On Thursday, June 27, 2002, at 11:56 , John Cowan wrote:
> Ray Brown scripsit:
>
>> As John observes above, Middle English is by no means a _direct_
>> continuation of Old English - it has been influenced by Norse and,
>> more particularly, by Norman French.
>
> Not quite what I said. The ME *writing tradition* is not a continuation
> of the OE one, in the same sense that the Greek writing tradition from
> pre-classical times to the present day is not a continuation of the
> Linear B one.
True enough - and I had misunderstood you a little.
> Of course, the script (Latin) is shared between OE and
> ME, but everything else from orthography to letter shape (in MS)
> was abandoned and had to be re-created de novo.
It was indeed. The insular style of Latin script - still preserved to some
extend by Irish - was supplanted by continental models and the phonemic
spelling of Old English was supplanted by the ill-suiting Norman
conventions
from which derives our eccentric modern orthography.
> Per contra, the writing tradition from Latin to each of the modern
> Romance languages is unbroken.
Exactly.
>> But if we're talking about the longest tradition of vernacular writing,
>> then Greek beats all these youngsters by a long way.
>
> For sure. Of languages written today, I suppose that only
> Chinese beats it.
I think that is so.
Ray.