XPost: soc.culture.welsh, soc.culture.cornish, soc.culture.irish   
   XPost: soc.culture.scottish   
   From: innes8@verizon.net   
      
   "allan connochie"  wrote in message   
   news:GYcxi.18254$ph7.8962@newsfe5-win.ntli.net...   
   >   
   > "Chess One"  wrote in message   
   > news:_QYwi.712$1e.196@trndny06...   
   >>   
   >> "The Highlander"  wrote in message   
   >> news:48q7c3hb12ilm8mm3i9n9ku6lijoagomt6@4ax.com...   
   >>> You are aware that Scots and English are sister languages derived from   
   >>> Old Northumbrian?   
   >>   
   >> No, I was not aware of that. Though certainly Mercian influenced the   
   >> borders.   
   >   
   > That would be the borders of England and Wales though!   
      
   Yes it would, too. Though it would include Liverpool, and its river, perhaps   
   the most important port in the world until 1900. The need to compass the   
   Mercian-cum-Irish combination for anyone conducting trade was a necessity,   
   and thus it spread from Liverpool to the Clyde.   
      
   >  Scots is a descendent of Northumbrian as are (as Highlander pointed out)   
      
   ROFL! 'Highlander' is a lowlander, and has lowlander orientations. And there   
   is no such language as 'Scots', any more than Geordie is a language. It is a   
   dialect form of speech, much influenced by all sorts of things, [see above]   
   and from time to time, more this than that. But language? Not!   
      
   > some of the more northerly dialects of English. Northumbrian at one time   
   > was possibly reasonably standard from the Forth down to the Humber. Modern   
   > Standard English itself is descended from more southerly dialects than   
   > Northumbrian.   
      
   Yes. This in academe is called a 'normative' understanding of the place West   
   Saxon occupies in the evolution of modern English. 'Standard English' is   
   some hypothetical form actually spoken nowhere, except on the BBC circa   
   1974.   
      
   > I can't see how Mercian itself could have been much of an influence, if   
   > any at all, in the Borders. The standard thinking is that the original   
   > Northumbrian of the north was greatly influencd by the later Anglo-Danish.   
      
   On the upper East coast, certainly, what was spoken in the Danelaw was   
   necessary to understand in order to have business with it. Concurrance of   
   words in this Danish form and with Englisc, is slight, until about the year   
   1000, when perfunctory if uncertain exchanges could be had on simple   
   subjects - like buying a horse.   
      
   > The Danelaw never reached as far as Scotland but there was at least some   
   > movement of displaced peoples northwards (possibly just a small number of   
   > important people) post Norman invasion and then more movements of northern   
   > English and Flemish merchants etc into the emerging burghs.   
      
   Okay, and true, but these Flemish influences were much later, and result of   
   beer brewing which changed the entire east coast economy to a hops-based   
   one, and away from ale. [You will have read that good-woman Dorothy Hatley]   
   This was, circa 1400 to 1550. Henry VIII and his latter Protestant   
   sympathies ushered it into the Island in larger force, and for which we have   
   to thank for our most commonly used swear terms  ;)   
      
   > This Northumbrian/Anglo-Danish mix then became the language of trade then   
   > royal power.   
      
   I am unsure to which period of time you refer, but the language spoken in   
   Kent was the one that eventually dominated trade - and that was an amalgm of   
   A. Sax. dialects before the year 1000, and then in French thereafter, with   
   A. Norm transcriptions so that people understood what their blessed   
   agreements said. It was not so much any Kentish dialect or anything about   
   speech, but as the major formative element of /written/ English at the time.   
   Very much later, in 1600s the Wash was a trading center for the high   
   technology products of  mostly /Southern/ Europe, and the great fairs there   
   were conducted in a post-Elizabethan English.   
      
   What you say is not untrue, but is untypically so, except for Nordsee   
   exchanges, which were conducted in the language of fish!   
      
   > The wars with England meant that north of the border the language   
   > gradually took on different influences from southern England and it   
   > developed differently. For instance even when we're talking the same vocab   
   > (and of course Scots doesn't share all its vocab with Standard English)   
      
   To what period are you prescribing this 'standard English'? I thought even   
   the idea of it was entirely blown.   
      
   > Scots didn't go through the vowel shift to the extent that Standard   
   > English did. Stane didn't become stone.  We tended to rid ourselves of   
   > most consonant clusters. For example Scots used 'tummel' instead of   
   > 'tumble'.   
      
   These are dialect excursives, not root~ language differentiations.   
      
   Educated people spoke Latin until the C18th, indeed, that was the primarly   
   subject and also means of communicating other subjects. Uneducated people   
   spoke polyglot forms, as necessary to their transacting needs with   
   foreigners.   
      
   Unread people spoke dialects so individualised to locality that they were   
   scarecely comprehensible beyond two days journey [with loaded wagon] - and   
   this was as true in Scotland as in England, almost until the time of Thomas   
   Hardy. People rarely ventured further their whole lives until the advent of   
   the industrial revolution attracted people to factory cities, and their they   
   spoke 3,000 words of Ork-speak to each other, and that is your 'standard   
   English'.   
      
   Phil Innes   
      
   >   
   > Allan   
   >   
      
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