Celtic influence

Sheila Watts sw271 at cus.cam.ac.uk
Tue Mar 23 15:03:22 UTC 1999


>JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>>Check out Martin Luther's choice of language for his German bible.  There was
>>nothing _but_ regional dialects until then.  Unless you count the language of
>>the German equivalent of troubadors, which nobody used but them.

Then John Peter Maher replied:

>Not quite. The Upper Silesian dialect had a wide currency in many courts
>outside its own region as Kanzleisprache before Luther. That's why he used it.

It was Saxon, not Upper Silesian. And both of these statements are pretty
wild simplifications. But I'm going to be pompous and say that this has
nothing to do with Indo-European (admittedly like many topics discussed
here, included ones on which I've contributed).

Sheila Watts
_______________________________________________________
Dr Sheila Watts
Newnham College
Cambridge CB3 9DF
United Kingdom

phone +44 1223 335816

[ Moderator's comment:
  I am in agreement with Dr. Watts that this has drifted very far from the
  discussion of Celtic substrate influence in the development of English,
  where it began.  Please take any further discussion to private e-mail.
  --rma ]



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