Celtic and English Again

[Anthony Appleyard]

Peter &/or Graham <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:-

> On the lack of influence from Celtic in English:
> ... Egypt, which was Egyptian-speaking for yonks,
> then Greek speaking for nearly a thousand years

The upperclass may well have learned Greek, but the mass of the population
may have stuck to the late form of Egyptian called Coptic. For example, the
modern Arabic placename Aswan continues Ancient Egyptian `Suan' (or similar)
and ignores the Greekized name `Elephantine'. (That and the Egyptian name
referred to big round rocks in the Nile there, that looked like elephants
wallowing in the water.)

> but now speaks Arabic with very little, if any, trace of either "substrate".

There are at least these carry-overs from Ancient Egyptian into Egyptian
Colloquial Arabic (ECA) (as distinct from educated speech):-
(1) Unstressed vowels becoming the same as adjacent stressed vowels, and
dropping when possible, e.g. standard Arabic {kabiir} = "big", but ECA
{kibiir) = "big", {wa kbiir} = "and big".
(2) Initial glottal stop + unstressed vowel often dropping when the previous
word ends in a vowel, whether or not in standard Arabic that glottal stop was
a {hamzat al was.l}.

> Does this suggest that languages can indeed be replaced without great effect
> on the invading language, if other circumstances are right, and that the lack
> of influence from Celtic on English is not really so remarkable?

Anglo-Saxon diphthongizes short front vowels before {r} and {l} or if
the next vowel is a back vowel. That occurs also in Old Norse; but where did
the Anglo-Saxons pick it up from?