Learning languages

[Confuse]

A selection of Latin words borrowed even before the Saxons came to England:

Belt. Bin. Bishop. Butter. Cat. Chalk. Cheese. Copper. Cup. Dish. Fork. Inch. Kettle. Kiln. Kitchen. Line. Mile. Mill. Mint. -Monger. Mortar. Mule. Pan. Pea. Pepper. Pillow. Pin. Pipe. Pit. Pitch. Plum. Poppy. Pound. Purse. Sickle. Street. Tile. Toll. Wall. -Wick. Wine.

Good luck finding Germanic equivalents. [read: Give up, this language is forlorn.]

I suppose they'll say, oh, but those are honorary Germanic words.
Either that, or they would have a serious situation and we would have terms like "stabbyfoodthing" for fork.

I wonder how they would do it, then. Without completely destroying English. I know there is some movement for Modern English, but it's not quite as thorough, it's only the more "recognizable" French words, such as "mutton", "question", etc.

Personally, I don't care about that kind of thing. I'd just like to be able to speak that language. No language has to be forlorn, that's a pessimistic view, and I'm an optimist.

I'm guessing for newer vocab they would look either to Germany, Netherlands, Norway Sweden and Denmark, or possibly even Iceland - linguistic purism, I guess. I suppose it would be like what they did with Hebrew.

[Confuse]

The only Coptic that is spoken by the Coptic Church is the Catholic Mass in Coptic, which is I think around 300 words that nobody understands ANYWAY

Lol!
300 words could give rise to 800, then to 2000, I guess. Before we know it, Coptic could soon become a living language again. Coptic is a pretty decent language to revive (I think very few speak it already actually), since it died out in the 17th century. There's quite a bit of material on it, too, so it could easily be put together in a committee to work out what the words were, or something.


On the plus side, it's written with an alphabet, too, so easier for learners.

I wonder how Egypt would take Coptic coming back, though..

[Formiko]

I wonder how Egypt would take Coptic coming back, though..

I studied a bit of Ancient Egyptian, and Coptic is real close, but we can have a happy medium. We can just use the Demotic script. PLus, Egyptian is VERY well researched (I have plenty of dictionaries and grammars), and there are "fluent" speakers (well, fluent readers?)

[Sean of the Dead]

Is there anywhere on the interent where I can hear Ancient Egyptian spoken?

[TaylorS]

Well, there are a few problems with "modernising" Old and Middle English.

First, what is Old and Middle English? It's not like people suddenly started speaking different language from the year 1066. English runs in a continuum, and 11th century English texts show an intermediary stage between the two. Whilst Middle English is characterised with the Norman influences, some 12th century poems still show very little Norman influence. Neither Old nor Middle English was "stable" because they were (as it is the case with most Medieval vernaculars) not standardised, and we should make an arbitrary choice to fix the language in a fossilised form.

And then, which dialect? West Saxon, Mercian, Anglian or Northumbrian? Or for Middle English, Southern, West Midland, Kentish or Northern? Following West Saxon or Chancery "standard" can oversimplify the linguistic situation... Although I wouldn't object West Saxon as the standard (since no other OE dialects are known well enough) I would refuse to participate reviving Chaucer's London dialect.

Even if we do agree with "what" OE/ME, there is another lurking problem.

We don't really know how they used the language. Most OE texts are either translations from Latin or poetry, and it is not unreasonable to assume that both were somewhat different from the actual usage. Given the relative paucity of materials in Old English, it really gives us few texts on which we can model our composition.

We have more volumes of ME texts, but anyone who is remotely familiar with ME literature would realise that you cannot just write the way you read them. Almost all ME corpus is in verse, which distorts the conventional syntax for the poetic effects. While there are a small number of prose in ME (Chancery anthology, two "Tales" of Chaucer, letters...) these are not the usual kind that ME learners (and readers) are accustomed to read.

You may wonder why you should care about all these things as we can eventually arrive at a convention if we just start doing the damn thing. True, but then how is it different from a collective historical conlang? The result would be something that was never spoken in the first place...

I've read that spoken Old English resembled early Middle English far more then it resembled the "Standard Literary West Saxon" we normally think of as "Old English", which was a standardized and very conservative form disconnected from actual speech. Basically, as the native Celts and (later on) the Norse settlers took up English they mangled the grammar and their kids inherited the mangled grammar. Then the Norman Conquest led to the abandonment of Standard West Saxon and thus the reality of the spoken language finally became reflected in writing.

[Karavinka]

I've read that spoken Old English resembled early Middle English far more then it resembled the "Standard Literary West Saxon" we normally think of as "Old English", which was a standardized and very conservative form disconnected from actual speech. Basically, as the native Celts and (later on) the Norse settlers took up English they mangled the grammar and their kids inherited the mangled grammar. Then the Norman Conquest led to the abandonment of Standard West Saxon and thus the reality of the spoken language finally became reflected in writing.

Well, it is because the language continued to change while the standardisation did not. (And this is why "standardisation" is important... Current English orthography is neutral to phonetics, and it can be understood by any speaker regardless of dialect. This is just perfect, and I would fight to death against any attempts to make it more "phonetic.")

West Saxon was first written as it was spoken. While most primers state "sc" was pronounced like "sh," in the earliest phase it was in fact pronounced like "sk." Sound changed, spelling didn't reflect the sound anymore, and it wouldn't be surprising if Late Old English (under the cover of West Saxon) sounded similar to Early Middle English. But still this is not to say West Saxon standard was universally used - far from it. Dialects were still present both in speech and writing, and different manuscripts show dialectal variations. (One interesting case would be Beowulf, which shows a composite of various Anglo-Saxon dialect elements and it got partially "normalised" into West Saxon by the scribes of the surviving manuscript. It's suggested that the original was Anglian.)

As you mentioned, West Saxon standard was abandoned almost immediately after the Norman conquest. The "continuations" of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written after the Norman conquest show that the scribes abandoned the West Saxon standard and wrote in their dialect. (It's the case with the "Peterborough Chronicle") These addenda are hence better classed as Early ME rather than Anglo-Saxon, and it's interesting that the scribes made a copy of the Chronicle after 1066, preserved West Saxon text but added more entries in Early ME. While they must have had the knowledge of West Saxon, they didn't bother to write in it.

There was Norse influence, but not in every dialect. Basically, it influenced the dialects spoken in the former Danelaw - Northumbrian and East Anglian. 12th century (Early ME) texts from the southern England (formerly Wessex) show very little Norse influence. And since the literary output of the former Danelaw was practically nil, we have no idea how extensive the influence must have been and the Norse influence can be detected only from Early ME texts from the former Danelaw region. And for the British-Welsh influence, I don't think this could be asserted with any degree of certainty in regarding Anglo-Saxon. There was, if any, very little British influence on it.

[Confuse]

I wonder how Egypt would take Coptic coming back, though..

I studied a bit of Ancient Egyptian, and Coptic is real close, but we can have a happy medium. We can just use the Demotic script. PLus, Egyptian is VERY well researched (I have plenty of dictionaries and grammars), and there are "fluent" speakers (well, fluent readers?)

Yeah, I think there are some fluent readers, hopefully they can speak it too.

I think Coptic is close, but I did mean about how Egypt, being an Arabic speaking country, would react to the language of the past being revived. Would they allow for Coptic as an official language along with Arabic, would it just be allowed, or would it be something more sinister?

I think something like 10% of Egypt is Coptic, so at a guess if every Copt learned Coptic (that sounded strange), I wonder what they would have to say.

I'd personally prefer to use the Coptic alphabet, just because of asthetical reasons, and since it succeeded Demotic and might be better or the language. I'm not sure, but this is a guess. My ancient Egyptian knowledge isn't quite up-to-scratch.

[Formiko]

I think something like 10% of Egypt is Coptic, so at a guess if every Copt learned Coptic (that sounded strange), I wonder what they would have to say.

