Crucially, their languages were quite unlike English. For one thing, the verb came first (‹came first the verb›). But also, they had an odd construction with the verb ‹do›: they used it to form a question, to make a sentence negative, and even just as a kind of seasoning before any verb. ‹Do you walk? I do not walk. I do walk›. That looks familiar now because the Celts started doing it in their rendition of English. But before that, such sentences would have seemed bizarre to an English speaker – as they would today in just about any language other than our own and the surviving Celtic ones. Notice how even to dwell upon this queer usage of ‹do› is to realise something odd in oneself, like being made aware that there is always a tongue in your mouth.
At this date there is no documented language on earth beyond Celtic and English that uses ‹do› in just this way. Thus English’s weirdness began with its transformation in the mouths of people more at home with vastly different tongues. We’re still talking like them, and in ways we’d never think of. When saying ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’, have you ever felt like you were kind of counting? Well, you are – in Celtic numbers, chewed up over time but recognisably descended from the ones rural Britishers used when counting animals and playing games. ‘Hickory, dickory, dock’ – what in the world do those words mean? Well, here’s a clue: ‹hovera, dovera, dick› were eight, nine and ten in that same Celtic counting list.
_____________◊ authp_J_o_h_n_M_c_W_h_o_r_t_e_r
K E Y W O R D S
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
◊ authp_J_M_c_W_h_o_r_t_e_r
◊ authp_M_c_W_h_o_r_t_e_r
◊ web_art, webhdr_a_e_o_n
◊ yauth_2_0_1_5, yedit_2_0_1_5
◊ lantxt_en, hdr_v3
• keywords_da_inserire
_____
¯¯¯¯¯
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento