From: dunkelza@titan.ucs.umass.edu (KEITH C MCCORMIC)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Language of Britain.
Date: 28 Jan 93 16:20:53 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
NNTP-Posting-Host: titan.ucs.umass.edu

In article <1jv6bsINNjuf@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> gorilla@cats.ucsc.edu (Christopher John Arnold) writes:
>
>Not being a linguitics maor by any means I'm not the greatest of
>authorities on the face of the earth, but being both a medievel-
>ophile and a Welshman, I have studied this a bit.
>
>Celtic languages are divided into two groups:
>Brythonic: from which Welsh, Cornish and Breton are derived,
>and Goidelic: from which Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, and Manx are derived.

  Sorry, but these are MODERN celtic tongues.  Very little survives of the 
older languages, so comparisons between ancient celtic tongues and ancient 
germanic tongues is that much harder.

>Neither of these groups share any of the necessary similarities with
>English to make it a member of that same language group.

  And MODERN English shares little but cosmetic similarities with MODERN
German.

>Old English was brought to Britain by the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons
>in the 5th-6th Century. It is a germanic language. Old English
>bears many of the same grammatical, syntactical, and vocabulary
>features of Danish, or German. 

  I will not refute this, but then again, old English bears little similarity
to MODERN English.

>Middle English was what happened when The Normans came to Britain in
>1066. The Normans for one thing were Vikings that had settled in Northern
>France and had assimilated the culture to some degree. The Vikings
>were Northern Germanic language speakers, and French is a romance
>language. No Celtic in there, save for the most remote of traces
>of Gaulish for example. 

  Oh, really?  Then how come many words which start with "W" in English
are almost identical in French, but start with "G"?  Words like "William"
and "Guillaume" mean the same thing, but are descended from a Celtic word
that began with "GW" as in "Gwent".  In English we often take the "W" and
French the "G".  French is a romance language because it is structured more
like Latin than anything else, but it bears as many similarities to the
Celtic tongues as it does to German.  And, again, I believe that the German
tribes were a divergent Celtic people who travelled north into Germany and
Scandinavia.  This is just MHO, but considering that we have little to no
record of the languages spoken by the Celts and the Germanic tribes in the
first century after the hypothetical split, we can not prove that they were or
were not with any conclusiveness.  However, one who wishes to refute my 
statement must be very careful, for the argument that was lodged regarding
the influence of Celts in Britain on Celts on the Mainland can be used to
refer to language as well.  Basically, the MODERN celtic tongues, and the
tongues from such out-of-the-way places as Britagne and the British Isles
can not be used as an accurate firm point with which to compare German.
Therefore, until someone invents a time-machine or discovers Celtic burial
sites in Scandinavia or Northern Germany, we can not PROVE or DISPROVE
my theory with confidence.

>Check with a Linguistics professor.

  You forget, I'm proposing a revision of linguistic theory.  Why should I
go and argue with a ligistics professor?

Dunkelzahn
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc