Re: fallire (was: a King's proverb)

At 3:02 pm -0400 19/6/01, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>
>> In fact in Old French the present tense of this verb was as follows:
>> 1st sing.  _je fail_
>
>
>Still surviving in English law as "jeofail", the term for an admitted
>oversight or mistake in a legal proceeding.  The Statutes of Jeofail
>permitted lawyers to correct their errors by instituting a new
>proceeding as if the original proceeding had never happened.
Wow - you're a source of info on AngloNorman survivals in legal jargon  :)

Yes. I didn't want to confuse my last mail with all the variants of the
pronouns in Old French as well, but "I" appeared not only as _je_ but also
as _jo_, _jeo_, and _gie_ (and in OF {j} and soft-g were still [dZ]).

I wonder at times whether, if the Pantagenets had successfully held onto
their Angevin possession and that, with no Joan of Arc, the crowns of
France & England had successfully & really been united, AngloNorman might
not have survived and given rise to the common language of the 'united
kingdoms of England & France'.  There's an idea for a conlang & an
alt-history  :)

Of course, English would then have declined and, possibly, become extinct
in England but might've survived in Lowland Scotland (as 'Scots', of
course) - but then Gaelic would've been in a stronger position vis-a-vis
AngloScots.  But one guesses that if the 'united kingdoms of England &
France' had remained firm, there would have strong desire to extend the
kindom to its "natural boundaries", i.e. to conquer the whole island and,
possibly, Ireland.  But one could imagine a Gaelic kingdom of Ireland &
much of modern Scotland successfully keeping independent.

Help!  I'd better stop before this gets out of hand.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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