Renfrew's Celtic Scenario

[Richard M. Alderson III]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> When Barlowe describes the Native Americans living on the Outer Banks in
> 1588, it's in an English that is plainly readable today.  "This island had
					   ^^^^^^^^
> many goodly woods, full of Deere, Conies, Hares and Fowles, in incredible
> abundance...  Such a flocke of Cranes arose under us, with such a cry
> redoubled by many Ecchoes, as if an armie of men had showted all together....
> {and the locals were] Very handsome, and goodly people, and in their manner
> as mannerly, and civill, as any of Europe."  There is no comprehensibility
> problem here even after 400 years and through a lot more changes than the
> Bandkeramik folk could ever have experienced.

Yes, *readable*.  There is no living American, though, who could understand
this text spoken at native speed in late 16th Century English on a single
hearing.  The two forms of the language are simply too different.

We are often cozened by writing, and by the habits of the modern stage, to
think of Elizabethan English as being similar or identical to our own, and then
to extend that thought to the language of non-literate societies over longer
periods of time.  The content of stories may have stayed the same, as in Homer,
but the language did not.  (Against Vedic, I call to witness Avestan--whose
texts were meaningless to the Parsi priests until western linguists began to
decipher them.)

								Rich Alderson