Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

I have spent the last couple of days on doing Polish wordlists, trying to make sense of Irish museum folders and ... learning a bit of Slovakian. Well, I don't expect to speak it in Bratislava, but I had printed some Polish texts and then thought that it might be fun also to make a small collection in Slovakian. So I found the Wikipedia articles about Kosiče and Bratislava and printed them out, but that wasn't enough so I added one about the rules of snooker. And then I looked at my shelf and found a micro Slowakisch<-->Deutsch dictionary from Langenscheidt which could help me over the difficult spots. But lo and behold, my experience with Bulgarian was repeated: it turned out to be quite easy to understand the two first articles, and the one about snooker seems also to be definitely within reach (I have used several tournaments of that game as music free 'grey' background while composing music, but not really tried to find out about the rules, so now I saw a chance to kill two birds with one stone).

My method has so far been ultra simplistic: take a bilingual printout, copy the Slovak text while trying to understand it - and if in doubt, check the translation. If still in doubt, consult the little yellow Langenscheidt. If still in doubt, skip that phrase. OK, I don't find all words in a dictionary of that size, and it took some time before I located the digraph "ch" after "h", but otherwise the whole thing went like a house on fire. I notated about fifty new words, but if hard pressed I could have guessed most of them, and less than ten would have been totally incomprehensible. Many hours doing Slavic wordlists have evidently paid off - not least the time I have spent on Polish words recently must have had an effect.

But this strategy of course only leads to some degree of passive compentence. I have so far not used a single minut on the pronunciation ... and even less on trying to speak or write Slovak myself. Before I try I want to study the grammar, but since my only Slovak grammar is the one in Slovak from Lingea it will be a somewhat steep learning curve.

By the way: I still have to think a second time each time I see the word "slovenský", which to me suggest things pertaining to the country between Austria and Croatia. At least I'm not the only one battling with these two names. If you take the English article about Kosice and click "slovinčina" you get the corresponding article in Slovak. Click "Slovenščina" and you see the one in Slovenian. If you ask Google Translate, then it tells you that "Slovenian" is "slovinčina" and "Slovak" is "slovenský" in Slovak. English "Slavic" is translated into Slovak "slovanský" (only one tiny letter is different). Just for fun I asked GT to translate the two English language names into Slovenian and got "Slovenščina" resp. "Slovak" ... but since I'm a bit suspicious around GT I checked this last translation by asking it to translate French "slovaque" into Slovak ... and got "slovaški". And now I'm totally confused.

FR: Pour écrire en Slovaque (ou quelconque autre language avec des lettres qui manquent sur mon clavier) mon intention est d'utiliser le clavier de Lexilogos. C'est un excellent resource, mais il semble que chaque clavier a été conçu d'une tabula rasa - et souvent par des programmeurs travaillant avec un autre clavier que le mien. Le clavier du Slovaque contient les lettres avec signes diacritiques, et puisque seulement le "a" a deux formes differentes avec signe diacritique on peux les écrire comme (lettre) + "=", qui sera immédiatement transformé dans une lettre slovaque. Pour le "a" il y a la règle que "a=" devient "á" et "a==" devient "ä". C'est pas si fou que ça! Avec beaucoup d'autres alphabets cyrilliques j'ai besoin de marquer certaines lettres avec le souris parce que la combinaison prévue pour le clavier a été conçue pour un autre clavier que le mien. OK, ça va - même avec un souris, mais pas assez vite.

Slovaque.jpg

[jeff_lindqvist]

By the way: I still have to think a second time each time I see the word "slovenský", which to me suggest things pertaining to the country between Austria and Croatia. At least I'm not the only one battling with these two names. If you take the English article about Kosice and click "slovinčina" you get the corresponding article in Slovak. Click "Slovenščina" and you see the one in Slovenian. If you ask Google Translate, then it tells you that "Slovenian" is "slovinčina" and "Slovak" is "slovenský" in Slovak. English "Slavic" is translated into Slovak "slovanský" (only one tiny letter is different). Just for fun I asked GT to translate the two English language names into Slovenian and got "Slovenščina" resp. "Slovak" ... but since I'm a bit suspicious around GT I checked this last translation by asking it to translate French "slovaque" into Slovak ... and got "slovaški". And now I'm totally confused.

