The Great Christmas Debate

@Setanta,

Blimey! 70 metres high would be the equivalent of a small mountain in the flat terrain of the Norfolk fens. Maybe these are the same thing, but just eroded down to ground level.

Inuvialuktun...... sounds Inuit or vaguely viking to me, so I will look it up, but can now confirm that it is my word of the day!

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@Lordyaswas,

Yep....Eskimo, Innuit, whatever it's called nowadays.

Fascinating.

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@Lordyaswas,

It's the aboriginal language of the far north of Canada. The two meanings of the word have to be coincidental, as i doubt that Anglo-Saxons were in the far north of Canada centuries ago, nor that North American aboriginals were in East Anglia.

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@Lordyaswas,

In Canada, one never says Eskimo--that's bad, bad, bad. However, the Aleuts, the aboriginal people of Alaska, don't seem to mind.

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@Setanta,

Maybe we've inadvertantly stumbled upon a long forgotten land route, and can now prove that all Inuit are in fact Angles.

Then again I could be testiculating as per usual.

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OK, as i look at your link, they are using the Innuit word and applying it to a terrain feature of Norfolk.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

In Canada, one never says Eskimo--that's bad, bad, bad. However, the Aleuts, the aboriginal people of Alaska, don't seem to mind.

This has obviously passed me by, and it was only the other day that I read somewhere that it was frowned upon. It obviously has some bad connotations from the past....

Shame, as I think it's a great sounding word.

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It appears that, due to a false etymology, it is considered a pejorative, meaning "eaters of raw meat" in an Algonquian language. Although linguists don't think that is the derivation of the word, in politics, perception is everything and reality is nothing--so the Innuit resent the word. According to Farley Mowat, the Aleuts of Alaska don't resent the use of the word.

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@Lordyaswas,

Quote:

Re. 1066...
"This last Germanic invasion, therefore, was also the smallest, although its lasting effect on the language and culture as well as the political, social, and economic structure of Britain would be hard to overestimate. In a word, everything in England changed after 1066, and one of the most potent legacies of the Conquest for genealogists is that it erased much of the history of Anglo-Saxon England. Only a handful of leading families--Berkeley, Arden, and one or two others--can be traced before 1066. The Old English aristocracy was systematically disenfranchised and replaced by William's Norman, Breton, and Flemish followers, the evidence for which was duly recorded in Domesday twenty years later."

Indeed, this FRENCH invasion did change England forever. Hence you guys have French origins. QED

Half of the English lexicon and Farmerman's map of Y haplogroups prove my point. Call us Germans, Breton or Normands if you're THAT ashamed of your forefathers... :-)

1 Reply

@Lordyaswas,

Lordyaswas wrote:

And we all know that Irish-Americans are the fount of all knowledge!

I cannot speak for Britain, but here in the states, Irish-Americans are presently quite represented in universities as professors, and much of what is in public libraries have Irish-American authors. Perhaps, after centuries of being forced to be illiterate by the British, their love of literacy and knowledge blossomed. Sort of like the Jews of Europe.

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@Olivier5,

You still trying to peddle that "half the lexicon" bullshit? You aren't going to get any points for persistence when the claim is bogus.

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@Setanta,

Would you care to explain why you think it's bogus?

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You provided a source yourself to the effect that 29% of the language derives from French. That's not half. That's not even close to half.

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It's mostly words like manure.

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And cattle-pult . . .

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@Setanta,

You missed an important caveat of that post: Latin provides an estimated 29% out of an estimated total of some 30,000 English words, but many of those Latin words are scientific, legal or otherwise technical. English words of Latin origin are typically not in common usage, apart from a few like 'minimum', 'maximum' or 'etc.'. French provided about half of all common English words, simple words like car, chair, table, blue, etc.

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@Olivier5,

So what? That doesn't authorize a claim that French provides half the lexicon.

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Is all of this gas on your part simply because you like to argue, or do think you're making some kind of significant point?

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@Olivier5,

You've got it wrong, it's the other way round. 'Le weekend' ring a bell?

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The most frequently used words in English are conjunctions and prepositions--and none of them in English are of French origin. I think he just likes to argue.

Nous avons autant de la niege . . . je vais faire du skiing. J'espère de trouver du parking.

1 Reply

The Great Christmas Debate

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