnonia, this can almost certainly be ruled out as the motivation."

Well, you know that and I know that, but did they know that? The idea of "taking back your ancestral homelands" would have been a powerful propaganda tool, and if you believe that political propaganda has to be based on truth, you probably think that Saddam Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction

>Well, you know that and I know that, but did they know that? The idea of "taking back your ancestral homelands" would have been a powerful propaganda tool, and if you believe that political propaganda has to be based on truth, you probably think that Saddam Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction<

Normans, Bretons and Flemish were all involved in the Norman Conquest. I think it was probably by virtue either of their proximity to Normandy or their relations with William that they ended up fighting alongside him. It most likely had little to do with a belief in taking back their ancestral homelands.

I don't mean to take this off-topic, but there is little reason to believe Saddam Hussein didn't have WMD, and a lot of reason to believe he did. At any rate, there is every reason to think that the invasion of Iraq was (at least largely) based on a genuine belief that Hussein either had or was making WMD, but there is no reason to think that the Bretons of 1066 believed that they were taking back their lost homeland.

Much of Armorica had been ruled by British kings from at least as early as the 300's, so even the founding of Brittany had nothing to do with the migrations of the 5th century.
'Taking back their lost homeland' would have been too far from the truth to be used as a propaganda tool for the invasion of 1066. I doubt that there would even have been a tradition of Britain being the ancestral homeland (someone correct me if I'm wrong though), and from what I know, few Bretons would have been descendants of the British migrants.

It is possible that the Bretons were propagandised that the Normans were taking back their ancestral home. the Normans presented themselves to the Welsh princes etc as being the fulfilment of the prophecy that the English would be driven out of England. And although there is probably no truth to the Welsh for England (Lloegr) translating as "the lost lands" there was certainly the view. Henry Tudor (the seventh) used exactly the same propaganda about a Welsh prince taking back England in 1487, and the Tudor dynasty used the red dragon as an emblem. But from the perspective of 1000 years later it is difficult to know what the propaganda among the other groups (Flemish, Picards, Bretons) that was used. And propaganda was being used, that we know. And the stories of King Arthur only kicked off properly in England after 1066.

On another point, there are incredibly few English names in the Domesday book. They are nearly all French. The wipe out of the English aristocracy at Senlac Hill and the need of William to reward so many of his followers meant that the overwhelming number of holdings across the country were given to new "French" lords of the manor. And 20 years is not long enough for new "French" names eg Robert, William, Henry, to be adopted as they were by the English. Most people if they were holding land and English would have had the tradiditional Anglo Saxon names the Alfred, Edwy, Edwyn, Athelbert varieties. These names of the "held now" variety in the survey are noticable in their absence. But there were a lot of unmarried men in the Norman army and a lot of widows and daughters of the old aristocracy and they did start to marry. Indeed Queen Maud, wife of Henry I was chosen by him because her mother was Queen Saint Margaret of Scotland, and also a member of the Anglo Saxon royal family.

Back to one of my previous posts, one thing Lallans lacks which does not help it, is a standardised grammar. Which results is half a dozen different forms of both Lallans and Doric. It is difficult to leran a language without a standaridised form. And with Lallans being mutually comprehensible 80-90% of the time with standard English, why would anyone bother? Hypothetically! Gaelic has the romance of the highlands, the smell of the heather, and the most difficult orthology of any UK language, and as it is so different to English you feel you have something to learn. Lallans and Doric do not have the romance factor. Perhaps yet should be added. Gaelic is still alive, virtually nothing is broadcast in Lallans, more is broadcast in Doric, and there are books published in both, but only a few. It is a shame, but in a way Scotland is struggling to keep alive its national language, it possibly cannot afford to keep alive more than two, and with four native languages (Gaelic, Norn (extinct), Doric and Lallans) plus standard English and Scottish English things get complicated. Countries do not like having too many official languages, even the EU only has three working ones. And for a small country, 5 and a half languages become too much. And you haven't counted in the new languages spoken in the country.

Hope this all makes sense.

TB

tivvyboy,

Many of the Welsh princes did apparently have a tradition of England (or at least parts of it) being taken away from them. This was probably because during the expansions of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, many British royal families were expelled from their kingdoms (possibly being replaced by rival British dynasties which would be loyal to the Saxon king) and fled to Wales, so their descendants would have kept the tradition that they had lost a kingdom. However, this is probably not the case with Brittany, since the migrants appear to have been from kingdoms in the West which were probably not under threat of conquest at the time.

The fact that there are few English names in the Domesday is probably because most of the names are of tenants-in-chief. I would think the tenants-in-chief were a minority of the whole aristocracy, so the majority of the aristocracy were probably still English.


Concerning the languages of Scotland, I think Norn could be ruled out considering it was always peripheral and not widely spoken. Lallans would have precedence over Doric because it was the language of the ruling class and king before the union of the crowns of Scotland and England. As for the new languages, they are not part of Scotland's heritage and needn't be considered such . Keeping those languages is the task of their countries of origin.

So it's back to Gaelic and Lallans, although as you say the latter is a difficult one due to a lack of standardisation.