LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.08.25 (12) [E/Cornish]

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.08.25 (03) [E]


John Feather wrote:
"Regarding the AS invasion of the British Isles, do we need any better
explanation than that with the withdrawal of Roman forces the land was
available for the taking?"

This is absurd! Of course we do! As a Cornishman I can assure you the land
was most definitely not just "for the taking" - it was already inhabited by
Celtic-speaking peoples.

Saying Britain in 520 was "available for the taking" is like saying Poland
in 1939 or France in 1940 were "for the taking".

I realise there is this whole myth of "natural, excusable expansion" applied
to the invasion of Britain but implying the place was terra nullius is, to
me at least, reprehensible. What may seem distant history to the English is
comparatively recent to the Celts they displaced.

Críostóir.

----------


From: Dan Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>

Subject: Language varieties



>>Dan wrote:



>>"The Island North Frisians appear to have settled on the islands between
700

>>and 800 AD coming from East Frisia. What we know is that the islands had

>>been abandoned for the duration of about 150 years."



John Feather wrote:



>>In the article by the orthographically challenged Frederik Paulsen which I

>>quoted from earlier he says:



John, I’m working from memory, but should I be reunited with my collection
of articles on the Frisians and ‘Anglo-Saxon invasion’ I’ll let you know
where I got it from.



>>"The many other West-, East- and North-Frisian islands, as well as the
main

>>part of the Frisian mainland, have either been reclaimed from the sea by

>>dykes or are still being shaped and transformed by sand dunes; and
therefore

>>they are relatively new. The fact that these two old islands [Foehr and

>>Amrum in his spelling] have been continuously inhabited, and indeed
densely

>>populated, since the early Stone Age or the end of the last Ice Age, may
be

>>why the Ferring language has some archaic structures and words which do
not

>>occur in the other Frisian languages, pointing to a pre-Germanic origin."



   As far as I remember I was reading about the four North Frisian Islands
Feer, Oomram, Sild and Nordstrand (the latter indeed having been reclaimed
for the most part by the sea in the 16th century, if memory serves). I’m no
archaeologist, but apparently the population diminished drastically in the
5th and 6th century. There seems to be a gap of about two generations.
Linguistically it is obvious that the Island North Frisians, and indeed all
North Frisians were not indigenous to the area. The Island Frisians arrived
in the 8th century and the mainland Frisians in the 11th. Both waves
emigrated from East Frisia. The marked dialectal division of the two groups
can be traced to this day, among of course younger dialectal developments.



   I have also heard accounts where vast areas of the continent were
de-populated in the 5th and 6th centuries. It is hard to believe that this
has nothing to do with emigration to Britain.



   Maybe someone familiar with archaeology in the above mentioned areas
could shed some light on this.



>>Of course, being non-Frisian is not the same thing as being non-Germanic.

>>Does anybody know what these special linguistic features are? Why should

>>these islands remain populated and therefore be different from the rest
and

>>the neighbouring mainland especially if, as Bede suggested, it was the
area

>>abandoned by the Angles and left vacant?



  The fact that there was a break in linguistic continuity might suggest
that there was a break in population, but it does not necessarily mean that
it is so. It is conceivable that a large immigration wave of East Frisians
may have swamped the older Island population, maybe even following an
invitation to do so. The Frisians would have become the linguistically and
culturally dominant group, but not without adding something of the older
population.



   We know that a Danish King actually invited East Frisians to populate the
areas which are today considered ‘mainland’ North Frisia in the 11th
century. In fact a lot of the mainland area were tidal waters and were
flooded (like the land surrounding the present day Halligen) until
continuously claimed from the sea.



>>Regarding the AS invasion of the British Isles, do we need any better

>>explanation than that with the withdrawal of Roman forces the land was

>>available for the taking?



   I’m afraid it may be a little more complicated than that. The Germanic
tribes doidn’t come in like a bang the minute the Romans left. The Roman
armies had been using Germanic mercenaries for centuries. The Romano-British
kings continued to do so after the Romans left, so the ‘Anglo-Saxon invasion
’ may have been a home-grown problem. A British King would have promised the
mercenaries land, and once they had finished their military service they in
turn would have brought families (and friends, and tribes) over to live with
them. Maybe settlement was even encouraged at an early date to have enough
fighters against the Picts that were pushing into the south after the Roman
withdrawal. So I believe Germanic bases were already established before the
actual mass immigration. The latter may have been caused by blight, or
another catastrophe and the people affected will have had a place to go –
across the channel or the North Sea to Britain. But a lot of this is, of
course, speculation.



