A swerd and bokeler bar he by his syde.
A whit cote and a blew hood wered he.
A bagpipe wel koude he blow and sowne,
And therwithal he brought us out of towne.

A sword and buckler bore he by his side
A white coat and a blue hood weared he
A bagpipe well could he blow and sound
And there with all he brought us out of town

quote:

You go to far Harry. I am certain you have found this thread at least interesting!.

Well, I mean I haven't learned anything new. It is where it was many pages back, a disagreement on the rate of language change.

all the very best

Harry A

quote:

we don't have evidence for any of them because they were unwritten languages.

That's been your argument since the beginning. Don't project that onto me.

You don't want an incontrovertibly rational statement projected onto you: that something that leaves no evidence leaves no evidence???

quote:

It's not standard french...

I've looked at this before: it's 80% standard French (which implies that French began to diverge from Latin some several thousand years BC).

So sorry for having a lot to say about important issues...

quote:

LOL, its funny how you guys ask for an example and, when given one, you don't accept it.

That's because Latin is not the written form of Italian: Italian is: which all Italian speakers in the Vatican write in. As Ishmael pointed out.

quote:

The fact is, if it was as easy as you all claim, you'd all do equally well.

You want everyone to get the same percentage mark, Harry? Doesn't "equally well" include a bit of leeway for everyone to get some things wrong, but not necessarily the same things?

quote:

I reiterate my challenge. Take 4 or 5 middle english texts into a year 11 class and ask them to write a version in modern english. According to yourselves, it should be easy.

Ah, establishment in action: you keep saying this, as though saying it enough will make it true; although we have spelled out how this is not prima facie a fair test.

Nevertheless, I have done the equivalent: everyone (else) I have ever talked to about this can see that Chaucer is just English.

(If I reported a different result from a classroom, would that be a test of the hypothesis... or a test of the test... or a test of their intelligence... or a test of Key-Stage-Whatever English teaching...?)

quote:

You won't find many linguists saying that written OE and spoken OE were the same for example.

You won't find any linguists who are not using an apparatus built on the assumption that written and spoken languages are related like so and language change is either as slow as this or as fast as that because we have seen it happen with Anglo-Saxon (and Latin).

quote:

Also of interest, you may like to investigate the hypothesis that the angles and the saxons may have spoken different languages.

Yes, a curious case, since linguists identify four main dialects of Anglo-Saxon and still equate them with the three invaders. If a different number of invaders had been described or no number had been given, the dialects and kingdoms would have been divided up another way... and treated consistently ever since.

quote:

Literacy is the accepted factor determining the rate of language change. It forces people to accept conventions and standards. Hence its conservative effects.

But without literacy, there is no evidence of the spoken language whatsoever. So what is this theory based on?

Isn't spoken language just as conservative? After all, we learn the language by trying it out and finding out we were either right or wrong. And if in later life we wish to flout the conventions of what we have been taught, can we not do that in writing just as easily as in speech?

You will notice that the correctness of adhering to established written styles (writing "didn't you" even if you say "div'n cha") is a facet of the widespread teaching of literacy, which comes much later in the day than, say, Middle English -- which as we have seen is also conservative.

It's not that writing is conservative because people are told what to write: it's conservative because there are conventional ways to write. And conventions are by nature, conservative. And speech is conventional, too.

quote:

D, E and F texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle... Bede's Latin was of course translated into OE.

...English and British/Welsh and Scottish and Pictish and Book-language.

That's fascinating, Jean. So there's this book written in Anglo-Saxon that tells of Book-language PLUS English.

Still not unequivocal though, since these passages

that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their rituals in English, or indeed could translate a letter from Latin into English;

And they had very little benefit from those books, for they could not understand anything in them, because they were not written in their own language.

that language that we all can understand, ... so that all the youth of free men... know how to read English writing well. One may then instruct in Latin those whom one wishes to teach further and promote to a higher rank.

appear to mean Anglo-Saxon by "English". However, they seem only to be concerned with the learned and men of rank; perhaps that "all the youth" should learn to read.


---

quote:

if you went back to the source (always good practice) rather than taking somebody's account of a secondary source as the starting point

You should shoot Jean then, PMB. Funny how we trusted her.

