LL-L: "Printed resources" LOWLANDS-L, 12.DEC.1999 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L Administrator]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 12.DEC.1999 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: "Printed resources"

> From: Roger P. G. Thijs [roger.thijs at village.uunet.be]
> Subject: Old Dutch
>
> His classification is curious:
> The Scandinavian languages, including the Orcadian, are grouped as the
> "Kimbrischen tak"
> The German/anglo-saxon..; languages are grouped as the "Theutonischen tak"
> The Romance and celtic languages are joined to form the "Keltischen Tak"
> it continuous with (9) "Slavoensche dialecten"
> and end ends finally with unclassified:
> "Littouwsch, Lyflandsch, Estonisch, Finnisch, Laplandsch, Hongarisch,
> Turksch and Tartarsch"

I don't find this classification too curious, coming from a book of such
antiquity. Two points might be enough to explain it:

1. By "Orcadian" it presumably means the now-extinct Norn language, which
was indeed a Scandinavian language and accounts for the Scandinavian
features in modern Shetlandic (which is a branch of Scots, rather than
Scandinavian).

2. Although Celtic and Romance languages can't be grouped together in this
way, certain types of cursory investigation might result in the investigator
discovering enough common features to lead them to believe they were closely
related, especially if they compared, say, French and Welsh - since they do
quote some Welsh, Breton ("Armorisch"), Cornish and Old Brythonic, it may be
that this comparison was actually made. For example, Welsh and French both
put _most_ adjectives before the noun, both have only two genders, masculine
and feminine, both avoid noun inflections except for the plural, but have
full verb conjugations for many tenses. All this gives the grammars of the
two languages a broad similarity. On top of this, Welsh has a fair number of
very common Latin words borrowed from the time of the Roman conquest (e.g.
pont = bridge), and I would suspect Breton would have even more such words,
borrowed from French.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
http://www.fleimin.demon.co.uk

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