LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.01 (02) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 01 November 2009 - Volume 02
lowlands at lowlands-l.net - http://lowlands-l.net/
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
===========================================

From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.10.31 (01) [EN]

Helloo Paul!

Subject: LL-L "Lexicon"

You wrote: Re one of the "Native English" words, "outgang" for "exit"; we
already have, and regularly use "way out", which is totally Germanic in
words, if not form.

You surely encapsulated your position in this thesis, & it is a good one.

Listening on the radio I once heard a long tale read out by a countryman of
Wessex (a warden, I think). for the speech. The reading itself was in
crafted & easily understood Modern English, utterly without loan-words from
the Romance tongues. In my youth I played with English in much the same way.
I found it all too easy with the help of Afrikaans but I reckon that given a
little English know-how it's not needed.

Recently I was obliged to recapitulate the exercise from the opposite
direction. A distressed monoglot Argentinian travelling in South Africa
solicited assistance. He requested a selection of brief notes to present to
a stranger in the case of emergencies, the contents of which would be
manifest to himself & his conversant. In English it is equally possible to
present a concept navigating entirely through borrowed & essentially Romance
terminology. The project was a perfect success.

& one can do just the same without it.

But I do blame the Normans (accredit them) with this propensity of English.
Certainly Church & legal Latin came into all the languages of the
post-imperial & Christian West, but there the loans remained. English alone,
during the hegemony of a Norman-French aristocracy, took a turn no other
tongue did to that degree, to borrow with such abandon that it now has the
largest word-hoard of any language outright (& the smallest working
vocabulary - for shame).

But I would lay the inclination to  analytic assembly rather at the door of
conflict between the Norse & the Anglian of the Danelaw, as well as the
heavily Norse precursors of the immediately pre-Norman aristocracy.,

True, the language on that island was always going to drift away from its
Continental relatives, with the help of the Normans or not. However, the
direction of drift is manifestly Early French, & in a peculiar way, note
among many other issues the preference manifest in the use of 'pork' as
opposed to pig; so also for venison, beef, veal, mutton & so on.  I agree
that 'exit' isn't a loan from the speakers of Norman-French, but even so
their client literati (a huge body for an extensive administration) spoke &
wrote Latin freely & easily, & until quite late in Plantagenet times better
than any kind of English

& you are correct, of course, about 16th Century Latin, carrier of what was
then called 'The New Learning'. Not many consider that the vehicle of the
Rennaisance was scholarly Latin. On the other hand, unlike other European
tongues, English took so much into common usage because it was habituated to
the practice. The various mechanisms of language change are not equally
powerful across the board to every tongue. English is to my mind singularly
susceptible to 'loaning'.

Wandering just slightly off the subject, I believe that just as
Norman-French brought influence to bear on Late Old English, the same
English was having a similar effect on the Norman-French of the Island. I
wonder if the Angevin gentry on the Continent were given to wonder at the
arcane argot, most likely to do with archery, hunting & carousing, affected
by their younger Insular relations! Can it be that just before it passed out
of knowledge this Norman-French creole sounded a lot more English than
French? Was in fact a dialect heavy with English terminology on a French
grammatical structure? I would have loved to have heard it spoken.

Yrs,
Mark

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.10.31 (01) [EN]

I'd .ike to raise the question, what's the ethical or humanitarian point in
trying to clear the latinisms from English or Scots? It seems to me like a
project for people with too much time on their hands.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

•

==============================END===================================

 * Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.

 * Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.

 * Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.

 * Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l")

   are to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at

   http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.

*********************************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20091101/6f134316/attachment.htm>