Dan

----------

From: Dan Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>

Subject: LL-L "Language varieties"



Dhys Lowena, sos,



Críostóir Ó Ciardha a screfas:



>>Dan wheag:



>>That reply was some feat of endurance on your part!



Pywa, muer ras dheugh why!!!   : - )



>>You write (in reply to Henno Brandsma):

>>"The Island North Frisians appear to have settled on the islands between

>>700 and 800 AD coming from East Frisia. What we know is that the islands
>>had been abandoned for the duration of about 150 years."



>>That begs the question: what language group(s) lived on the north Frisian

>>islands before their abandonment and repopulation by the north Frisians?
>>The Danes?



I don't know. Most probably folk that left to build England, so Ingvaeonic
speakers of the Anglian or Jutish sort. The Danes pushed in later.



>>Gwra'massi, ow soce,

>>Críostóir.



Nyns yw dhe vos accomptys!

Yehes da re'th fo,

Dan



----------

From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.08.25 (03) [E]

> From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
> Subject: Language varieties
>
> Dan wrote:
>
> "The Island North Frisians appear to have settled on the islands between
700
> and 800 AD coming from East Frisia. What we know is that the islands had
> been abandoned for the duration of about 150 years."
>
> In the article by the orthographically challenged Frederik Paulsen which I
> quoted from earlier he says:
>
> "The many other West-, East- and North-Frisian islands, as well as the
main
> part of the Frisian mainland, have either been reclaimed from the sea by
> dykes or are still being shaped and transformed by sand dunes; and
therefore
> they are relatively new. The fact that these two old islands [Foehr and
> Amrum in his spelling] have been continuously inhabited, and indeed
densely
> populated, since the early Stone Age or the end of the last Ice Age, may
be
> why the Ferring language has some archaic structures and words which do
not
> occur in the other Frisian languages, pointing to a pre-Germanic origin."
>
> Of course, being non-Frisian is not the same thing as being non-Germanic.
> Does anybody know what these special linguistic features are? Why should
> these islands remain populated and therefore be different from the rest
and
> the neighbouring mainland especially if, as Bede suggested, it was the
area
> abandoned by the Angles and left vacant?

By my limited knowledge of Fering (due to the course I did some years ago),
all features of Fering can be explained either from Old Frisian or as loans
from Danish, Low German or Dutch. There is a strange grammatical feature of
two types of definite article (di/ju vs at/a), which is its biggest "claim
to fame" within Frisian linguistic literature. But to explain this is
"pre-Germanic" is going to far, I think. In most respects it's still
remarkably Frisian for a dialect so geographically distant from West Frisian
(from the point of view of a West Frisian, of course, they would see it the
other way around).

Henno Brandsma

----------

From: Stella en Henno <stellahenno at hetnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.08.24 (04) [E]


> From: Dan Prohaska <Daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>
> Subject: "Language varieties" [E]
>
> >>Sandy Fleming wrote:
> >>I always say that the main characterictics of American English speech
are
> >>derived from the southwestern dialects of England (Somerset, Dorset,
> >>Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire and some of Oxfordshire) so it
> >>doesn't surprise me.
>
> I think what you say is more or less generally accepted by American
Engliah
> dialectology, but it must also be remembered that the South West today
> preserves linguistic forms that have since been lost in other varieties.
It
> may well be that features we perceive as typically south western today,
may
> have bee more widely used in the past.
>
> Dan
>
> Henno Brandsma wrote:
> >>I've read in a book by Joergensen on Island North Frisian, which has
some
> >>old differences with the mainland varieties, that he believed the
> >>islanders to be a relic of the older Anglians that would have moved to
the
> >>islands around the 6th century. But this is speculation, I suppose.
>
> Henno,
>
> I don't believe this to be true. Frisian and Anglian, despite their
> similarities are distinct enough to see that this cannot be the case. The
> Island North Frisians appear to have settled on the islands between 700
and
> 800 AD coming from East Frisia. What we know is that the islands had been
> abandoned for the duration of about 150 years. Island North Frisian shows
> distinctly East Frisian forms and typically Frisian monophthongal reflexes
> of Proto-Germanic diphthongs *au and *ai - even in distribution. The
Anglian
> development was quite different, and we are talking relatively early
> developments here.

