Language roots and growth discussion (from Funny Welsh Expressions thread)

Yeah, there’s a great article on Law French on Wikipedia, which says it lasted in increasingly debased form up until the 17th century, quoting this absolute gem from its declining years:

Richardson Chief Justice de Common Banc al assises de Salisbury in Summer 1631 fuit assault per prisoner la condemne pur felony, que puis son condemnation ject un brickbat a le dit justice, que narrowly mist, et pur ceo immediately fuit indictment drawn per Noy envers le prisoner et son dexter manus ampute et fix al gibbet, sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence de Court.
— Sir George Treby

(“Richardson, Chief Justice of the Common Bench at the Assizes at Salisbury in Summer 1631 was assaulted by a prisoner there condemned for felony, who, following his condemnation, threw a brickbat at the said justice that narrowly missed, and for this, an indictment was immediately drawn by Noy against the prisoner and his right hand was cut off and fastened to the gibbet, on which he himself was immediately hanged in the presence of the Court.”)

I particularly like que narrowly mist :slight_smile:
I didn’t know about Cromwell burning the library at Raglan – and I’m sure there must be other examples – but a Name-of-the-Rose-style discovery of some lost Welsh MSS would be nice.
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I hear that as being spoken by the late Edward Heath… :wink:

BTW, I knew something of King Alfred’s efforts (personally or indirectly) to get learned Latin texts translated into English, and perhaps he was largely responsible for formalising Old English (at least to some extent) in his time.

I’m wondering if there were any early attempt at translating the Bible into English (i.e. Old English) at this time, perhaps before it took on the controversial aspect of being associated with the idea of Reformation within the church?

Yes, there were poetical adaptations of Biblical and Apocryphal themes – poems based on Genesis and Exodus and the like – and also straight translations of some portions of the Bible. The beautiful Insular manuscripts often had interlinear glosses, giving word-by-word translations, and there were full prose translations of the gospels and the first six books of the Old Testament.
Some of those Biblical translations were among the first connected prose that I read in Old English, as they’re often at least kind of familiar, and they can give a good idea of both how much the language has changed and of odd little bits of continuity.
Two phrases that stuck in my head were from the translation of the story of Abraham and Isaac, and from the parable of the wise and foolish virgins:
Þā wolde God fandian Abrahāmes gehiersumnysse (Then God wanted to test Abraham’s obedience.) The word for ‘obedience’ is exactly the sort of word that got replaced with French/Latin after the Norman Conquest: hieran is ‘to hear’; gehieran (the ge- is pronounced like the ‘ye’ of Modern English ‘yet’) means ‘obey’ (like German gehören ‘belong’); gehier-sum is ‘obedient’ (‘obey-some’, like ‘winsome’ or ‘toothsome’); so gehiersumnysse (‘obey-some-ness’) is ‘obedience’.
And then you’ve got the foolish virgins, shut out of the feast, who bang on the door and clamour Dryhten! Dryhten! (‘Lord! Lord!’) Lǣt ūs inne!

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Much higher profile than my pursuit of history. I failed my Chemistry degree for lack of enthusiasm, took it part time for lack of any other detectable options, drifted into Health Physics and just read history in assorted books![quote=“RichardBuck, post:20, topic:11744”]
(the Head of Department at the time had started out as a chemist, I think, and the Professor as an engineer,
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That was wonderful luck! I am full of naughty envy!!! :slight_smile:
p.s. I never read Chaucer in original. I never had any urge to study old English… I was always chasing my Welsh ancestry! Progressed in fits and starts with Welsh, more backwards than forwards I’m afraid!

well the ornate woidwork from the castle ended up in the Duke of Beauforts Estate and some other great piece of furniture with welsh engraved on it was found in a stately home in Cornwall. Bits have turned up as Feeding troughs for cows on a local farm, so there were plenty of spoils taken.

