rathmann@brahms.berkeley.EDU (Michael Ellis such as he is) (10/25/86)
> ccplumb@watnot [from a conversation about American vs. British spelling practices..] >> Are there any Brits (or Scots, Welsh, or Irish) out there who've >> felt this American linguistic imperialism? > Speaking of linguistic imperialism, the Scots, Welsh and Irish > already have felt it to such an extent from England, that Gaelic is > dying out. Tell me, do the French Canadians feel any more > linguistic imperialism from "color" as opposed to "colour"? I doubt > it. Indeed, why should the Scots, Irish, or Welsh have any attachment to Saxon language practices? I do not know how many genuine native Gaelic speakers actually exist, but by the accounts I've heard the number is vanishingly small. I suppose those Irish or Scots who give a damn about their spelling by definition give a damn about the spelling of "Saxon" (English) since that appears to be the only language they use. I suspect that Gaelic culture was as much the victim of English cultural imperialism as of the mass exodus to America, for centuries a factory of mass Saxonization on a scale that King Alfred could not ever have imagined even in his wildest dreams. We turned Celts, along with Poles, Germans, Italians.. into Anglo-Clones by the millions. Pity. On the brighter side, Welsh, from the reports I have heard, is a living language that is commonly spoken, employed in textbooks, in business, in legal documents, streetsigns, etc. Welsh language "activists" and other pranksters purportedly enjoy misdirecting English language streetsigns so that you must read Welsh to go anywhere, since placenames are often rendered incomprehensible to the Saeson due to the grammatical effect of initial consonant mututations. Such stories sound too good to be true, at least to Celtophiles. A related language, Breton, which is much closer to Welsh than Gaelic (I've heard it said that the Welsh and Breton are perhaps as mutually comprehensible as Spanish and Italian) is spoken in France. Breton is the only case I know where a Celtic language has successfully reconquered lost territory: sometime between 500-1000 some proto-{Breton/Welsh} left Wales for Brittany. On paper, Breton looks very much like a Frankified Welsh, particularly in its vowels and vocabulary additions. I have not heard either way as to the vitality of Breton -- is it used in daily life, commerce, law, public schools, etc? Is there anyone out there who firsthand knowledge of day-to-day linguistic usage for any Celtic language? -michael A'r gyfreith honno a ddroes Alfrydd frenhin o Gymraeg yn Saesneg (And that law did turn King Alfred from Welsh into Saxon) -from the Red Book of Hergest
jmm@miro.Berkeley.EDU (James Moore) (10/31/86)
There is a professor in the linguistics department here at Berkeley who teaches Breton. From what I gather, the language is, sadly, slowly dying out. James
rathmann@brahms.berkeley.EDU (Michael Ellis such as he is) (10/31/86)
> James Moore > There is a professor in the linguistics department here at Berkeley > who teaches Breton. From what I gather, the language is, sadly, > slowly dying out. -- James I was just talking with some French travellers who told me that Breton was commonly used in domestic speech, but they were unable to offer very much concerning its business, legal, or academic usage. (This is all hearsay: if anyone knows better, please set us straight!) It seems to me that any language that is still used domestically, is still alive, since native speaking ability is still being transmitted during infancy. As far as Celtic language studies, UCB is better than any university I'm familiar with: currently medieval Welsh is being offered, and both Irish Gaelic and Breton are available from time to time subject to student interest; there is also a "Celtic Colloquium" which schedules a few events each year. As far as I can tell, Welsh, like most provincial languages, has been extremely conservative; grammatical irregularities seem to have been fairly well preserved across the centuries such that, except for orthographic and minor pronunciation changes, the text of the Mabinogi is not enormously different from what is spoken today (from what I can determine), whereas English or French from the same period would be almost incomprehensible to modern speakers. With knowledge of spelling changes, a modern Welsh dictionary suffices for translating the ancient literature. My guess is that Gaelic and Breton have been equally conservative. As the sad story of the Celtic languages has largely been one of being overwhelmed by invaders, the Celtophile naturally wonders what traces they may have left on the conquerors' tongue, perhaps as some form of "language substratum" to modern English, French, and perhaps Spanish. For instance, there are certain similarities between the phonemic system of Welsh and English, such as the presence of the "th" sounds in "thin" and "then" (written "th" and "dd" in Welsh), and the back-central unrounded vowel in "but" as well as the dubious barred-i of some phonemic representations of English (written "y" in Welsh), the aspiration of initial unvoiced stops, and a number of other subtleties. On the other hand, Welsh possesses some pretty weird sounds, like the unvoiced liquids rh, ll, nh, mh, ngh; excluding these, the phonetic qualities of Welsh words are more natural to my ear and tongue than any other language I've heard, including the other Teutonic languages. Except for Dutch. -michael
jmm@miro.Berkeley.EDU (James Moore) (10/31/86)
In article <165@cartanBerkeley.EDU> rathmann@brahms.berkeley.EDU (Really Michael Ellis) writes: > As far as I can tell, Welsh, like most provincial languages, has > been extremely conservative; grammatical irregularities seem to Umm... Not really. We're reading a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Pursuit of Diarmad and Grainne right now, and there are quite a few differences between that and modern Irish. Mostly there are strange verb forms, in particular dependent forms of ta' and things like do-bherim rather than beirim. Some older forms of prepositions are also there, such as os (used outside of os cionn), and "nuair" is still "an uair" (or even an OI form such as an tan). My skill in Irish is still rather limited, but the "feel" of Diarmad and Grainne is very different from something such as "Peig", which was written in 1939. As far as I know, Welsh is much the same. I was told by a native speaker that going to Wales today and trying to use the language of the Mabinogi is not going to work. Something like the equivilent of read the Canterbury Tales in the original -- it can be done from only a knowledge of history and modern English, but you're going to miss a lot of vocabulary and meanings will have changed. Slan libh, James Moore
csrdi@its63b.ed.ac.uk (ECTU68 R Innis CS) (11/03/86)
Michael Ellis wanted to know about Celtic languages in everyday use....I can
tell you for certain that the number of Gaelic speakers is *not* 'vanishingly
small', in fact in Scotland the number is actually growing as non-native
speakers acquire the language. F'rinstance, there are more Gaelic-speaking
14/15 year olds now that there were Gaelic-speaking 4/5 year olds ten years
ago. A growing number of younger people (myself included) are becoming aware
of the fact that Scotland has its own language and cultural heritage. A lot of
the resurgence (probably too strong a word for it, but anyway...) of Gaelic is
probably due to politics as much as anything else, but it is still very much a
living language, particularly in the Western Isles (Lewis, Harris, the Uists
etc) - a lot of the people there have Gaelic as a first language, roadsigns
are bilingual (if you're lucky - I've seen many on Uist in Gaelic only) and
many the people use it as their normal language, switching to English only for
the benefit of ignorant tourists like myself. There's also some (not nearly
enough!) Gaelic programming on radio and television, generally current affairs
and newsmagazines, although the BBC is now also doing some childrens'
programming in Gaelic. There are also quite a few folk groups who sing a lot
of Gaelic songs - Capercallie are one example, sticking to fairly traditional
tunes, while RunRig do both traditional songs and their own, all with a fairly
good rock feeling - traditional pipe tunes played on electric guitar, for
example. (purists may freak, but Malcolm Jones is as good a piper as he is a
guitarist - for proof check out the 'Recovery' album, which along with the
latest ('Heartland') probably represents RunRig's best output to date). And
of course the Mod is usually the high point of the year for the
traditionalists...
As for other Celtic languages, I think the Irish have always held onto their
culture better than we have - then again, the English didn't ban their culture
they way they did ours. Welsh has always been stronger and will probably stay
as long as there are Welsh people to speak it. Breton I think has about the
same status as Welsh, though I can't say for certain.
Siol Na Alba,
--Rickcsrdi@its63b.ed.ac.uk (ECTU68 R Innis CS) (11/05/86)
> > As far as Celtic language studies, UCB is better than any > university I'm familiar with: currently medieval Welsh is being > offered, and both Irish Gaelic and Breton are available from time > to time subject to student interest; there is also a "Celtic > Colloquium" which schedules a few events each year. > I don't think we offer Welsh; however Edinburgh (and, I believe, Glasgow) offers a degree course in Celtic Studies, which predictably contains intense study of Gaelic. In fact there are no less than three Celtic Studies I (ie, first year undergrad level) courses; for native speakers, non-native speakers with some knowledge of the language (ie high school leaving level), and a no-credit course for non-gaelic speakers. Also an extra-mural course which I intend to make time for next year... > .....English or French from > the same period would be almost incomprehensible to modern > speakers. H'm...the BBC once did a reading of Beowulf, with it's original Anglo-Saxon spellings and (conjetured) pronunciations, and people were surprised at how easy to understand it was. Bear in mind that spoken language changed slowly up until the advent of radio/tv, whereas the written language began to standardise shortly after the invention of movable type. Previous to that, written forms tended to mirror spoken ones - f'rinstance, old Scots documents have 'qu' where modern English has 'wh' (or should that be, 'quair modern English..'?). This actually does reflect quite well the sort of pronunciation one could expect from the Scots of the time. As to the Celtic languages providing anything to the invader's tongue, I'd say the obvious manifestation of that would be in dialects - Scots contains quite a few words which the Saassenach cannot comprehend - sadly having been torn from my roots at a tender age many of them are lost on me as well. Still, stand on a Glasgow street corner (or better still, sit in a Glaswegian pub) for a while and you'll hear plenty of examples. Or if you want written examples, how about 'The New Testament In Scots'? There's plenty of other written material about - if anyone's interested I can look some up, the School of Scottish Studies is just around the corner from the library here. --Rick
chm@aber-cs.UUCP (Corinne Morris) (11/06/86)
In article <121@its63b.ed.ac.uk> csrdi@itspna.ed.ac.uk (ECTU68 R Innis CS) writes: >I don't think we offer Welsh; however Edinburgh (and, I believe, Glasgow) >offers a degree course in Celtic Studies, which predictably contains intense >study of Gaelic. In fact there are no less than three Celtic Studies I (ie, >first year undergrad level) courses; for native speakers, non-native speakers >with some knowledge of the language (ie high school leaving level), and a >no-credit course for non-gaelic speakers. Also an extra-mural course which >I intend to make time for next year... While we're advertising universities, let me put in a word for Aberystwyth. There are 3 levels of Welsh taught, similar to the above, but all accredited, and Celtic Studies, Irish, etc. For those who shy from formal courses, the student Celtic Societies offer elementary lessons in Irish and Breton, and I believe also Scots Gaelic, and there are extra-mural Welsh classes. But middle Welsh is only taught through the medium of Welsh. > >As to the Celtic languages providing anything to the invader's tongue, I'd >say the obvious manifestation of that would be in dialects - Scots contains I was told in class this morning that it is "commonly thought" that the tenses of English are derived from the pre-Saxon (ie. Celtic) British rather than Latin/French or Germanic influences. I come, I am coming, I will come , I have come, etc. all have direct analogies in Welsh, whereas the French and German tenses are rather different. Corinne. (Sut mae, bawb?)