And you should shoot yourself for suggesting that everyone should always refer back to the original sources, which is clearly neither the general practice of academe, nor it's aim, which is progress.

quote:

'boclaeden'(D) and 'bocleden' (E)... "book-Latin"

Fair enough. But why "book Latin" rather than just "Latin"? Could it have another connotation? The OED tells me it referred in Old English to the language of a people etc.; a tongue. in general: in this case, for all we can tell, Anglo-Saxon.

---

quote:

See Nennius who refers to Scots, Picts, Britons and Saxons and who refers to the language of the Britons and language of the Saxons, with examples.

The other Nemnivus, or Nennius, is mentioned in a Welsh manuscript of the 9th century. In response to the snide accusation of a Saxon scholar that the Britons had no alphabet of their own, this Nemnivus is said to have invented an alphabet on the fly in order to refute this insult.

Still sounds like élites talking amongst themselves.

quote:

what do you think this "vulgar Latin" is except the French language itself.

That is, they were told to preach in the vernacular. It does not say the vernacular was Vulgar Latin (which the linguists admit is hypothetical -- as are the vast majority of languages the historical linguistics industry operates with).

quote:

Of course if you think Classical Arabic is a normal spoken language, as you appear to do here, then you will have to explain why it has remained unchanged from Mohammed's time to now.

Mr Harper has skipped ahead a bit. Harry was to give examples of written languages lagging the spoken equivalents. Within his own (current paradigm) terms, he has done so. Sort of.

All this amounts to is that the linguists have done the same thing over and over: which is, of course, sound scientific practice, since good principles should be applicable everywhere. However, since these are all the same model, none of them reinforces another. If the paradigm is at fault, then they all fall down together.

In the latest account of Anglo-Saxon, the spoken and written forms start out in step, but one starts to lag the other (for no known reason) and they gradually diverge. Trouble is,
• Anglo-Saxon doesn't develop in the way that the spoken language is said to, just some centuries behind: it barely develops at all;
• then all of a sudden, the written language catches up again to become Middle English; but then written English barely develops either and the naturalness of this situation is unexplained;
• despite the supposed lagging, Middle English is the same language that I, for one, speak now;
• none of this divergence has been observed: in all the supposed examples, there is a huge gulf between the vernacular language and the dead, written language.

quote:

It is where it was many pages back, a disagreement on the rate of language change.

If that's all it comes down to and this matter can not be decided, then the paradigm can not be defended either!

"Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo et in ajudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit son fradra salvar dift, in o quid il me altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai, qui, meon vol, cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit."

I've never worked it out, Bystander, so why don't we do that now. I was going to start out by claiming that the Latin bits were pro forma (no literary joke intended), but even that much I am being to wonder about.

Take the opening phrase "Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament". Pro Deo is pure Latin since I doubt that 'pour dieu" would be so rendered. But then the words could easily be "amour et [pro] Christian peuple (poblo?..mmm) et nostre commune salvement". Actually I realise at this point that my knowledge of either Latin or French rather lets me down. And I suspect a nowledge of Occitan/Provencal would be helpful here too.

But I appeal to the Great Savants hereabout to bring aid and comfort to the party by helping out with the rest.

"Pro" is as much "pour" as "bren" is "burn"... but "Pro Deo" is just as likely to be a Latinism used in French (like "Pardee" is a Frenchism used in English).

Other than that... I have run out of time. Sorry.

quote:

Originally posted by Innocent Bystander:
You should shoot Jean then, PMB. Funny how we trusted her. And you should shoot yourself for suggesting that everyone should always refer back to the original sources.

Yeah, right. Yes, checking what the original sources actually say certainly is a bind isn't it that no doubt you feel no true "revisionist" should have to be asked to endure.

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
But I appeal to the Great Savants hereabout to bring aid and comfort to the party by helping out with the rest.

And I appeal to the pistolo-revisionists and Harry A. to take their pseudy linguistic games somewhere else. Please.

I'd love to, PMB, but this is truly excellent galère. They're difficult to find. If it would help, you can always stop opening this thread. Unless you are strangely drawn...to the dark side.

