English and Welsh - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Jonh Ronald Ruel Tolkien (ч. notes)

1

Some of his work is contained in B.M. MS. Add. 31922, together with compositions by Henry and his friends.

2

The names from which Cerdic and Ceadwalla were derived may be assumed to have had some such late British form as Car [a]dic and Cadwallon. In the West-Saxon forms the accent was shifted back to accord with the normal Germanic initial stress. In Ceadwalla, and probably in Cerdic, the initial с had been fronted, and the pronunciation intended was probably nearer modern English ch than k. The genealogy begins with Cerdic in the sense that this name is given to the ancestor of the later kings who first landed in Britain in a.d. 495 (according to the Chronicle) at a place called Cerdices orа. The relation of this account to real events is debatable. The borrowing of names must at least indicate close contacts. If Cerdic actually existed, the family to which he belonged can hardly have come first to Britain in his time. But when we come to Cadda in the fourth generation after Cerdic, and Ceadwalla in the sixth (in the late seventh century), the situation is quite different.

3

After the Battle of Thetford in 1004: hi næfre wyrsan handplegan on Angelcynne ne gemetton þonne Ulfcytel him to brohte (Chronicle С and D).

4

Scotland presents different problems, which do not concern us, except as affording a glimpse of the fact that the celticizing in language of this island was at least as complicated a process as that which eventually produced 'English'. Of the survival of a pre-Celtic and non-Indo-European language in 'Pictland' the most recent discussion is that of Professor Jackson in ch. vi of The Problem of the Picts (ed. F. Wainwright, 1955).

5

Jackson, op. cit., p. 156.

6

The 'Belgic' invasion did not resemble the Scandinavian invasions in routes or points of impact. Actually in these respects it strikingly resembled the invasion of those elements in the 'Anglo-Saxon' immigration to whom the debatable name of 'Jutes' is given.

7

In the days of Ulphilas the language of Scandinavia must have been in many respects far more archaic.

8

Especially aesthetically. In Gothic we are afforded specimens of a real language, and though unfortunately these do not represent its free and natural use, we can perceive in them a language of beautiful and well-ordered word-form, well fitted for the liturgical use to which it was at one time put.

9

The shifts of language naturally do not present sharp boundaries between 'periods', but this second or 'middle' period of English ended in the thirteenth century; after which the third period began. Though this is not the division usually made.

10

These features are exemplified in ciwdod (ciuitat-em), ciwed (ciuitas) gem (gēmma); pader (Pater noster) beside yscawl, ysgol (scāla); ffydd (fides) beside swydd (sēdes).

11

Whereas the remigrant British, the Breton of Armorica, has changed þ (th) to s and later z.

12

Though it may be noted that many of the things that strike the modern Saxon as insuperably odd and difficult about Welsh have no importance for the days of the first contacts of British and English speech. Chief among these are, I suppose, the alteration of the initial consonants of words (which revolts his Germanic feeling for the initial sound of a word as a prime feature of its identity); and the sounds of U (voiceless l) and ch (voiceless back spirant). But the consonant-alterations are due to a grammatical use of the results of a phonetic process (soft mutation or lenition) that was probably only just beginning in the days of Vortigern. Old English possessed both a voiceless l and the voiceless back spirant ch.

13

Alfred was no doubt an exceptional person. But we see in him a case that shows how even bitter war may not wholly destroy the desire to know. He was engaged in a desperate conflict with an enemy that came very near to robbing him of all his patrimony, yet he reports his conversations with a Norseman, Ohthere, about the geography and economics of Norway, a land that he certainly did not intend to invade; and it is clear from Ohthere's account that the king also asked some questions about languages.

14

This may seem probable enough; but it does not promise easy evidence to the historical philologist. He will be faced with Latin incorporated in Welsh, and in English (each with its own phonetic history), and with different kind» of Latin on either side of the Channel.

15

We here see the word applied to a tongue that was though Celtic not British. Wealhstod became the ordinary word in Old English for either an interpreter or a translator; but that was at a much later date. It seems never, however, to have been applied to communications with the 'Danes’.

16

Latin Life, ch. xxxiv.* What follows occurred in the days of Coenred, king of the Mercians [704-9], when the pestiferous British foes of the Saxons were embroiling the English in piratical raids and organized devastation. One night at time of cockcrow, when according to his custom the hero Guthlac of blessed memory began his vigils, suddenly as if he were lost in a trance he seemed to hear the roaring of a tumultuous crowd. At that he started up from his light sleep and rushed from the cell where he sat. Standing with ears cocked he recognized words and the native mode of speech of British soldiers coming from the roof; for when in former times he had been isolated among them on his various expeditions he had learned to understand their cacophonous manner of speaking. Just as he had made sure that it came through the thatch of the roof, at that moment his whole settlement seemed to burst into flames.' The devils then caught Guthlac with their spears.

