Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[DaveBee]

If Early Anglosaxon really had one parent, namely either Protofrisian itself or some kind of common ancestor, the links between the early Frisians and the societies in Southern and Eastern Great Britain should antedate the arrival of the Anglosaxon so that the invading army came to a country that basically already spoke a comprehensible Germanic language. In that case they might influence it (like the Vikings did), but they wouldn't have any reason to suppress it totally. If on the other hand the population spoke a Celtic language with a Latin varnish then the Germanic languages of the conquerors would be the source of Anglosaxon - and then the question is which role Frisian had in that process. A hefty Frisian influence later on might then have contributed to shape the Anglosaxon language that came out of the fog several hundred years later, but it wouldn't have been the root of it according to the Stammbaum theories of the historical linguists. And maybe such cultural and linguistic ties before the invasion in the late 5. century are indeed what the sources mentioned by DaveBee have been able to prove - but it will take some solid proof.

The genetic information convincingly links the British population to the Iberian Peninsula, so it is likely that the inhabitants first spoke a non-Indoeuropean language, then switched to Celtic, which was supplemented, but never completely replaced by Vulgar Latin and finally adopted a Germanic language of some kind, except in the most Western and Northerly regions where the Celtic languages survived. The genetic links prove that the original population wasn't ever eradicated, but the fact that people in Great Britain (or France, for that matter) don't speak Basque today also proves the limitations of genetic information.

A recent programme about the history of the Orkney Islands, used the DNA of the Orkney Vole to advance the theory that the Orkney Islands were settled by neolithic farmers from/near Belgium.

[Iversen]

I had not expected to see Belgians on the chilly and windy Orkney Islands - how do you make beer and chocolate there? But I'm prepared for surprises - like the one that the closest blood relatives to the Brits live in the Iberian Peninsula.

This of course raises the question of the age of the Basque language in its present location. I found several articles on the internet that suggest that the early population of El Portalón in Atapuerca, northern Spain, stems from a mixture between the original hunter-gatherers of the peninsula and a wave of early farmers who pushed through Europe from around 8-10.000 years ago and up - i.e. long before the Indoeuropean wave. In between these invasion we have the golden age of the megalith culture, which reached all the way up through Brittany and the British Isles to Scandinavia. I have never seen any claim that the Scandinavian populations was particularly closely related to the early Iberians and the early Brits, but the Westernese pattern of the big stone jugglers does however fit well with the studies that suggest a common ancestry for Basques and Brits.

The British Isles have their own mystery people, namely the picts in Scotland, known as the 'blue men'. Their language has only survived in a few place names etc., which doesn't even allow to decide univocally what kind of language it was. The arrow does however point towards P-Celtic (the branch that includes Welsh), whereas 'modern' Scots Gaelic is a Q-Celtic language imported from Ireland. The idea that it was pre-Indoeuropean have largely been abandoned - otherwise we might have had a parallel to the Basque language.

And now, what about the Orkney Islands? They have definitely been under Pictish influence, but the jury is out on the question of the origin of the population of the Islands. I have found a short article about the question, and it states that

it is now generally accepted that the inhabitants of "Pictish Orkney" were simply the descendents of the islands' Iron Age broch builders.

So according to this view the population of the Orkney Islands was basically unaltered from the original invasion, and from some remarks in the Wikipedia article about the history of the islands it is evident that they were part of the Megalith culture sphere. This doesn't exclude an early invasion of Belgians (since Belgium also had Megalith producing people), but it would surprise me if the population differed drastically from the one producing Stonehenge and other fun places.

By the way, as an offspring to the discussion above I found an article about the shift to agriculture in Denmark. Back in the romantic age the general view was that a foreign invasion had either wiped out the old hunter-gatherers from the first wave after the Ice age OR pushed them away from most of the country. Later a politically correct army of historians claimed that the original population had learnt about agriculture and decided collectively that agriculture was the way to go. Now the pendulum has swung partly back and the opinion voiced in the article is the following one:

A new PhD study of flint axes and flint mines now suggests that Scandinavians were taught these skills by immigrants from the south, who settled in the region and started to cultivate the land. ”Some 6,000 years ago, new agricultural power centres emerged in southern Scandinavia. These were Scandinavia’s first farmers,” says Lasse Sørensen, a PhD student at the National Museum of Denmark.

Now we just have to wait for the political correct generation to die out...