Why not post up something about the Slavonic languages, then you might feel more included.

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
Why not post up something about the Slavonic languages, then you might feel more included.

What would "help" would be if you took this linguistic discussion to a linguistic discussion list. So, no I am NOT going to "post up something about the Slavonic languages", Time Team Forum is not a place for discussing at such length, page after self indulgent page, any "languages". Like it says on the box, its for discussing the programmes, the personalities and archaeology in general. Not Slavic languages, not Middle English literature. Archaeology.

Here is a quote from Post Number One in this thread:

quote:

Did anyone here see Newsnight last week when it featured an item on whether English (or a Teutonic predecessor) was spoken in Britain in Iron Age Britain. There was an archaeologist called Win Scutt who presented the idea based on English place-names relating to water features in the upper Thames region.

Is this now no longer archaeology? Did Win Scutt not get your memo?

Dear PMB.

Calm yourself. Threads die when the participants lose interest in the subject or feel the discussion has exhausted the topic. They don't die just because you've decided the matter is unworthy of debate.

It may well be that this thread has reached its natural end anyway so, relax, de-stress, do some breathing exercises. There is still justice in the world even if it must contain people like me. Look on this as an opportunity to develop your tolerance muscles.

quote:

Nowel was a scholar of the Anglo-Saxon language. He had nothing to do with the transmission of the Latin text of Bede. But of course there was a later translation into OE. You managed to track down a comment on his transcript of one copy of that. It discussed the argument that he had added his own translation into OE of bits from the Latin Bede. In short the proposed interpolation was from Bede's own text.

No-one accused Nowell of re-wroting part of Bede; it seems, though, from the above, that parts of Bede were omitted in some of the MSS and that later A-S scholars like Nowell re-inserted some or all of the omissions.

There are some discrepancies between the Bede MSS, including the oldest copies which are claimed to be the Moore Bede and the Leningrad/St. Petersburg, both of which are said to be based on a yet older, parent version. Yet the Alfredian OE translation is also supposed to be based on the original Bede version. None of the multiple versions is in fact the original Bede.

(Cf. Sir Frederick Kenyon, former Director of the British Museum, who remarked "Of Bede's translation no trace or vestige now remains")

quote:

if other Bede-like testimony should turn up


See Nennius who refers to Scots, Picts, Britons and Saxons and who refers to the language of the Britons and language of the Saxons, with examples.

Nennius is generally considered completely unreliable. The Historia Brittonum is no longer ascribed to Nennius; its anonymous author is valued for the literary, not historical, content and for the 'window' it gives us onto the ninth century.

quote:

if other Bede-like testimony should turn up

See Nennius who refers to Scots, Picts, Britons and Saxons and who refers to the language of the Britons and language of the Saxons, with examples.

Nennius is generally considered completely unreliable. The Historia Brittonum is no longer ascribed to Nennius; its anonymous author treated mythical characters such as Hengest and Horsa as historical, it was not intended as a 'true' history.

Still, the old boy does have a point so let me try to ellide this particular language question with some of the equally anomalous postions that British archaeology finds itself in.

Chief amongst these is the question of where the pre-Roman population lived. We can be pretty sure from indirect but solid evidence that the population must have been in the low millions. Yet British archaeology has had no luck so far in discovering their habitments. Indeed when just one tiny settlement is discovered the news is trumpeted far and wide.

The problem (but of course) is caused by the underlying paradigm error: that the British lowland population were Celtic-speakers and therefore lived in "the Celtic fashion" which is in widely separated houses and hamlets. And these are notoriously hard for archaeologists to uncover.

This is perfectly true for the actual Celtic-speaking areas ie the highland north and west of Britain where intensive agriculture is not widely practiced and therefore "crofting" techniques are employed. But in lowland Britain of course everybody lived in villages and villages are very hard to miss by archaeologists.

So why are they always missing them? That's easy. Virtually all the villages of lowland Britain have "English" names and the poor old archaeologists have been told by their history colleagues that English didn't arrive until after the Romans. So the villages couldn't have existed before the Romans, and the British couldn't have been living in them.

