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Britain/Ireland - genetic vs cultural | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 9 of 19 08 October 2013 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thank you Elexi, Tractor, and Emk for your interesting contributions.
Further questions: If the Normans were so quick to adopt French (or a version thereof) in Normandy, why were they so slow to adopt English in England? (e.g. The English Parliament was conducted in French for its first 400 years). There is placename evidence of Nordic-speaking people coming to Northern France. There is also placename evidence of a Celtic-speaking people in other parts of France, where nowadays Celtic is either not spoken, or barely spoken. There is place name evidence of Celtic in Cornwall, where the Celtic language Cornish died out, and only exists now in a revived form. But there is little placename evidence of Celtic in central and south-east England, and that which there is has been disputed by Michael Goormachtigh and Dr Anthony Durham. (http://www.proto-english.org/who.html) So if Celtic really was spoken in that part of England, why was so little evidence of it left behind? Goormachtigh and Durham cite the genetic evidence supplied by Stephen Oppenheimer author of "The Origins of the British" (2006, revised 2007), which seems to me to be consistent with that of Bryan Sykes. There are links in that Wikpedia page to 2 articles by Oppenheimer in Prospect magazine, that are worth looking at. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5567 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 10 of 19 08 October 2013 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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As an interesting aside - Norman French survived until roughly the English Republic
in English law courts (although by then it was just generally Frenchified English). Here is a 19th century dictionary of Norman French terms used in Law: http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Dictionary_of_the_No rman_Or_Old_French.html? id=5OQTAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y Edited by Elexi on 08 October 2013 at 1:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 11 of 19 08 October 2013 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Interesting, thanks! My French vocabulary is probably too small to make a realistic comparison, but one thing just hit my eye: "Mac, son". cf. the Mac prefix in Scottish and Irish. Intriguing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 12 of 19 08 October 2013 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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One slightly annoying (to me) thing about that Proto-English site is their use of the
term "Brythonic". "Brythonic" is a neologism coined from (relatively) modern Welsh, and simply means "British", and is usually taken to refer to those Celtic languages that (at least ostensibly) originated in Britain, as opposed to the Goidelic ones which originated in Ireland. However, they seem to use it to refer to the whole lot, which is odd since: 1. Their basic thesis is that the British people (and possibly the Celtic language(s)) arrived in Britain (possibly via Brittany) from Iberia. 2. So why give the name "Brythonic" (="British") to a language that they claim didn't originate in Britain? 3. Why use the word "Brythonic" to also include the Celtic language of Ireland, which is not Britain? Very curious, and I have emailed them to ask why. EDIT: p.s. it's also curious, since they seem to have convinced themselves that the origin of the word "British" is Germanic. I must say I found that part of their case a little tortuous, but I'm not sure if there is a better story on offer. However, it's not good enough to say that it came from Latin "Britannia", since the Romans were quite capable of Latinising local names wherever they existed, and so Britannia might easily have come from either Celtic or Germanic originally (or something else, presumably). Edited by montmorency on 09 October 2013 at 12:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5567 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 13 of 19 08 October 2013 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I agree, it is one the problems they have, amongst many others. It is possible that
prior to the Saxons coming there were 'Celtic' tribes like the Belgae or the Atrebates that whilst generally Gaulish speaking had Germanic influences, such that they may have had a trade language with the Saxons etc, that would have allowed Anglo-Saxon to become a relatively dominant language without mass slaughter (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgae) - although I know of no evidence for this. However, I doubt that the Saxons came to eastern England and met a bunch of proto- English speakers as they suggest. I have a couple of points, though. The Brythonic/Goidelic linguistic distinctions are neologisms but they emerged in the late 19th century because of the inadequacy of the eighteenth century terms 'British' and 'Cymric' that had been used before. I would also add that it could be argued that the 'Celtic' as an ethnic and linguistic description of inhabitants of the Britain and Ireland is also a neologism, originating as it did in the early eighteenth century. Nor did it arise as a neutral term but was packed with a whole bunch of political and romantic connotations that came about from the emergence of the centralised bureaucratic state in England/London and France/Paris. As Mark Stoyle's book on the 'English' Civil War (quick review here: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/552), among many other books, shows - a resurgent 'celtic' identity can be seen developing in the mid seventeenth century in reaction to these pressures. I also have read that Sykes/Oppenheimer's evidence for the Iberian origins has been questioned by wider DNA studies that, whilst showing British and Irish DNA to be essentially the same, locates the genetic origins in the Balkans. Trouble is, I can't quite track down where I read that, but it was only a year ago or so. Sorry for the rant. Child to put to bed. Edited by Elexi on 08 October 2013 at 8:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 14 of 19 09 October 2013 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
