Languages in Roman and Post Roman Britain

[Imperial Dave]

There is another, more traditional, explanation based on the non-Germanic speakers being expelled or eradicated by fire and sword before they had the opportunity to do more than pass on a few loan words ...

Agreed, although modern genetic studies suggest that this may not be the case, ie large portions of the Romano-British population may have in fact stayed where they were or at least the lower levels of society did

I had the impression this was the infamous study that in essence said: we can tell people's origin by the trace elements in their teeth, because this shows where they drank their water.  These skeletons have teeth which shows that most of them drank most or all of their water in Britain.  Therefore they were Britons.  (Spot the gap in logic ...)

Or have there been some genuine genetic studies?  It would be nice if these could be pinpointed.

There have been such studies done. I'll have to have a look around my bookcase as there have been several but to mind Stephen Oppenheimer's "The Orogins of the British" was one of the better ones

[Sharur]

Couple of thoughts additional to the above.

It may be worth exploring the Parisi tribal region of roughly the modern East Riding of Yorkshire as a possible pre-Roman area of continental settlers in Britain for place-name/language evidence, which became/continued as the rough area of Deira (and/or Ebrauc) during the post-Roman period (from memory, there's little such surviving place-name evidence, though there has been a general impression the Parisi became the later Deirans, maybe in a somewhat modified form). It's difficult to be certain what may have happened, because this was probably also the area of the best, largest, stretch of agricultural land in Britain north of the Humber, so would tend to have promoted a strong regional culture regardless of other considerations, as a loose, relatively rich, "breadbasket for the north", as it were. However, the Parisi seemed to have maintained a distinctive material culture separate from their "native British" neighbours too, albeit the timescale isn't tightly-constrained, and may have been relatively short.

There's also the comment from Tacitus' Agricola 12, where he talks of the Britons being unable to cooperate against a common enemy because of their local tribal squabblings, something which was clearly apparent during Caesar's time too. If that returned in the post-Roman period, as seems highly likely, perhaps the only thing stopping a more coherent external warrior force (Saxons, etc.) was a lack of interest in going any further - i.e. once they'd taken the better land, there was no desire to go further.

Place-name evidence is of course ever a difficult subject, because it's so heavily dependent on what forces operate to allow one name to dominate over another during long periods of time. There's evidence to suggest oral traditions rarely survive entirely intact for more than a couple of hundred years or so, partly because of the "Chinese whisper" effect of mispronunciation and minor errors in transmission with time, partly because changing circumstances necessitate re-evaluation of what's being transmitted, whereas once things are first written down, that tends to fix things more permanently, especially where the documents are preserved by local administrators (i.e. people that aren't suddenly going to vanish "overnight", as perhaps the Roman administrators in Britain, or more accurately the driving force behind them, effectively did). Thus place-names may date no earlier than when they're first recorded in writing by whatever group decides those documents should be preserved.

[Imperial Dave]

you do wonder if the presence of so many dialects in Britain could be due in part to a wide ranging ethnicity prevelant from just prior to and immediately after the Roman period

[aligern]

I think dialects develop much later Holly.  In England there is a major split between North and South in terms of the pronunciation of Oo and a as in tooth and castle . Southern English  rural accents go right from Cornwall to Norfolk  Northern accents are pretty similar in the band from Lancashire to Nottingham / Derby, perhaps it is a Danish influence? Liverpool is a late creation of Northern and Irish, 
Birmingham is presumably an invention of the nineteenth century as is the city itself. accent must develop quite quickly , look at Australia and at the USA so I wouldn't think much goes back as far as  pre Roman Britain?

Roy

[Erpingham]

you do wonder if the presence of so many dialects in Britain could be due in part to a wide ranging ethnicity prevelant from just prior to and immediately after the Roman period

Has anyone ever studied the variations in loan words in different dialects?  I know, for example, that Cumbrian dialect has some Welsh words.  One might expect more in Scots, for example, given the continuation of North Welsh political and cultural entities longer than in the English lowlands.

[Patrick Waterson]

Going off at a slight tangent (which may have been mentioned before) some borrowed forms can preserve pronunciation for centuries.  The German 'Kaiser' is much closer to the original Latin 'Caesar' (kae-sar) then the Italian 'Cesare' (che-sa-re).  In England, the customary form of assent was 'Aye, aye' whereas in Scotland it was 'Och, aye' (in both cases the 'aye' has an inflection that makes it sound almost like 'oye').  This seems to derive from the original pronunciation of the word for 'yes' in the Langue d'Oie and the Langue d'Oc respectively - northern French (and Normans) said oye whereas southern French said oc.

When French contingents travelled to Scotland, as was occasionally the case under the Auld Alliance (Scotland and France), Scots would not have been able to tell northern and southern Frenchmen apart.  Hence, when giving acknowledgement or assent, both forms were given: oc and aye.

[Imperial Dave]

Going off at a slight tangent (which may have been mentioned before) some borrowed forms can preserve pronunciation for centuries.  The German 'Kaiser' is much closer to the original Latin 'Caesar' (kae-sar) then the Italian 'Cesare' (che-sa-re).  In England, the customary form of assent was 'Aye, aye' whereas in Scotland it was 'Och, aye' (in both cases the 'aye' has an inflection that makes it sound almost like 'oye').  This seems to derive from the original pronunciation of the word for 'yes' in the Langue d'Oie and the Langue d'Oc respectively - northern French (and Normans) said oye whereas southern French said oc.

When French contingents travelled to Scotland, as was occasionally the case under the Auld Alliance (Scotland and France), Scots would not have been able to tell northern and southern Frenchmen apart.  Hence, when giving acknowledgement or assent, both forms were given: oc and aye.