This got me thinking of Gaston Dorren's Lingo: A Language-Spotter’s Guide to Euro, in which there's a text called "Know your Slovak from your Slovane" (link to Google books preview).

[Iversen]

I remember the sinking feeling I got when I read about the Slavic languages in Serbian some time ago. Why couldn't they invent some really different and memorable names for those countries, and preferably names that didn't could be confused with the name for the whole language group?

There is something similar going on with Dutch (in English) for the language spoken in the Netherlands versus Duits (Dutch) and Deutsch (German) for the language of Germany. And now we are in that part of Europe: it is hilarious that the country is called Deutschland in German, Düütsland in Low German, Þēodscland in Ænglisc (my sincere thanks to Wikipedia!) and Tyskland in Danish, but Germany in English (referring to the whole Germanic language group or to the tribes as referenced by the Romans) and Germania in Italian (although the Italians call the language tedesco) and in Romanian (where the language is called german or nemțeste), Allemagne in French (referring to a long forgotten germanic tribe), Niemcy in Polish and similar things in other Slavic languages (and in Hungarian: Németország)...

Wiktionary has this to say about the etymology of the English word "Dutch":

From Middle English Duch (“German, Low German, Dutch”), from Middle Low German dütsch, düdesch (“German, Low German, Dutch”) and Middle Dutch dūtsch, duutsc (“German, Low German, Dutch”), from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz (“of one’s people”), derived from *þeudō (“people”), from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂.

Compare Old English þēodisc (“of one’s people”), Old Saxon thiudisk (German Low German düütsch (“German”)), Old High German diutisc (modern German deutsch (“German”)), modern Dutch Duits (“German”) alongside elevated Diets (“Dutch”) (a secondary dinstinction, fully accepted only in the 19th century). See also Derrick, Teuton, Teutonic.

Protogermanic " þiudiskaz" evokes fond memories from Modern Icelandic, where the name for a people still is "þjóð" (pronounced /thjöudh/), but otherwise the quote just serves to underline how totally erratic the process was that made the Brits call their Southeasterly neighbours 'Dutch'.

And what about Niemcy in Polish? I looked the etymology up in the Polish Wikipedia and got a minor surprise:

Według popularnej etymologii[8] polska nazwa „Niemcy” wywodzi się z tego samego rdzenia słowiańskiego, co określenia „niemy”, „obcy”[9], i podkreśla barierę językową między germańskim językiem niemieckim a językami słowiańskimi („niemy” jako osoba niemówiąca zrozumiałym językiem – podobnie jak w przekształconym pod wpływem ruskim wyrazie niemowlę; do XVI wieku niemowię, niemowiątko) – psł. *němъ – „pozbawiony zdolności mówienia”, „mówiący niezrozumiale, obcym, niezrozumiałym językiem” → *němьcь „ten, kto nie ma zdolności mówienia”, „ten, kto mówi niezrozumiale, niezrozumiałym językiem”[10] (egocentryczne, podobne do greckiego bárbaros – barbarzyńca)

Ahem, maybe we shouldn't translate that into German ... or even show it to our resident Germans...

PS: The developments mentioned above mainly took place in Northern Germany and the Low Countries, but the person below is in all likelihood Bavarian - and may have participated in something called an October party.

Tysk.JPG

[William Camden]

Based on knowledge of Polish, Czech and Slovak are surprisingly easy, although there are false friends you have to watch out for. And those are all West Slavic but even with other Slavic languages there is quite a bit of mutual intelligibility.
Max Hastings' book Catastrophe about the first year of World War 1 mentions an interesting incident from a linguistic point of view. A Slovak soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army has been captured and he is having a conversation with a Russian (possibly Ukrainian?) soldier. They commiserate about having to go to war because their respective emperors wanted it. But what is interesting is that no interpreter is mentioned - it is as though, if they keep the register simple, the Slovak can speak Slovak and the other one Russian (or Ukrainian) and they can understand each other.

[Iversen]

The funny thing is that I have stayed for weeks in Czechia and Slovakia without noticing - but the orthographies suggest that the differences are larger than they (apparently) are. I have not yet tried to read Czech texts, except those I saw during my last visit there. I had been to the UEA congress in Nitra (or Nitro, as the Esperantists call it), and from there I went to Brno and Prague before flying home. And of course I did my best to read the signs in first Slovak and later Czech, but apart from the word Dz(i)ekuje I didn't explore the links to Polish. Btw. I haven't been to Ukraina since 2000, and it seems that Polish-Slovak-Czech would be helpful even there.

