|
 |
Icelandic / Old English | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4632 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 25 of 28 25 September 2012 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I happened to be reading bits and pieces yesterday about the word "Welsh", and it might also be connected with the name "Wallace" (i.e. the latter presumably derived from "Welsh" or a similar word), which may have been a Cumbric name, cf. William Wallace.
Yes, it was that sort of thing, rather than loanwords (although there are a few, such as "cairn"), or even placenames (again, there are a few, like Pen-y-Ghent in Yorkshire - plenty in Cornwall of course, but that's a bit different). Yes, that sort of thing, plus something called "Lack of external possessor", and a few other things I forget for the moment. I'll see if I can find the references again.
Well, so subtle that perhaps it has been underestimated. A more obvious influence (not on the language as a whole, but on regional variants) would be the fairly well-known so-called "sheep-counting" systems of parts of northern England. (Apparently, they weren't really, or only, used for sheep though). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_ tethera Edit: This is linked from the above, but I thought worth highlighting: http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba46/ba46int.html http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ ba46/ba46int.html EDIT2: As this has now diverged sufficiently from the original topic, I've taken the liberty of creating a new thread, for possible further discussion, here: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=33817&PN=1&TPN=1 http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=33817&PN=1 Thread title: "Influence of Celtic on English?" Edit I've now re-done that last link with Firefox instead of Chrome. (I'd thought it worthwhile giving Chrome another try, since I had just updated it to be the newest, shiniest version from Google Galactic HQ, but it's as bad as ever, if not worse.) Isn't it about time we had an official health warning against using Chrome for posting URLs, in the technical part of the Forum? Of course, an actual Forum fix would be nice, but waiting for one of those will be like waiting for a square triangle to roll along. Found a post yesterday that says it all:
That was from 2009, but we haven't moved on very much, it seems. (Backwards, actually, since some problems got fixed after that comment was made). Edited by montmorency on 25 September 2012 at 8:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4648 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 26 of 28 25 September 2012 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I have heard that Celtic languages also had an influence on Old Norse. There are some words in Faroese and Icelandic which are supposed to have Celtic roots, like the city Mykines or the words 'blak' ('buttermilk') or 'drunnur' ('behind of a cow or sheep'). For further reference, see here.
In this context, it would be interesting to know something about the Norn language, spoken on the Shetlands and Orkneys until 1750 or so. Unfortunately, there is not much information in the Wikipedia article. Does anybody know anything about the language? Is there anything left of it to be known? I guess Celtic influence on OE and ON was rather marginal, but it's interesting to know how much influence there actually has been. Of course, today the situation is absolutely turned around. There are so many English loanwords in Scottish Gaelic, it's almost ridiculous. EDIT: Here is a link to a website about Norn including history, phonetics, grammar, and texts. Edited by Josquin on 25 September 2012 at 6:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5369 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 27 of 28 25 September 2012 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
Is there any serious linguistic work to suggest that the English progressive tense can
be ascribed to 'celtic' roots (by which I assume is meant some form of brythonic language)? Wikipedia can only manage a reference to a blog and most of the material on the internet (admittedly in a 20 minute search) that I can find seems to fall into the 'crank' category. I think this website provides the more serious references on the subject of progressive tenses - http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/co urses/6362-lamont.h tm This website has some good and fairly presented information on sheep counting in Yorkshire and a discussion of the view that it is an importation from Welsh rather than a Brythonic survival (which would seem more credible to me): http://www.yorkshiredialect.com/celtlang.htm Edited by Elexi on 25 September 2012 at 9:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6507 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 28 26 September 2012 at 10:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I would be very surprised if somebody could find solid evidence for a Celtic origin of the progressive verbal forms in Modern English, and the Lamont article mentioned by Elexi clearly shows that there are other explanations - the present participle exists in all Germanic languages and in Latin so it just needed to be reinterpreted and put to a more systematic use. It would be interesting to know whether anything resembling a progressive tense or construction (with some form of a copula verb plus a present active participle) is used in Welsh. But as I already have pointed out the equivalent construction in Irish is so different that it can't be the source.
The sheep counting system is interesting, but the article at yorkshiredialect.com specifically points out that the words aren't attested before 17xx something. A few other loose ends: Norn had a long life, but very little has apparently been written down - and often by foreigners who didn't know the language. The articles at Wikipedia may actually contain most of the extant texts - enough to study it, but not enough to speak it as a living language. I found a couple of other references, including a reasonable good article at nornlanguage.x10.mx and a shorter one at shetlopedia.com, but they didn't add much new material. Besides there are a few articles which you would have to pay to see (without any guarantee that the content was worth the money - for instance 2.99€ just to see one article of 10 pages which judging from the free excerpt doesn't contain a shred of independent research). If somebody wants to revive Norn on the available basis, which is limited and from a period where it already had been corrupted, the result will be more guesswork than realities. Let's face it, Norn is dead as a dodo. But it may have left its mark on the local Scots/English dialect: "The Orkney cadence is quite different from that of any part of the mainland of Scotland, and there is not the slightest possibility of confusing it with that of our nearest neighbour - Caithness. But on the other hand, a Norwegian in Orkney, listening to Orcadians talking among themselves at such a distance that only their tones were audible, might well imagine he was at home in Norway" Btw. there was a reference to Mykines, which is the Westernmost island and town of the Faroe Islands. Actually the Icelandic Wikipedia mentions that Celtic settlers and monks were active in the 700s ("ræktun hafra hafi byrjað í Mykinesi um miðja 7. öld og hafi þar keltneskir einsetumenn og munkar verið að verki"). But that doesn't mean that the name is of Celtic original.I haven't seen any authoritative etymology, but the name could for instance be related to the word "mjúkur" ('soft') in Icelandic (positive "mýkri", 'softer' - notice also "myk" in Norwegian) - "nes" is the standard word for a promontary. I have found the following description in Danish of the local topography: "..den højeste tinde på 560 meter kaldes Knúkur. Fra denne høje del af øen falder landskabet langsomt mod vest, hvor bygden Mykines ligger" (the highest peak at 560 m is called Knúkur. From this high part of the island the landscape slowly falls (get lower) towards the West, where the hamlet Mykines lies). However the Faroese Wikipedia states that " Í jarðar- og roknskaparbókunum frá 1584, sum eru skrivaðar á donskum, finna vit formin Myggennes. Navnið Mykines hevur verið nógv umrøtt millum granskarar. Ósemja er um, hvat navnið merkir." (=In the 'doomsday' and accounting books from 1584, which are written in Danish, we find the form myggenes (mosquito promontory). The name Mykines has been somewhat debated among scholars. It is unclear what the name means). I find both these etymologies more likely than the origin in some unidentified Celtic word. Edited by Iversen on 26 September 2012 at 11:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
