Re: Brithenig misunderstood

Skrivet gant Ray Brown:

>> just as an aside, the titles of the post-roman leaders before or just
>> after Hengist's revolt were celtic (vortigern, riothamus)
>
>
> But not Arctorius (Arthur) or Ambrosius (Emrys)    :)
>
> Nor AFAIK do we know Vortigern's full name. It is possible that
> Vortigernus was his cognomen & that he had a Roman praenomen & nomen.
> There were no contemporary accounts of this period, and by the time they
> were written about any nascent Britto-Romance had disappeared.
>
Well, vortigern is a title, meaning "supreme chief" and so is Riothamus
"high king". Riothamus' name was latin "ambrosius aurelianus" and it is
not impossible that Vortigern's was too, but those guy did choose
brittish titles even though the language was unlikely to be very
prestigious at the time. So one can safely assume they did use it
(alongside with Latin of course)

>
> OK - I do not want to get into an argument this.
don't worry, I'm not into britto-roman nationalism :-)

> I guess I overstated the
> position a bit. But when one considers that Lingua Romanica took root,
> flourished and has survived till modern times (Romanian) in Dacia, which
> was occupied at a later date than Britain, I still think it likely after
> about 4 centuries that Lingua Romanica had taken root in urban Britain.

It certainly was used, like French in Senegal or Togo. The determining
factor in whether local languages are displaced is not as much the
length of the occupation as the level of disruption of the local
society. Britain retained its tribal structure with most of the
territory ruled, in fact, by local chieftains, while the (much more
sophisticated) Dacian society was highly disrupted by the conquest (and
presumably the destruction of the local nobility) and by the immigration
of soldiers from all over the Empire (in Britain, most legionaries were
recruited locally)

> But whether it had or not, that is the position from which Brithenig
> starts, which is what is relevant in this context.
>
> Ray
I do agree with that.

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