Speaking about Esperanto: I have just received the homonymous magazine, and it contains a couple of interesting articles.In one an esperantist tries to make Noam Chomsky say something nice about the artifical language. And actually he does receive a mail stating that insofar it is learnt by children less than 6 years old it could be accepted as a language - but the admission is veiled in a somewhat obsure formulation: "Esperanto is a language for native speakers, but it is not what is described by the the 'grammars of Esperanto' ". The problem that it is - to the same extent as any other language is described by its grammars. The problem is not a certain lingvist apparently doesn't know anything about something he comments on, but that his opinions are taken at face value by hordes of less brillant minds.

EO: En alia artikolo la haroj de Rob M hirtiĝis, kiam legis la frazon: "Ni vidis infanojn ludante". Kia eraro estas en ĉi tiu frazo? La problemo estas ke Zamenhof mem skribis in 1906 ke "... adverba participo ... povas esti nur tiam, kiam ĝi rilatas al la subjekto de la frazo". Alivorte, predikativoj de subjeto estas permisitaj, predikativoj de objekto ne estas permisitaj. Punkto, fino, la orakolo parolis. Mi ĝenerale celas sekvi la regulojn en iu ajn lingvo, sed iuj reguloj ŝajnas esti nur arbitra limigoj, kaj se ĉi tiu "eraro" estas disvastigita, la haroj sur mia kapo malmovos.

Alia konstruo estas viligita kiel latinismo: "Finita la manĝo, plaĉis la televida". La subjekto implicita de "finita" ne estas la manĝo, ĉar estas mi mem kiu manĝis ĝin - kaj nun mi ĝuas rigardante televidon. Sed post mi manĝado, la manĝo estas sendube manĝita - kaj mi haroj ne ekstaros, se vidos ekzemploj kiel la citita latinismo. La alternativa sugesto de la aŭtoro estas pli suspekta, ĉar ĝi ne specifas la temposekvencon: unue manĝaĵo, poste televido: "Fininte la manĝon ni ĝue telespektis".

I have also watched TV today:

SE: На HRT1 (хрватска телевизија) било је вишејезичног магазина између осталог, са албанским позориштем (што је изгледало као аматерска комедија), босанским писацем и румунским школама, све у Хрватској, ...

and after that I switched to RaiUno1, where I was pleasantly surprised to find ...

IT: .. la prima occasione da molto tempo a vedere l'eccellente programma "Passaggio al Nord Oveste". Questa volta ci fu una visita a Oslo, dove l'emittente televisiva visitò il Museo delle navi dei vichinghe a Bygdøy, e in aggiunta ci fu un episodio trattante il famigerato manoscritto Voynich, il quale nessuno ha avuto finora la capacità di decifrare.

And in case you haven't noticed it we have entered the Easter week, after weeks with supermarkets full of edible ovoid objects. So here is a painting with a couple of those (plus a lamb):

kunst095.JPG

[Iversen]

I ought to have written the following rant in Slovak, but ahem ... we're not quite there yet. Since last update I have mainly worked with Polish words and Slovak texts, and I now basically know the rules of a certain game where you put a number of balls on a green table and try to kick them down in small holes with a stick. But until you have buried all the red ones the un-red ones have a tendency to pop up to the surface again, which makes the whole thing take much longer. Maybe they should have some efficiency expert look the whole thing over. Like for instance the guy who suggested that a modern orchestra only needs one string player of each kind - the rest could be added using amplifiers. And the guy who plays the triangle should be fired - he is incredibly lazy and only strikes his thing a few times in each piece of music. Or not at all. Goodbye, slacker.