That's fascinating Patrick and thanks for highlighting it.

Re Scotland, there are an awful lot of place names and words present from Old Welsh which has persisted as has happened in Cumbria and also if you look the English borderlands (and of course Cornwall and Devon)

[Jim Webster]

you do wonder if the presence of so many dialects in Britain could be due in part to a wide ranging ethnicity prevelant from just prior to and immediately after the Roman period

Has anyone ever studied the variations in loan words in different dialects?  I know, for example, that Cumbrian dialect has some Welsh words.  One might expect more in Scots, for example, given the continuation of North Welsh political and cultural entities longer than in the English lowlands.

I remember when I went up to Shetland in the 1970s, the dialect contained words that were used in Cumbria, but the accents were often different.
Cumbrian contains a lot of Norse derived words, perhaps more Norse than Celtic

Jim

[Jim Webster]

I think dialects develop much later Holly.  In England there is a major split between North and South in terms of the pronunciation of Oo and a as in tooth and castle . Southern English  rural accents go right from Cornwall to Norfolk   
Roy

It was fascinating being in Reading in 1975.
The commuters on the station spoke with one accent, the girls serving in the shops spoke with another, and the lads digging the road spoke a far more West Country dialect

Jim

[Duncan Head]

And now everyone in Reading speaks sub-London.

[Jim Webster]

And now everyone in Reading speaks sub-London.

I went back to Reading for a meeting three or four years ago, having not been there since 1976.
Between the Station and the University there was a big chunk that was totally new to me.
Mind you I was walking back that evening to the hotel and the the children playing in the park were speaking Polish.
I suspect we'll pick up a few interesting words from that connection 

Jim

[Swampster]

When French contingents travelled to Scotland, as was occasionally the case under the Auld Alliance (Scotland and France), Scots would not have been able to tell northern and southern Frenchmen apart.  Hence, when giving acknowledgement or assent, both forms were given: oc and aye.

I think 'och' is just an interjection, comparable to 'oh'. It can equally be used to show disapproval - "Och, Dr Cameron..."

A quick trawl of etymology sites puts 'aye' as being surprisingly late in usage though that may just be that it is only found written down at a late date (16th century).

[aligern]

I once lived and worked in Reading. The local social services said that the same families who were on the problem estates  had been on their books since the 1890s. they were local agricultural labourers who had been forced off the land by mechanization. They had a country accent, but it would be wrong to call it a West Country accent. My wife's uncle, Surrey born and bred had a softer version of the same accent and there is a Hampshire version too. I presume it went right through to Kent and it is definitely spoke in Gloucestershire and Warwickshire

As to Duncan's Estuary English in Reading , very true, though I wonder if that is what is being spoken around Cemetery Junction:-))

Roy

[Erpingham]

To revert to the earlier discussion, I'm fairly sure that "dialect" or regional variation isn't just a modern thing.  Anglo-Saxon writings can be assigned to different areas of the country based on the language in them and this is also true in later Medieval English.  Almost certainly, the philological literature would generate family trees of variants.  We can also say that dialect does contain clues about its linguistic origins - northern dialects have a nice line in Norse words for example.  But does it give any insight as far back as the post-Roman period?

[Sharur]

The dialect discussion is missing a key point, because dialect doesn't actually work on the kind of broad regional scales being described. For those living long term in an area, typically from childhood (albeit this is less common now than was once the case), it's often extremely easy to spot differences in dialect terms and accents (which are not necessarily the same things) from places sometimes only a few miles apart. The "broad brush" approach suggesting the existence of regional, or even county-wide, accents/dialects only works for people from outside said area, and unfamiliar with the local twangs and dialect words.

There's an interesting discussion of Geordie on the British Library's website, including sound files, that may be of interest here: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/case-studies/geordie/ . As a Geordie (Newcastle-born), I can confirm how relatively easy it is for "true" Geordies to spot differences in native accents/dialect-terms from areas around Sunderland, the northern (rural) parts of County Durham, the various parts of south-eastern (urban) Northumberland, rural mid to western Northumberland and rural northern Northumberland, for example.There's also a difference in the Pitmatic spoken around Ashington in Northumberland and the Pitmatic from the north Durham coalfield towns, though that isn't mentioned on the BL site. I'd guess from past contact with folks brought up elsewhere in Britain, these would all be classed as "Geordie", however. This might relate back to the "many petty kingdoms" concept, but I'd doubt much has survived in the actual language which would tie up with the original topic query here.

It's also quite simple to follow how such small-scale differences could occur, seeing how most families develop, adapt or adopt words and phrases with especial significance to them, which then sometimes pass into the larger community of neighbours and/or friends, so in a less-travelled world, these could become part of the village/local area patois.

The BL site also has some useful pages on the change of language over time, including some notes on loanwords from various "external" cultures, starting here: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/changlang/language.html . Searching for "loan words", specifying from which original language to English will bring up a lot more, while if you want to check out lists of loan-words in English, this Wikipedia page might be a good starting-place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_English_words_by_country_or_language_of_origin .

At a more general level, the discussions in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language by David Crystal (2nd Edition, 2003, CUP) might be helpful for the earlier on-topic periods. I found a free scanned PDF copy of the first edition is available from various places online too, e.g. via this 2Shared page: http://www.2shared.com/document/z7sBqORd/The_Cambridge_Encyclopedia_of_.html .

There's also Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English by Philip Durkin (OUP, January 2014). Parts of this are freely available online via Google Books, of which I found the general discussion in Chapter 3 (pp. 53-64) gave a useful overview for the pre-Roman to Norman Conquest periods.