17

Its origin is not of importance in this context. It is commonly supposed to be the same as that of the Celtic tribal name represented in Latin sources as Volcae. that is derived from it at a time sufficiently early to allow it to be germanicized in form. Traces remain of the sense 'Romans'. Widsith, which contains many memories of pre-migration days, has an archaic form mid Rumwalum, and mentions Wala rice as the realm ruled by Court (Caesar); weala sunderriht and reht Romwala are found in two glosses on ius Quintan, But these are not normal uses. Later applications to Gaul (France) are probably not derived from English tradition.

18

The men who established themselves at Richard's castle in Hereford in 1052 were called Normanni and tha Frencyscan, but in the Laud Chronicle tha welisce (waelisce) nun. And when Edward the Confessor returned from abroad the same Chronicle says that he came of Weal-lands, meaning Normandy. But these arc not natural English uses and are in fact simply items of the influence of Norse upon the English of the late period. In Norse valskr and Valland had continued to be applied specifically to Gaul. There is other evidence of the influence of Norse in the same part of the same Chronicle: woldon raedan on hi (always mistranslated ‘ plot against') is an anglicization of Norse ratha a 'to go for, to attack'.

19

They were generally supposed to do so; but it has been shown that in fact many contain either weall 'wall* or weald* forest*. But scepticism has in reaction probably swung too far. In any case a number of these names must still be allowed to contain walk, among them several in the east far from Wales: Surrey, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. When these names were first made they must have referred to groups of people who were not regarded as English, but were recognized as British; and language must have been the principal characteristic by which this was judged. But how long that situation lasted is another matter.

20

For my purpose it does not matter at all whether Sir Gavain or his reviewer was the author of the remark: both were posing as scholars.

21

The association of these two dissimilar functions is again notable. Old Irish uses b-forms in these two functions, but distinguishes between future and consuetudinal in inflexion. The Welsh tense (byddaf, &c.) as a whole blends the two functions, though the older language had also a form of the 3 sg. bid (bit) limited to consuetudinal use. The difference of function is not yet fully realized by Anglo-Saxon scholars. The older dictionaries and grammars ignore it, and even т recent grammars it is not clearly stated; the consuetudinal is usually overlooked, though traces of it survive in English as late as the language of Chaucer (in beth as consuetudinal sg. and pl.).

22

The Irish, Welsh. and English forms relate to older bi. bii- (cf. Latin fis, fit &c.). The development from bii- to bith- in Welsh is due to a consonantal strengthening of i which began far back in British. When ii reached the stage ith is not known, but a date about a.d. 500 seems probable.

23

The influence of the short i in the forms of the true present might be held responsible. In a pre-English stage these would have been uk, is, ist (is).

24

The addition of a plural ending (normally belonging to the past tense) to an infected form of the 3 sg. In this way bithun diners from the extended form sindun made from the old pl. sind. The latter was already pl. and its ending-nd could not be recognized as an inflexion, whereas the ith of bith was the normal ending of the 3 sg.

25

Some philologists (e.g. Förster, in Der Flussname Thenisc) now hold that the English process belonged to the seventh century and was not completed till the beginning of the eighth; it thus belonged wholly to Britain and did not begin until after the completion of the first stage of British i-affection (the 'final i-affection'). But no linguistic matters are simple in this region. The beginnings of the process in English must lie back in pre-invasion times, whatever may be true of its results, or of any of its vocalic effects sufficient to be recognized in spellings. For this process is not peculiar to the English dialect of Germanic, transferred from its native soil west to Celtic Britain. Indeed the native soil of English seems to have been a focus of this phonetic disturbance (in its inception one primarily affecting consonants). Northwards it is found attacking the Scandinavian dialects with almost equal severity; though southwards its effects were more limited or later. Certainly moving west, within the area of the disturbance, the process was not retarded in English – what would have happened if it had moved southwards is another matter – and in the event English became the language of i-mutation par excellence and its results were far more extensive than in any form of British. In British, for instance, long vowels were not affected; but in English nearly all long vowels and diphthongs were mutated.

26

For the most part. The cultivated written language of Wales has naturally, at all times, been less open to invasion. Neither has cultivated English been the chief source of the loans.

27

Probably in origin a dissimilation where the verb stem contained nasals: as in tincian/tincial (ME. tinken); mumial, mumlian 'mumble’.

28

It also possesses in MS. Jesus Coll. Oxford 29 a copy of the early Middle English Owl and Nightingale, which in its history illustrates in other terms the progress of English words. Written in the south-east, it passed to the West Midlands and there received a western dialectal dress; but it was preserved in Wales, and reached Jesus College in the seventeenth century from Glamorgan.

29

For there is concomitant pleasure of the eye in an orthography that is home-grown with a language, though most spelling-reformers are insensitive to it.

30

A difficult proportion to discover without knowing his ancestral history through indefinite generations. Children of the same two parents may differ markedly in this respect.

31

I refer to Modern French; and I am speaking primarily of word-forms, and those in relation to meaning, especially in basic words. Incomprehensibility and its like are only art forms in a diluted degree in any language, hardly at all in English.

32

Each, of course, with immediately following* sense*.

33

If I may once more refer to my work. The Lord of the Rings, in evidence: the names of persons and places in this story were mainly composed on patterns deliberately modelled on those of Welsh (closely similar but not identical). This clement in the tale has given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in it.