But this prematurily emptied my stock of Slovak study texts so I had to find something new, and then I hit upon the homepage of the Polnohospodarsky muzeum in Nitra. Hrmpff!!!! And this is why this isn't exactly my preferred tourist spot in an otherwise quite nice town:

EO: Mi vizitis Nitron en 2016 okaze de la Universa Kongreso de la esperanta mondokomunumo, kaj kiel kutime mi ankaŭ vizitis la kulturajn instituciojn de la gastiganta urbo. Lasu min unue diri ke la Kongreso okazis en la Agrikultura Universitato, kaj apude estis granda komerca centro. Laŭ mia urba mapo, la terkultura museo devas esti rekte sur la sudon de ĉi tiu centro, kaj dum unu tagmanĝopauzo mi iris en la ĝusta direkto ĝis mi venis al ŝlosita barilo. Mi sukcesis kontakti homon aliflanke, kiu informis min, ke la ĝusta enirejo ne estis tie. Bedaŭrinde mi devis reveni al Esperantistanujo por aŭskulti pli da la lingvo de paco kaj internacia kompreno (nu, ne por tio, sed al prelego pri io pli realisma). Mi faris unu pli provon, ĉi-foje post ricevi suplementan informon de la tre helpema turisma oficejo. Mi devus preni buson, iri de ĝia fino, turni dekstren kaj iri tra areo kun altkreska loĝejo kaj ... kaj miraklo, tie mi vidis ne nur pordegon, sed ankaŭ afiŝojn kun malfermaj horoj ktp. Kaj mi estis perfekte ene de la malfermaj horoj indikitaj sur la tabulo, sed estis unu malgranda problemo - ankaŭ ĉi tiu pordego estis fermita ... kaj ĝi restis fermita, eĉ kvankam mi vidis kelkajn gehomojn proksime de la konstruaĵoj kun la ekspozicioj. Eble ili devus havi iu efikulema spertulo studi la problemon. Se la bastono ne malfermas la pordegon, eble la muzeo malantaŭe la pordegon povos esti fermita kaj la nobla urbo de Nitra povos savi almenaŭ la salajron al la pordegistoj..

But the text I found about the history of this sad place was OK, and I read with interest about its previous history of meandering around Bratislava until it escaped to Nitra, where it apparently is easier to avoid visitors.

F5416a05_polo-eternally-closed-gate.jpg

[Iversen]

I have earlier mentioned my Kauderwelsch booklet about Quechua, and also that I intended to use it as goodnight reading ... but then it somehow ended uop beneath my alarm clock (which by the way has been ordered never ever to alarm me). Now I have reread the first part and I have a few comments. Since the book is in German and I haven't learnt enough Quechua from it you will get that part of the rant in German, supplemented with a wee bit of Spanish. And then I have been studying som Slavic texts, including one about the Kurgan cultures in Bulgarian. And since the Indoeuropean languages in all likelihood stem from languages spoken by the Kurgan tribes the topic is highly relevant for my next lecture in Bratislava.

SP: Es realmente un insulto escribir en español sobre el idioma indio de América del Sur porque los invasores españoles probablemente prefirieron verla morir, pero, según la Wikipedia en español, todavía hay al menos 5 millones de habitantes en la región de los Andes que continuan a hablarla. O tal vez deberíamos usar la forma plural, porque el mismo artículo menciona que el lenguaje ya estaba dividido en dos partes en el siglo V - yo no sabía esto. El libro alemán tambien menciona que hay dialectos, pero no que la división entre los dialectes actuales vaya tan atrás en la historia - mucho antes ela época de los Incas, que solo lograron gobernar unos pocos siglos antes de la llegada de los conquistadores.

La lengua Aymara pertenece a otro familia de lenguas, llamada Lenguas aimaraicas. Se hable por ejemplo en las famosas islas artificiales que flotan sur el Lago Titicaca. Y hay sin duda otros idiomas indigenos en la region, pero no he leído nada concerniente ellos.

GER: Der Autor des Kauderwelshens Büchlein ist sehr vorsichtig seine deutschen Leser nicht zu erlauben, ihre deutsche Sprachmuster an der Quechua zu übertragen. Er schreibt: "Grammatische Bezüge von Wörtern innerhalb eines Satzes werden mit bestimmten Suffixen ausgedrückt, auch die Hauptwörter erfahren mit Suffixen ihre Beugungen. Dabei handelt es sich meist um Besitzanzeigen und Richtungsangaben, die mit einer Deklination, wie sie etwa der Lateiner erwartet, nichts, gar nichts zu tun haben!". Und vielleicht doch. Suffixen sind im Prinzip unveränderlich, und ein Wort kann mehrere davon akkumulieren. Aber grundsätzlich sind die Endungen von flektierenden Sprachen nur komplizierte Weiterentwicklungen von Systemen, die auf Affixen oder Verschmelzungen mit zunächst unabhängigen Grammatikwörtern basiert sind, und es gibt alle Arten von Zwischenstadien. Erwartet aber nicht, daß irgend etwas in einer südamerikanischen Sprache exakt den gleichen semantischen Strukturen entspricht, die in den indoeuropäischen Sprachen zu finden sind.

