Stigmatization and Celtic Influence

JoatSimeon at aol.com JoatSimeon at aol.com
Tue Mar 23 01:55:31 UTC 1999


>iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu writes:

>Apart from pragmatic consderations ("Do we have a word for this?"),
>the main thing that controls borrowing is the reaction that the would-be
>borrower expects:  will I get laughed at?, etc.

-- unlikely in a community of peasants most of whom, allegedly, are speaking
Brythonic themselves.  Who is going to be doing the laughing?  Other
Brythonic-speaking farmers?

Where is there any indication of such an Anglo-Saxon prejudice against the
Celtic languages?

>The higher the level of stigmatization of a subject (i.e. conquered)
>language, the less likely a would-be borrower is to think that the reaction
>he would get from using a word from the subject language would be good.

-- this did not prevent hundreds of Celtic loan-words in Gallo-Romance.

This whole argument is circular, ludicrous, and a non-falsifiable hypothesis;
ie., a meaningless semantic null set.



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