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BA IN: Saya telah di kunjungan keluarga sejak Selasa, dan satu-satunya buku bahasa yang dimembawakan oleh saya adalah panduan bahasa Indonesia kecil dan kamus Yunani-Jerman. Tapi aku melihat kedua Denmark, Jerman, Swedia, Inggris, Belanda dan Norwegia TV. Saya menyebutkan bahasa Norwegia secara terpisah untuk mengiklankan program tentang bahasa rabu malam:

NO: Det handler om ei ny Linda Eide serie om språk: "Eides Språksjov". I fyrsta episoden hadde hun invitert ein språkprofessor og ein skuespiller i studio for å snakke om variasjoner innenfor dialekter - med eksempler. Og dei var både drilske og grinaktige .. og for det meste forståelig sjølv for danska flatlendingar fra Danmark som mor min og meg.

[tractor]

NO: Det handler om ei ny Linda Eide serie om språk: "Eides Språksjov". I fyrsta episoden hadde hun invitert ein språkprofessor og ein skuespiller i studio for å snakke om variasjoner innenfor dialekter - med eksempler. Og dei var både drilske og grinaktige .. og for det meste forståelig sjølv for danska flatlendingar fra Danmark som mor min og meg.

Jeg så det samme programmet for noen dager siden. Likte det godt. Han skuespilleren var flink til å etterape dialekter og sosiolekter. Særlig parodien av Lundestad og hans "banksjefnordnorsk" var god. Har du norske TV-kanaler, eller så du det på nett? For de viser vel ikke norske språkprogrammer på dansk TV?

[Iversen]

I have NRK1 through my cable operator, but I could also watch this particular programme through the link to the NRK archive in my message - sometimes there are geographical restrictions on such archives, but apparently not here.

DA: Der handles også programmer mellem de nordiske TV-kanaler, men det omfatter vist ikke deciderede sprogprogrammer. For eksempel har jeg set den danske dokumentarserie med 'Bonderøven' på svensk og vistnok også norsk TV, og dertil kommer en del TV-dramatik (som jeg ikke gider se, end ikke på dansk TV). Noget af det har de danske TV-kanaler endda kunnet sælge til engelsksprogede kanaler.

[tractor]

Bonderøven heter Det gode bondeliv på NRK. Liker originaltittelen bedre.

[Iversen]

Just for the Anglophones: the title "Bonderøven" literally means "The peasant ass", but as a compound noun it refers to a rural person, and the protagonist of this program tries to get through every single activity which can be performed in the countryside - and a couple more. When I watch it I always wonder how one person can have so much energy without causing spontaneous selfcombustion.

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[Iversen]

EN: I have just written something in the thread about thinking in your target languages, and the funny thing is I that just woke up from a dream where I practiced doing that in Greek. And no, that doesn't happen all the time in my dreams - alas. I mostly speak and think in Danish in my dreams - or occasionally in English, but dreaming in more exotic languages mostly happens I'm travelling in a suitable country.

The dream went as follows:

GR: Είχα έρθει σε ένα βιβλιοπωλείο μέσα σε ένα κτίριο. Ήμουν σε ένα διάδρομο με ένα παράθυρο, στο τέλος, και το βιβλιοπωλείο ήταν σε μια γωνιά σε ένα άλλο διάδρομο διακλαδίζεται προς τα αριστερά, και ήταν το τελευταίο κατάστημα πριν από το παράθυρο. Ένας άνδρας στέκεται σε μια σκάλα ανάμεσα σε εμένα καιστο παράθυρο, και ο ίδιος ήταν κρέμασονταν ένα λάβαρο επάνω. Σε αυτό το λάβαρο γράφτηκε τίποτα γι 'αυτόν τον Τσούκαλος που προσπαθεί να μας πάρει για να πιστεύουμε σε επισκέψεις από εξωγήινους αστροναύτης στην τηλεόραση. Όταν κοίταξα στο παράθυρο του καταστήματος, ένα κυρία Έλληνας βγήκε έξω και είπε πολλά λόγια στα ελληνικά για εμένα. Και εγώ μόνο κατανοητό ένα κλάσμα από αυτό (το οποίο είναι περίεργο, δεδομένου ότι πρέπει να έχουν εφεύρει όλες τις λέξεις στο μυαλό μου). Η ίδια προσπάθησε για μια ακόμη φορά - πιο αργά - και τώρα κατάλαβα ότι ο συγγραφέας θα είναι στο κατάστημα για μια στιγμή. Προσπάθησα δύο απάντηση, αλλά κόλλησε - και έτσι προσφέρθηκε να γράψει την απάντηση. Κατάφερα να γράψω μια γραμμή (που έχω διορθωθεί μια δυσανάγνωστη λέξη) πριν να ξύπνησα από το όνειρο. Ως εκ τούτου, δεν έχω συναντήσει το κύριο Τσούκαλος...