While waiting for my Sykes book to arrive (and I guess I should also read Oppenheimer for completeness), I found a book in the library by Barry Cunliffe about the Iron Age in Britain which includes the period just before the Roman invasion, and he writes epecifically about the various tribes like the Atrebates, Catavellauni, etc. He seems to regard them as Celtic, but this will be in cultural terms, based presumably on things like pottery, jewelry, and also coins, on which he writes a lot. Of course, he is an archeologist, and does not focus on language. He works with the evidence he has, I guess. He's written a lot of books, including some focusing more on the Celts, so I think I'll try to find one of those. Might also be time to get a good translation of Caesar's Gallic War's and find out exactly what he said about Britannia, the Gauls and the Belgae. I'm sure you are right, and Celtic speakers in mainland Europe would have to have developed ways of speaking with Germanic speakers over the years, and those who ended up in England would have had no difficulty in communicating with the Anglo-Saxons later on. While looking on Amazon for "Gallic Wars", in one that you could "look inside" I found an interesting map which showed a relatively small "Gaul", and a fairly massive "Celtica", which included modern Brittany but also much of modern northern France, and it virtually surrounded Gaul. However, I don't know the source of that map; it may be a modern interpretation. Did Caesar even use the term "Celtica"?
Yes, we have to be careful of superimposing relatively modern viewpoints back on to a time period 2,000 or more years ago. I suppose that Goormachtigh & Durham see themselves as countering some of the more romantic ideas about Celticism, but in turn, seem to have imposed their own prejudices. I worry that they have made the classic mistake of deciding what they want to prove, and then gone out looking for evidence for it (consciously or unconsciously) ignoring evidence to the contrary. People who "fall in love with their theory" often do this, I fear.
There were some pretty trenchant comments underneath Oppenheimer's 1st Prospect article, some of which he replied to in a second article, and some questioned the DNA evidence. Your mention of the Balkans reminds me that Goormachtigh & Durham. have one map that shows a genetic and linguistic east-west divide in England, either side of the Pennines. I can't find the map I was thinking of, but here is one that shows a similar divide: creolisation of the northern Maglemosian zones The page with the map I was originally thinking of talked of the people east of the Pennines coming from central or eastern Europe (I think). They see proto-English as having come from a Proto-Flemish, and highlight the closeness of English to West Flemish (as well as to Frisian). There is a problem with this, which was pointed out (I think) in one of the comments beneath Oppenheimer's article, or if not, I've seen it somewhere(!), which is that the Germanic language of the Flemings was due to the incoming of the Franks in the 5th century AD, far too late to have influenced "Proto-English" in the way that Goormachtigh & Durham suggest.
Not a rant at all. Interested to hear your views. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 15 of 19 09 October 2013 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Oops, looking back, thought that didn't seem right, so checking again, it's not "Gaul" that's surrounded by Celtica, but "Belgica" (the whole thing being Gaul, I guess). That makes more sense. It's slightly confusing though, since in Caesar's own (translated) words: "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws." (From Gutenberg.org, Gallic Wars, Book 1, Chapter 1) So sometimes he is talking about Gaul, the larger territory, and sometimes he is talking about the people who call themselves "Celts" ("Celtae"), but whom the Romans call "Gauls". So Goormachtigh & Durham are probably right to highlight the confusion of terms, and incorrectness of the idea that the Gauls all spoke one language, i.e. a Celtic language. Caesar noticed that they didn't, and interestingly (if he is correct), the Belgae differed in language from the people who called themselves "Celts" or "Celtae". So if the Belgae in Gaul didn't speak the same language as the people who called themselves Celts, was that also true of the Belgae in Britain? hmmm. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 19 09 October 2013 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Is it necessary to assume an apartheid-like social structure in Early Anglo-Saxon England?
Discusses some of the issues raised in this thread, such as the nature of the Belgae. Quotes Oppenheimer among others. Edit: This paper among others, is referenced: Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British? Edited by montmorency on 09 October 2013 at 9:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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