And give up their sacred Arabic? Hardly! Islam is too tied to Arabic, and Coptic is too tied to Christianity. There's a fat chance of Egypt being keen on reviving Coptic

[Ghost]

Sorry for breaking into the discussion like a madman, but I found something that might interest some of you. Actually, there is a family that still, and have through out the generations spoke, speak Copic.

Link!!!

Exerpt

- There are only four families who speak the Coptic language, and most of the members travel to Canada, Australia, or the United States.
- The number of people who speak Coptic reaches around 300, an no one is still in Egypt except the family of Titti Mouris. At home, their children speak Coptic.

[TaylorS]

There was, if any, very little British influence on it.

This is a commonly promulgated myth derived from the claim that English borrowed almost no Brythonic vocabulary. But linguistic substrata tend not to leave much of a lexical trace, instead they leave grammatical influences. According to American linguist John McWhorter this is seen in the usage of the Present Progressive as the default present form with the Simple Present being a habitual tense, Welsh does the same thing. There is also what McWhorter calls "meaningless Do", that is, the use of "do" as a dummy particle ("Did I open?", Welsh "Nes i agor?". I did not open, Welsh "Nes i ddim agor". This "dummy Do" was even more widespread in Middle and Early Modern English, occurring in affirmative statements without the intensifying meaning it has today ("My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time"}, just as in Welsh.

[Karavinka]

There was, if any, very little British influence on it.

This is a commonly promulgated myth derived from the claim that English borrowed almost no Brythonic vocabulary. But linguistic substrata tend not to leave much of a lexical trace, instead they leave grammatical influences. According to American linguist John McWhorter this is seen in the usage of the Present Progressive as the default present form with the Simple Present being a habitual tense, Welsh does the same thing. There is also what McWhorter calls "meaningless Do", that is, the use of "do" as a dummy particle ("Did I open?", Welsh "Nes i agor?". I did not open, Welsh "Nes i ddim agor". This "dummy Do" was even more widespread in Middle and Early Modern English, occurring in affirmative statements without the intensifying meaning it has today ("My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time"}, just as in Welsh.

That's interesting, but why only since ME? I haven't read the article and I don't know any Welsh so I don't think I can make any judgment on the issue, but it's strange that this phenomenon is absent in OE period. It was more common for OE to simply use "ne" (either independent word or prefixed) or a double negation. It'd be interesting why it starts appearing in ME onwards. Maybe there was a difference in the speech of Saxons and Britons? The chance would be high if this type of construction is found in other Brythonic languages, and if it is not, then it would be unclear which direction the borrowing took place.

[TaylorS]

That's interesting, but why only since ME? I haven't read the article and I don't know any Welsh so I don't think I can make any judgment on the issue, but it's strange that this phenomenon is absent in OE period. It was more common for OE to simply use "ne" (either independent word or prefixed) or a double negation. It'd be interesting why it starts appearing in ME onwards. Maybe there was a difference in the speech of Saxons and Britons? The chance would be high if this type of construction is found in other Brythonic languages, and if it is not, then it would be unclear which direction the borrowing took place.

According to McWhorter it was in SPOKEN Old English but it rarely appeared in the written language. He claims that without Welsh influence we would say "He opened it not" and "open it, he?" or something to that effect

[KingHarvest]

How does he make the argument that it existed in spoken OE?

[Confuse]

And give up their sacred Arabic? Hardly! Islam is too tied to Arabic, and Coptic is too tied to Christianity. There's a fat chance of Egypt being keen on reviving Coptic

I meant the Copts, the Christians, not the Muslims.

[sa wulfs]

How does he make the argument that it existed in spoken OE?

If you assume it is due to Brythonic influence and not an independent development, it had to exist in spoken OE.

But I don't know why you need to assume it is due to Brythonic influence without any serious evidence.

[nighean-neonach]

The Brythonic theory does make some sense. As pointed out above, some funny things occur in Medieval English, which cannot be explained by the Germanic predecessors of that language, but have parallels in a geographically neighbouring language, Welsh. In medieval times, written language tended to be conservative and take up influences from spoken language only very slowly.