EO: Kaj kiam mi ne povas paroli aŭ skribi en Klingona aŭ Na'ava mia takson de fremdaj astronaŭtoj kaj iliaj subtenantoj venos ĉi tie en Esperanto. Mi ŝatus elsendoj kun sinjoro Tsukalos kaj liaj samideanoj en televido ĉar ili montras multajn interesajn lokojn kaj aĵojn kiuj sendube mankas praktikan klarigon. Sed fremdaj astronaŭtoj tre malsupras sur mia listo de utilaj klarigoj.

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[Iversen]

I spent most of yesterday working on my music collection. Long ago in a distant and half forgotten age I composed music myself, and before I stopped for good I had recorded a few pieces, some with people I played with in the 80s and early 90s and other playing them either in the original version or in transcripted piano versions. Somewhere in the 00s I transferred these old recordings to new cassettes, and some 3 or 4 years ago I scanned most of the music sheets and concocted a work list with the whole caboodle saved as html and pdf files. There was just one problem: the recording quality ranges from mediocre to pure hell, and since all recordings were done on the fly they are full of errors. This is particular evident in my own piano recordings since I was a thoroughly rotten pianist even when I still played the instrument, and now after a lapse of some 15-20 years where I haven't touched it I simply can't make new recordings.

Que faire? Well, I wanted to integrate the pieces in my music collection in spite of all the reservations I just mentioned, and it turned out that I could do quite a bit with a free tool that also has been mentioned in this forum, namely Audacity. It can make recordings less shrill or less muffled, and in one case I came to the conclusion that the sound actually would be better if I removed the almost empty right channel, copied the left channel and added it to the 'project' as a new right channel, defined the result as stereo .. and then added some reverb. But the reel hidden gem of Audacity is the effect called 'tempo' that can make recordings faster or slower without changing the pitch (this obviously also can be used on recordings of speech !). Since I basically was incapable of playing my own piano pieces I had to record them at a snail's pace, but this wonder tool can kick them up to almost originally intended speed. Unfortunately I didn't play them at a consistent snail's pace so I had to listen to the whole meandering thing and regulate the tempo a few measures at a time - and I also had to cut out lots of nerve-wrecking hesitation pauses. The result is still an inferno of wrong notes, but getting at least the tempo fixed means that I now can listen to the stuff without getting physically sick. But it is still so bad that I will keep it strictly to myself - others shouldn't be subject to this kind of torture.

And as I said, this project took a whole day and far into the night, which could have been used on other things. Today I have also spent some time on music: I have written out the themes of works by some German composers which now only survive on Youtube - people like Hiller, Brüll, Lachner and Goldmark. But I have also found time to do some genuine language studying today, so I'm hopefully back to my normal day routines now.

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[Jar-Ptitsa]

Oh no, your composition is incredibly difficult!!! so many jumps like from the trill to the low C

Why have you written

4

instead of

4
4

?

[Iversen]

Well, I just wanted to show why I had problems playing the stuff I could hear in my head. But I also wrote some simpler pieces, including those I wrote to play together with other amateur musicians (not pianists). I am not going to fill up this thread with screendumps of sheet music - after all I ought to be discussing language learning and not music, but you can see the beginning of an easier piece below.

And why 4 instead of C or 4/4? Well, "4" gave all the necessary information so why write more? Another idiosyncracy of mine: I don't let b's and sharps spill over from one measure to the next - they have to be repeated. And one more: I always wrote the transposing instruments at pitch in my scores (like Prokofiev - good man!). But I wrote the usual transpositions in the parts - though actually I rarely made parts since nobody played most of the pieces, but I did do so in a case where I had written something specifically for a group consisting of a violin, a viola, a cello (me), a flute and ..here it comes: a clarinet in B flat. Anything written for such an instrument has to be written one tone 'too high' since it habitually plays everything one tone too low.

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