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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Archaic English [was: Re: Anounsing a nu Ingglish spelling
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References: <32CC4567.BC7@online.no> <E3GGpF.KwB@midway.uchicago.edu> <E3IC3E.8Mz@scn.org> <32CE6513.7078@online.no>
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 18:36:14 GMT
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In article <32CE6513.7078@online.no>, Anders Blehr  <ablehr@online.no> wrote:
>Leland Bryant Ross wrote:
>
>> How many urban-myths-of-language can one amateur orthographic surgery beget?
>
>"Amateur orthographic surgery"?  By whom?  Me?  Clarify!

	I think he was referring to the fact that this discussion branched
off from Ruud's orthographical reform proposal.

>> In a previous article, ablehr@online.no (Anders Blehr) says:
>> 
>> >I am actually serious.  The English spoken in Newfoundland today is
>> >supposedly as close as you get to 17th century (rural) English anywhere
>> >in the world.
>> 
>> My personal supposition would be that you'd get a lot closer on any
>> decent-but-not-innovative Shakespearean stage--but you still wouldn't
>> get very close.  (In Newfoundland, too, you need to be constantly on the
>> lookout for Beothuk loanwords and the occasional outcropping of Old Norse.)
>
>As to "urban myth", I specifically stated that I was only quoting what
>I'd heard from various sources.  However, that doesn't imply that I
>don't find it plausible.  It's a common pattern that emigrants speaking
>a certain language preserve their language to a greater extent than
>those left "at home".  

	They preserve *certain archaic features*, especially in
pronunciation (which is usually the primary standard in judgements of
"archaicness", IMHO). However, they often innovate at least as much as
they conserve.  Depending on how much weight you give to various features,
very different dialects will come away with the title "most archaic".

>Just look at the French spoken in Qubec and in
>the Atlantic Provinces, it's a lot more archaic than that of France
>proper; 

	17th century French had laxing of vowels in closed syllables (e.g.
Quebecois [vIt] vs. Parisian [vit])?  It had only two nasal vowels?  It
had more borrowings from English and Amerind than modern Parisian French?

>look at the English spoken in the US, for that matter, it has
>quite a few archaic features that are long gone in British English; 

...and quite a few innovations, some of which are now reaching British
English.

>look
>at the "Norwegian" spoken by Norwegian emigrants to Iceland and the
>Faroe Islands - Icelandic is almost identical to Old Norse, which hasn't
>been spoken in Norway for a thousand years; 

	Faroese easily has the most divergent phonological system of any
Nordic language, with all kinds of strange vocalic shifts and splits--some
of which have few, if any, analogs in other languages of the world. These
are, to are large extant, concealed by an extremely conservative ortho-
graphy.  This is, to a lesser degree, true of Icelandic as well.  E.g. the
written diphthong <au> is pronounced [{OE}Y] (as it is in many Norwegian
dialects); [au] is actually spelled <acute-accent a>, and so forth.
Modern Icelandic is conservative, but its a far cry from being "almost
identical" to Old Norse, *especially* when lexical innovations are taken
into account.  It's often claimed that modern Icelanders can read Viking
sagas; it remains to be seen whether Vikings can read modern Icelandic.

>look at the Norwegian spoken
>by decendants of Norwegian emigrants to the US in the 18th century, &c.
>&c.
>
>I'm not saying that "Newfanese" *is* the most archaic brand of English
>in use today, I'm only saying that I've heard that it is, and that I
>don't find it unlikely that it is.  And if this is an urban legend, your
>average man has changed his preferences quite substantially - where I
>am, I'm having a hard time finding anyone who harbours even the
>slightest interest in language related subjects.

	Urban legends occur at all levels of society.  What linguist
hasn't heard the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax from the mouths of the most
educated people she knows?  From people who otherwise show not the
slightest interest in linguistic questions?

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