Is that the development of Anglian in Great Brittain, or is something known
about the mainland situation??

> One reason that Joergensen may have put forth this theory is that the
> product of de-rounding of earlier short */y/ (< PGmc *u + i-umlaut) in
> Island North Frisian is /i/ and not, as in the rest of Frisian /e/. This
> simply points to the Frisians emigrating to the isles before the rest of
the
> Frisian speaking area underwent the change from */y/ to */ö/ to /e/ (or
*/y/
> > */i/ > /e/).
Indeed this is one of the main reasons. The /y/ became /I/, while /ö/ became
/E/ in these dialects.
But these de-roundings are common in Ingvaeonic areas, indeed. Some of these
caused palatalisation in Frisian (brutsen = broken eg), but some did not (as
"rêch" (rag in Fering) vs "ridge" in English) so maybe something about
relative chronology can be said here?
>
> It is safe to assume that Germanic (Ingvaeonic) speakers from this area
took
> part in the colonisation of Britain, maybe even left the islands down to
the
> last person, but the Island North Frisians were themselves immigrants who
> settled on the abandoned islands.
>
> >>I'd like to know more about this. What do we know about Continental
> >>Anglian?
>
> As I indicated in an earlier post, I don't think much can be said about
> 'Continental Anglian' except that the area was settled, most likely by
> Ingvaeonic  speakers (perhaps?) and that some, or more, or all of these
took
> part in colonising Britain. Whether the dialect they were speaking was
> already called "Anglian" or whether it was a term for a region, or a
ruling
> class or some other form of designation we cannot say today, only that the
> name was used in the newly established colony as a name for the population
> and language of larger northern part of the land.
>
> The Old English dialects called Anglian most likely developed their
> distinguishing features in Britain. So there is no one continental dialect
> which can be considered the parent dialect of Anglian, but it was rather a
> levelled colonial amalgam of several dialects. The situation is no
different
> for the Saxon dialects of Old English.

Henno Brandsma

----------

From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Language varieties


On 18 Aug I asked, referring to my posting of 17 Aug:

>a) do my definitions of OE and LG seem reasonable?; b) is there a need for
a term to cover OS and OE? ...<

Dan and Troy posted interesting replies but didn't actually address these
questions. Since nobody has objected to my definitions of OE and Low German
I assume they are sound.

Question (b) perhaps ought to have read: Is there a need for a term to cover
just OS and OE and nothing else?

Dan and Troy brought in the terms "Ingvaeonic" and "North-Sea Germanic" for
the smallest linguistic grouping which would include OE and OS, the third
and last member being OF.

I had thought that "Ingvaeonic" in this sense had been abandoned and was now
only used for certain linguistic features ("Ingvaeonisms") which I would
define as those (other than ones which clearly derive from historical
contacts with the North Germanic [Scandinavian] languages) which are common
to Low Saxon, Frisian, English and Dutch but are not found in High German,
_except_ where the difference is attributable to the High German Sound
Shift. Since ethnically/culturally the Franks whose language is the main
progenitor of Dutch were not part of the North Sea Germanic group the
linguistic definition does not coincide with an ethnic one.

Ingvaeonic features include loss of the nasal in words such as (mainly in
the modern languages) E "goose", Du "goes", Fr "goes" (cf HG "Gans", Du
"gans"); E "five", Du "vijf", Fr "fiif" (cf HG "fuenf", On "fimm", Sw "fem",
Gr "penta"); E "other", OS "othur", Fr "oar" (cf HG "ander", Du "ander", Sw
"annan"). In the case of "other"/"ander" the HG form has tended to push out
the others in areas of linguistic contact. Another feature is the loss of
"-r" from certain pronouns, eg E "we", Du "wij", Fr "wy", Sw/Dan "vi" (HG
"wir"): ON has "ver" but East ON has "wi". Dan suggested that modern LS has
lost its Ingvaeonic features but someone else (sorry, can't find the
posting) said that not less than one has been preserved in not less than one
dialect (sorry to be so precise but see above). What is the true picture
here?

In the absence of any other suggestions I propose calling OE and OS
collectively "Bisaxual" but hope never to hear or see it used.

John Feather
johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk


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