Oliver Cromwell commissioned people to seek out and catalogue English, Latin and Welsh manuscripts, so he knew what was in Raglan Castle, before they torched it.

I’m sure Iolo Morgannwg would have found anything if it existed but the trouble is he forged so much stuff, that no one knows what in his collection was real and what was forged and many just assume they were all forged.

It is so sad. I wouldn’t trust anything he claimed to have found and some may be perfectly genuine!! If only he’d been honest and said things like, “It seems likely that” or, “My theory is that something along the following lines must have existed and may still exist.”!! But Victorians seem to have had a very loose grasp of the difference between science and imagination. e.g, ‘Red lady of Paviland’ who must have been female because found wearing beads and a prostitute because coloured red with red ochre, and providing her services to the Romans because…??? Er? Never mind the total lack of evidence that the Romans ever entered the Gower peninsula! And we judge Iolo Morganwg a liar!! Remember Piltdown ‘man’? I’ll bet they were all at it!!

Not necessarily - a language can be complex in structure quite independent of the culture it expresses. Conversely, a language can be simple in structure - English being a case in point - and express a complex culture. A lot, as always, depends on the definition of complex and simple. As Rob said, isolated languages tend to become more complex in inflection (e.g. Finnish and Estonian), in overspecification (e.g. different verbal suffixes for direction, materials), through morphology. John McWhorter explains this well in “Language Interrupted”.

Every language is perfect - it cannot be primitive in the sense that it is not perfectly suited as a means of communication. Unless there is some ideal language model by which languages can be judged, and I am not aware of one. If a language needs new words to express new ideas, technology, for instance, its speakers will borrow or create new words.

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Yeah, I thought about that a few hours after I posted. I get sidetracked easily. :blush:

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It’s very fictional, but I’ve been watching “Vikings” recently - there is an interesting scene with Alfred talking to the Abbott at (the rebuilt) Lindisfarne. Alfred tells him that more of a service ought to be in English, rather than Latin. So it looks like Henry 8’s separatist attitudes started a few centuries earlier…!
Vikings does skirt around and flirt with, the truth, introducing total fiction in the story, but searching on the Interweb is hardly an easy task if you’re interested in “What really happened”…
And the recently-departed Stephen Hawking reckoned time-travelling was not possible, so I’m not quite sure how we are going to answer that…

Came across a thought. Planning a wedding present, I suddenly, and very belatedly, noticed the clear resemblance between priodi, priodas, priodfab, priodferch and ‘bride, bridal, bridegroom’. I was left wondering where ‘groom’ came from as it seemed to me that invaders from the North, from Ireland, from the Roman Empire and by Angles, Saxons, Jutes etc. tended to be men with weapons and local women were their sole hope for producing offspring if they stayed in Britain, so the woman’s word for ‘getting hitched’ would tend to linger!

It’s from Old English brydguma, so should really be ‘bridegoom’, but that sounds weird, so the -r- got inserted to make it into a more familiar-sounding word. Bryd is ‘bride’ (and also ‘bird’ as in “Are you looking at my bird?”), but guma is an Old English word for ‘man’. It corresponds to Latin homo, humanus and (more distantly) ‘humus’ (as in soil).

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eh bah goom!

btw those who saw the Mafia film Goodfellas may remember that the word for the semi official girlfriends of the (married) gang members was “gumars” . (iirc)

We were talking about King Alfred earlier in the thread. There was an interesting programme on BBC4 tonight (actually a repeat from 2013 I see now), talking about Alfred’s translations (among other things) and mention of Welsh scribes being involved. Not sure how they knew they were Welsh. I’ll have to re-watch it from the beginning, which I missed.

(UK people only I’m afraid (at least I assume so)).


English song from the 13th century. You can see the germanic (or anglo-saxon whatever you call it) influence a lot stronger than you can today.
Incidentally Arany Zoltan also has an Album called “Celtica” with lots of celtic music if anyone is interested (also on YouTube)

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