Re: Breton, Cornish & French

"John Briggs" <john.briggs4@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:ulYtj.724$%W6.423@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> And as usual present no evidence.  Well, since we're agreed on the
>> interchangeable nature of the terms from the 8th century on, we'll
>> restrict ourselves to the 7th and earlier.  One type of evidence is
>> the names of the various kingdoms: in the south we have a consistent
>> use of compounds with Saxon (East Saxon, West Saxon, South Saxon
>> etc), and not one with the term "Angl*-in it.

Well well well! What a confabulation of text to language! What evidence is

there of even literacy? Did Bede write in Latin, translate Caedmon to
Latin? 
What are the expected sources of dialectical reference to the non-literate

populace?

> Ignoring "Wes***" (for obvious reasons) do you notice that they relate
to 
> the "Saxon Shore"? That it might pertain to the place, rather than the 
> people?
>
> Rather more to the point, how do we know that these "Saxons" actually 
> existed? Separately from the names of the kingdoms?

I suppose these paragraphs intend to interrogate some topic - though I
doubt 
it is Saxon-denial as on its face. What exactly is being 'obviously' 
discarded and why?

I assume the writer will not depend overmuch on what is written in the 
Chronicle 300 years later? What then is the source of these opinions?

>> Likewise we have the
>> story, first told in the 7th century, of Gregory's encounter with
>> slaves in the market from the norther kingdom of Deira who identify
>> themselves as Angles, not Saxons, and there is no confusion or
>> interchangeable usage in any version of the story or in any of the
>> manuscript copies.  In fact, there is no such interchangeable usage I
>> know of in the early period, perhaps you could provide some.

What philological finesse is here requested of slaves in some market 
encounter? That they hypenate their owner's speech adequately to an 
antiquarians desire - why? Which manor of Angles [nor any term in A. Sax.]

do these A. Sax people profess to be? Are they 'Mercians?'

The language hardly coallesced until 950, and before that was hardly 
intelligble, one region to another. Any other understanding is entirely
not 
*****sed as real - it certainily was not to Alfred.

So is this some regional matter, based on the understanding of slaves in 
it - somehow recorded by Gregory who was of uncertain dialectical 
understanding ~ but this thin anecdote presented here is represented as of

the whole island?

> No, I have decided that the names were not interchangeable for the 
> people - in fact, that "Saxon" did not, in practice, exist.

And there you have an opinion, and its provenance together.

Phil Innes