I hope you do not mind if I top post. Wright, the eminent Victorian
philologist, noted the total lack of German grammar in so called Middle
English, as well as massive word borrowings from Scandinavian and Celtic
languages, and even on a smaller scale French. Grammatically English bears
to relation to either archaic or modern German, so how can English be
derived from Anglo-Saxon? No, English is a pidgin language derived from
several other languages. This accounts for the mixed English vocabulary
and
the general lack of grammar. The final coup-de-grace arose when in
Northern
English the definite article THE replaced the German (masculine,
feminine,
and neuter definite articles (I forget the archaic German/Anglo-Saxon
definite articles, but in modern German they are die, der, das). So called
Old English was in fact Old German. All of this rubbish about 'Old
English'
derives from Gobineau's book, The Inequalities of the Races..
"allan connochie" <allan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:43368e4b@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "hawker@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <flink@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:dgtm29$lp3$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Allan, why then do you Scottish people speak Northern English, which
you
>> have renamed Scots?
>
>
> What's in a name eh? Whatever one calls it doesn't actually affect
what's
> being spoken. You are right of course in that the Scots language springs
> from the northern dialect of Anglo-Saxon or Old English. In the 13thC
> there
> would probably have been little difference as to how it was spoken from
> Edinburgh right down to past the northern English counties, apart
perhaps
> from accent, in truth we don't know. After the Wars of Independence the
> language spoken in Scotland started to move away as the two countries
> became
> more isolated and different influences started working on the various
> regions. The more southerly dialect took precedence in England whilst
> through being the language of state in Scotland the language took on a
> life
> of its own. Initially the Scots called their own tongue Inglis (English)
> whilst they gave the language spoken further south the appellation
Suddron
> (ie Southern). The change to using the term Scots as opposed to Inglis,
> first evidenced in the works of Gavin Douglas, probably came about for
> nationalistic reasons. It was by then the dominant langauge of those in
> power in Scotland so took on the national name whilst they started to
> refer
> to Gaelic as Erse (Irish). It was probably also, due to a century or so
> of
> hostility, influenced by an aversion to using the title English.
>
> Even by the sixteenth century, as far as written do***ents are
concerned,
> there is still a strong similarity between at least Border Scots and the
> dialect of the Northumberland dales. I suspect that the written sources
> perhaps even exaggerated the difference. Nowadays there are still
> similarities between modern Border Scots and Northumbrian or even
Geordie.
> Saying that no Borderer would mistake someone from the opposite side of
> the
> Border. If you compare someone brought up in Ladykirk with someone
> brought
> up in Norham (a stones throw across Tweed) then what is remarkable is
not
> the similarity, as that would be expected anyway, but rather the
> differences
> are perhaps more marked than would be expected.
>
> Allan
>
>
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