This week, as per my timeline, I
looked at the native language of England and I realised, there is a lot of
jargon that goes with linguistics. Al large portion of my time went into the
not so simple process of learning some of the jargon I would need to know that
goes hand in hand with learning linguistics. Words like lenition, sonority,
spirantized, rhotic tap, etc.
Lenition held some of the most
surprises that could be useful for understanding the English language. For example,
when languages evolve, vegetation and altitude play a role in that evolution. I
found this very surprising. It seems that there is a correlation between
temperature and language with warmer temperatures being related to more
sonorous speech. In simple terms, this is the warmer it is, the more voiced and
long sounds there are. However, this relation flips when that warm climate is
accompanied by dense vegetation. The theory is that in open terrain, with
moisture in the air voiced and long sounds that tend to make the more lyrical
languages functions well. In a cold climate, where moisture and heat are a
problem, shorter time spent talking means less heat and moisture loss that
would lead to the mouth feeling dry and problems like cracked lips. In dense
vegetation sound is dampened and so plosives travel better. A plosive is when
you block air flow while talking and let it explode out. This is done with English
sounds like ‘b’, ‘t’ and ‘p’ (anything that Trudeau might label as speaking moistly).
Altitude plays a similar role for similar reasons. At high altitudes where
atmosphere is thinner and sound doesn’t carry as well, plosives and hard sounds
travel further and better than sonorous ones. For this, many languages that
evolved at high altitudes or dense vegetation tend to sound harsher and more
forceful with more stops. For example, a lot of the romantic languages have a
sonorous sound to them as Latin, Spanish, and French developed in a warm land
that was not dense jungle at a relatively low altitude. Languages such as German,
Danish, Swedish, and a lot of the east Asian languages developed at high
altitudes and/or dense jungle. Some of the harsher sounding African languages
were developed in mountainous or jungle regains. However, I kept my focus to European
and neighbouring areas that could have influenced English, so I did not look closely
at these areas. I would be curious to look at the native languages of south America
as the continent is (or was) mostly jungle or mountains but that will have to
wait for another time.
Influences on lenition may be
important later but I won’t know until I do more research. For now, I stuck to
the native languages to Britain, England, and the area, as this is the birthplace
of English. Three languages broke off from the parent native language and dominated
the area that would become England. These became Brittonic which covered the
majority of England, Welsh which was spoken in what is now wales, and Cornish
which was spoken in the southern most part of England, what is now Cornwall and
Devonshire. Welsh is the only surviving language spoken today and probably
gives the greatest clues as to how old Brittonic sounded and was structured. It
was similar to the old Irish and Goidelic dialects and featured periphrastic
forms, inflected prepositions, VSO typology, and dependent and independent verb
forms. Some of these forms are reflected in English and some are not.
Periphrastic forms seem to be
adopted into English but not regularly. This is one of the features of the
language that makes English hard for English language learners. The simplified explanation
of what periphrastic form is would be the use of multiple words to make one
meaning. I say this was not regularly incorporated into English as you can see
both being used. For example, I can use the inflected form lovelier, or I can
use the periphrastic form more lovely. It can also be seen with verbs such as
converse. You can use the full verb, to converse, or you can use the periphrastic
light verb alternative to have a conversation. This is inconsistent through the
language and can be done using verbs like give, take, and have.
Inflected prepositions are contractions
of prepositions and personal pronouns. It would be the equivalent of saying ‘toyou’
as one word (probably changed to sound better together and make it more
distinctive) instead of ‘to you’. Another real example of this could be the Portuguese
form comigo which springs from the contraction of Latin ‘cum’ (with), and ‘me’
(me). In Latin this would be mecum, but the principle applies. This does not seem to be incorporated into English
as you can see, we do not combine our pronouns with prepositions. I’m not sure
yet where this comes from.
VSO typology was also a part of
the language that was not carried forward. This is verb-subject-object order. Speaking
like this is understandable in English and is, in technicality, grammatically
correct… but it makes you sound like Yoda. This is the sentence structure that
looks like "eats john, the food”. It is awkward and is almost never used
in common English.
Tag questions are one of the few
contributions from old Britannic than I remember students having issues with
when I was a teaching English in brazil. A tag question is the shortened
question form the takes the form, aren't I?, isn't he?, won’t we?, haven’t
they, would you?. This is in contrast to German (nicht wahr?), French (n'est-ce
pas?), and Portuguese (Nao e?), all of which are constant and can be used with
almost any preceding statement. This varying form used in English is almost identical
to welsh, the nearest surviving relative language to old Brittonic.
There are many structures and
forms that I could talk about here and many more that I don’t know or
understand enough about to explain them. after much research into the Brittonic
language, I found that many scholars agree that Brittonic did not contribute
much to modern English as it is today. Contribution largely seems limited to
toponyms such a geographical words and a few lexical constructs. The silent b
at the end of words such as bomb and comb seem to have its roots in old Brittonic.
Periphrastic forms and question tags seem the most likely contribution from Brittonic
that could cause English learners’ difficulties.
In conclusion, after much
research into the native languages of England, I am forced to conclude that the
Brittonic languages of the native played very small role in the development of
the English language. From here, and for next week, I would like to look into
the invasion of Latin into Brittonic territory and the effects of Latin on the
language, which I am thinking will be vast. Hope to see you next week!
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