[geeks] English language [was: power (was Mr. Bill)]

[Mike Meredith]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:21:09 -0400 (EDT), Sandwich Maker wrote:
> it always was since its birth.  saxon and danish in the first
> millennium,

I'm not sure how much Danish crept into the dominant Old English
dialect (Late West Saxon), but it certainly crept into other dialects
and influences later versions of English.

> british
> [welsh gaelic]

Er ... probably not. First of all it's definitely not 'welsh
gaelic' (and certain old friends who studied Welsh as a degree rather
than computer science would be frothing at the mouth at the
suggestion). Cymraeg ("Welsh") is only distantly related to Gaelic
being descended from the earlier Brythonic which was a separate branch
of the Celtic languages.

As to how much crept into modern English ... probably not very much
(which is somewhat odd considering the founder of the House of Wessex
was probably half-Brythonic). Certainly not on the scale of latin,
greek, french, or even danish.

Wikipedia lists 11 words in English that are of Welsh origin, but of
that list I'd probably only routinely use 6 (and half of those are
English words in relation to 'celtic' things). There are apparently
more Hungarian loan words than Welsh!



--
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 'I met the well connected, the powerful and the rich; I saw little to
  envy or, indeed, much to admire;B we were being lionised by a class of
  society with which we had little in common'B --- Edmund Hillary