We could tell them different but I doubt that they will listen to us. It will be interesting to see what happens when the geneticists start telling them the same story. If we all gang up together perhaps a little progress could be made.

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:
Chief amongst these is the question of where the pre-Roman population lived. We can be pretty sure from indirect but solid evidence that the population must have been in the low millions. Yet British archaeology has had no luck so far in discovering their habitments. Indeed when just one tiny settlement is discovered the news is trumpeted far and wide.

The problem (but of course) is caused by the underlying paradigm error: that the British lowland population were Celtic-speakers and therefore lived in "the Celtic fashion" which is in widely separated houses and hamlets. And these are notoriously hard for archaeologists to uncover.

This is perfectly true for the actual Celtic-speaking areas ie the highland north and west of Britain where intensive agriculture is not widely practiced and therefore "crofting" techniques are employed. But in lowland Britain of course everybody lived in villages and villages are very hard to miss by archaeologists.

So why are they always missing them? That's easy. Virtually all the villages of lowland Britain have "English" names and the poor old archaeologists have been told by their history colleagues that English didn't arrive until after the Romans. So the villages couldn't have existed before the Romans, and the British couldn't have been living in them.

We could tell them different but I doubt that they will listen to us. It will be interesting to see what happens when the geneticists start telling them the same story. If we all gang up together perhaps a little progress could be made.

Sorry MJ, but you clearly do not know as much about archaeology as you do about the evolution of langages. We have plenty of evidence for where people lived prior to the Roman Conqest

Your assumption that our understanding of settlement patterns is based on assumptions that settlement pattern was somehow linked to langiage is simply risible. People live in widely separated areas and 'croft' because of the poor agricultural value of the land and because that is the best way to farm those areas - it has nothing to do with the language they spoke.

As for the pre-Roman villages under all modern English viillages, why are they so dashed hard to find. Presumably your model requires the pre Roman English speakers lived in houses and had a recognisable material culture. If this is indeed the case, why is it that the settlement patterns we keep finding for the Iron Age inhabitants of Britain not coincide with your 'Englis villages', and why is the same true for the Roman period. For your model to have validity, Iron Age and Roman sites should lie beneath our medieval villages. In most parts of lowland Britain the cultural waste of these periods is pretty recognisable - they'd learn to make good hard pots and had enough sense to change fashions from time to time to give us dirt diggers a chance of building chronologies, and even started banging funny designs onto lumps of metal. So why then do the distributions of these material types not cluster on these modern English villages?

<<Your assumption that our understanding of settlement patterns is based on assumptions that settlement pattern was somehow linked to langiage is simply risible.>>

That is not (quite) what I am saying. It is a linked paradigm. If you assume the native pre-historical British population is Celtic and you observe that the historical pattern of Celtic settlement is "scattered" then it (kinda) follows that the British population is "scattered". I agree this is not very formidable reasoning but it has underpinned all pre-Roman assumptions -- whether wittingly or unwittingly -- right from the beginning of Modern British Archaeology. These things are really hard to shake, they seep into everything.

<<People live in widely separated areas and 'croft' because of the poor agricultural value of the land and because that is the best way to farm those areas - it has nothing to do with the language they spoke.>>

Absolutely agreed. But we know that lowland Britain had intensive agriculture and that therefore the lowland Britons presumably lived in intensive settlement patterns ie villages. Where are they? They are hard to miss in such an archaeologically-rich country as Britain. NOT ONE HAS EVER BEEN FOUND. Only small-scale stuff. And not much of that.

<<As for the pre-Roman villages under all modern English viillages, why are they so dashed hard to find.>>

Archaeologists (and palaeontologists and geologists and water-diviners) notoriously tend to find what they are looking for. I might turn the question round and ask why haven't they found the pre-Roman villages?

<<Presumably your model requires the pre Roman English speakers lived in houses and had a recognisable material culture.>>

Well....yes and no. A material culture, certainly; a recognisable one...mmm...maybe. For instance, archaeologists are obsessed with the idea that the Ancient Brits lived in wooden dwellings so look for post-holes. It never occurs to them that it is overwhelmingly likely that the Ancient Brits lived in stone houses and used the same stone foundations over and over again. These stone foundations are of course always named as "Saxon" whenever they occur in an "English" village..