Betrachten wir einige Beispiele des Buches (alles begleitet von einer wörtlichen und einer freien Übersetzung). OBS: die Bindestriche sind nur da für pädagogische Zwecke, aber wird normalerweise nicht geschrieben:

"llaqta-pa wasi-n-kuna yuraq-mi"
Dorf-1 Haus-2 viele weiß-sie sind (1,2: Besitzanzeige teil 1 und 2, laut Erklärung)
Die Häuser des Dorfes sind weiß

Die buchstäbliche Übersetzung könnte auch anders formuliert werden:

"des-Dorfes Haus-seiner-mehreredavon weiß-sind(3p.pl)

"pa" hier ist natürlich etwas Genitiv-ähnliches, "kuna" markiert das Pluralis, "mi" kann wie hier "zu sein" bedeuten, anderswo indikiert es aber persönliche interesse oder Wissen in etwas. Und das kleine "-n-"? Angeblich ist dies das persönliche Fürwort 3. Person singularis ("sein"). Ich hätte lieber "sein" als en Possivpronomen klassifiziert, aber das ist hier nicht wichtig. Wichtig ist est, daß mit dem "n" markiert wird, das die Häuser vom Dorf 'besitzt" werden (vielleicht nicht im rechtlichen Sinne, aber grammatikalisch) Quechua hat keine Artikeln, aber eine genitivische Konstruktion wird also in Quechua so ungefähr ausgedruckt wie "Des-Eigentümers sein-Eigentum".

Another example with the very interesting suffix "-ta":

"Warmi mikuy-ta yanu-n"
Frau Essen(1) kochen-sie
Die Frau kocht das Essen

Das Suffix "ta" bedeutet generell, daß etwas das Ziel einer Bemühung ist, oder anders gesagt "es zeigt, welchem Zweck eine Handling dient". Und hier ist das Zweck natürlich, eine Mahlzeit zu produzieren. Un hier ein anderes Beispiel:

wasi-ta ran-ti"
Haus(1) kaufen-ich
Ich kaufe das Haus"

Es gibt natürlich keinen Kasus im Deutschen, der einen solchen Hauch von Finalität angeben könnte (auch nicht der Dativ), aber unmöglich wäre es nicht, so was in einer flektierenden Sprache zu finden.

EN: ..And that should really be enough for today. I'll write about the Kurgan tribes later (maybe in Bulgarian since I can't do it in *Protoindoeuropäisch).

F1513b01_inka-trailers.JPG

[Iversen]

Today has not been a productive day for language studies. I did start out rereading the Greek text about the Antikythira mechanism which I have written about earlier in this log, but then I somehow got tempted to update an old composition: a prelude and fugue for Cor Anglais and strings. It is one of only three works that still haven't been revised/rewritten and uploaded to the IMSLP site, and I just got some useful ideas which I had to write down ... Well, the inevitable result was that I got caught up in complications arising from an attempt to write a nice five-part double fuga, and then my study plans for today went poouff (like just about every single note from the old version, which I wrote in 1998). However I did study the bulk of the Bulgarian Kurgan text yesterday, and I also have been reading a lot about the DNA Y-haplogroups that make it possible to trace migrations far back in time - but in English, and I don't count that as language study.

BU: Обещах да напиша малко на български, но струва много време и работа просто да пиша няколко изречения. Намерих много подробен източник на английски език (Eupedia.com) по отношение на хаплогрупата, и аз ще проуча внимателно този източник през следващите два месеца ... но моят българин не е достатъчно добър, за да пише за ДНК и миграции! Основният ми проблем е, че разпространението на индоевропейски езици в южните части на Европа не е толкова тясно свързано с генетичното откриване на миграцията.

