<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 01 November 2009 - Volume 02<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="mailto:lowlands@lowlands-l.net">lowlands@lowlands-l.net</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
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===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Mark Dreyer</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.10.31 (01) [EN]<br><br></span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Helloo
Paul!</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: LL-L "Lexicon"
</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">You surely
encapsulated your position in this thesis, & it is a good one.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">& one can do just
the same without it.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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).</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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.,</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">& 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'.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Yrs,</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Mark<br><br>----------<br><br>From: <span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Sandy Fleming</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk">sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk</a>></span></span><br>
Subject: <span class="gI">LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.10.31 (01) [EN]<br><br></span>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.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a></font></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
•
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