<<If this is indeed the case, why is it that the settlement patterns we keep finding for the Iron Age inhabitants of Britain not coincide with your 'Englis villages', and why is the same true for the Roman period. For your model to have validity, Iron Age and Roman sites should lie beneath our medieval villages.>>

But don't you see...that's exactly the point. We find over and over again (whether we call them Iron Age or Roman or Anglo-Saxon or Danish or Norman) settlement places outside the ordinary villages. This is always how the ruling elite live. Let me once more turn the question round. When you find and excavate a Roman villa, where pray are the ordinary inhabitants living? In the villa....I think not apart from personal servants. In the outhouses? No, they always turn out to be non-domestic. So where? In tents? In lean-to's round the back? No, in the nearest "English" village, same as they always do. Do you honestly suppose that Roman agriculture can possibly be very much different from medieval agriculture?

<<In most parts of lowland Britain the cultural waste of these periods is pretty recognisable - they'd learn to make good hard pots and had enough sense to change fashions from time to time to give us dirt diggers a chance of building chronologies, and even started banging funny designs onto lumps of metal. So why then do the distributions of these material types not cluster on these modern English villages?>>

As soon as we start excavating modern English villages PROPERLY, using the correct paradigms, this will be the case. When that will be is anybody's guess.

quote:

Originally posted by M J Harper:

That is not (quite) what I am saying. It is a linked paradigm. If you assume the native pre-historical British population is Celtic and you observe that the historical pattern of Celtic settlement is "scattered" then it (kinda) follows that the British population is "scattered". I agree this is not very formidable reasoning but it has underpinned all pre-Roman assumptions -- whether wittingly or unwittingly -- right from the beginning of Modern British Archaeology. These things are really hard to shake, they seep into everything..

Utter rubbish...

Who made the observation that the historical pattern of 'Celtic' settlement is 'scattered'.I think even in prehistory you ought to be allowed to argue for settlement heirarchies etc.

quote:

Absolutely agreed. But we know that lowland Britain had intensive agriculture and that therefore the lowland Britons presumably lived in intensive settlement patterns ie villages. Where are they? They are hard to miss in such an archaeologically-rich country as Britain. NOT ONE HAS EVER BEEN FOUND. Only small-scale stuff. And not much of that.

Because a culture farms intensively, it does not necessarily follow that they lived in villages. the two simply do not follow one from the other.

quote:

I might turn the question round and ask why haven't they found the pre-Roman villages?.

You haven't turned my question around at all - merely repeated it!

quote:

Well....yes and no. A material culture, certainly; a recognisable one...mmm...maybe. For instance, archaeologists are obsessed with the idea that the Ancient Brits lived in wooden dwellings so look for post-holes. It never occurs to them that it is overwhelmingly likely that the Ancient Brits lived in stone houses and used the same stone foundations over and over again. These stone foundations are of course always named as "Saxon" whenever they occur in an "English" village..?.

I'm sorry MJ, but yet again your archaeology is letting you down again. We do find plenty of pre_Roman post built buildings, usually in small groups of 2 - 4 houses, possibly representing extended families or farmsteads. Funny you should use the word Saxon in association with stone footings in English villages. I challenge you to produce two stone Saxon structures in an English village (churches don't count!) Saxoon buildings, even many of the really important ones, are usually wooden post built structures

quote:

As soon as we start excavating modern English villages PROPERLY, using the correct paradigms, this will be the case. When that will be is anybody's guess.

But we do - we work within English villages all the time. And we don't find what you want us to find. No offense but its not rocket science. Even if you think that we are somehow missing or misidentifying the buildings, hundreds of people living in the same place for such a long period of time produce a lot of waste. We know what pre Roman and Roman waste looks like. If there were large quantities of it kicking around in our English villages, someone would have noticed, even if only when double digging their potato patch. When we humans have finally found the perfect way to poison our own species of the planet and the cockroaches which succeed us have done the same in their turn, there will still be bits of Roman pottery and tile kicking around - its almost indestructible. Trust me, I'm not falling victim to any sort of paradigm here, its just simply not there. Sorry