Kunst177.JPG

[Iversen]

Once again I have spent time visiting an internetless family member, but in the train back home I got through a number of travelogues from first time travellers ... in Romanian. About one year ago I visited Cluj and Oradea and bought a few books, including "Prima mea călătorie in străinitate", where Romanian citizens told about their first trip abroad. Most are in some way writers or journalists who like to show their scriptorial prowess, and therefore this book is much harder to read than for instance the one about the origin of life or the one (by Oliver Sacks) about extremes in musical capabilities or the lack thereof which I also bought during my voyage. And therefore I didn't get through more than some fifty pages last year, but now I added about 100 more. Some statistics published by Testyourvocabulary.com (se below) suggest that you need to read fiction to get a really big vocabulary; I would venture the guess that readers of selfbiographies and similar books written by professional writers will be just as efficient.

Testyourvocab_NativeAnglophones_readinghabits.jpg

RO: Nu vreau să revizuiesc cartea aici (mai ales nu rapoartele pe care nu le-am citit încă), dar merită să ne amintim că România nu este o țară deosebit de bogată și, sub dictatorul Ceaușescu, nivelul de trai pentru majoritatea românilor era destul de scăzut. De aceea, majoritatea oamenilor care au călătorit in strainatate pentru prima oară au ramas cu ochi mari și guri când au văzut lumea în afara României. Un exemplu frumos: Dan Lungu a vizitat Paris, unde a "remarcat ceva de-a dreptul bizar: în fața noastră, la oarece distanță, se află o clădire imensă, din sticlă. Uniii oameni se apropiau de ea, și ușile se deschideau în fața lor, fără a apăsa pe nici un buton. (...) După îndelungate discuții între noi, am ajuns la concluzia că (...) în spatele zidurile de sticlă, într-un birou plasat deasupra intrării, se afla cineva care deschidea ușa celor pe care-i cunoștea, adică parizienilor. (...) Dar iată că un câine cât o mănușă de box, scăpat di mîna stăpânei, se indreaptă către ușa de sticlă (...)". Da, ușa sa deschis. Cu toate acestea, câinele nu a intrat, dar scriitorul și prietenii săi și nici nu s-au îndrăznit ncercați să conteste înfricoșătoarea ușă. Și apoi mă gândesc la ușile din trenurile de DSB in Dania: oamenii stau în mod regulat și își băteau brațele in zadar pentru să să acționez mecanismul automat.

[Iversen]

I have mostly been listening to English the last couple of days (more about that later), but I did supplement this severely lopsided input with a bit of reading in other languages - like for instance parts of St. Gildas' sad tales in Latin about the fate of the Brits from the moment they were subjugated by the cruel Romans through the pillaging done by Scots and Picts shortly before his own time to the merciless invasion by the Saxons, Angles and Jutes under Hengest and Horsa. Many people have wondered why he doesn't mention king Arthur, but I tend to believe a TV programme I once saw which claimed that the name Arthur isn't really a name, but more like a nickname meaning 'Bear' in extremely old Welsh. Even the name of his father, mr. Uther Pendragon had a meaning in Welsh - something about a dragon, as far as I remember. Btw. I'm not going to visit Tintagel, even though it would be possible. I don't think here is much to see there.

LA: Quomodo imperium romanum Britanniae terminavit? In altro programmae televisisico dictum est quod legio IX romanorum sine vestigium evanuisset, et de Scotis Pictisque innuebatur exterminata esse - et etiam istud ex pudore de romanis occultatum esse. Bone, probatio certa abest, sed factum est quod magis ad septentrionem muri Hadriani altrum murum construxit romani, et sine ulla concessione furtim iterum reliquerunt. Cur? Scotes, Picti ... Gildas scripsi quod post discesso romanorum incolae Britanniae quaesīvḗrunt propter incursionibus Scotorum Pictorumque in finibus suis, et romani semel emisit exercitum ex militibus sine praevia cognitione condicionis Britanniae compositum (!). Hostibus expulsis, iterum ex Britanniam relictus est exercitum romanum, et postero tempore quam quaesīvḗrunt incolae Britanniae apud imperatorem romanum ille eis docuit posthac die ille sibi ipses defendere. Et postea pervenerunt Saxones, Angles Jutesque qui, de Vortigernus vocati, maximam parte Britanniae quam proelium (atque salarium) tulerunt. Cladis modo apud Montem Badonicum Germanorum progressionem prohibuit - sed Gildas infeliciter nomen ducis victoriosi non scripsi. Num 'Arturus' fuit?