Ah me, how can I leave this "lute irrelevant" thread? But I can't stop thinking of language - and it does relate to music as each evolves a bit differently in different communities.
> Just that a Finnish speaker and an Estonian speaker understand each other > as much as an Italian speaker and a Spanish speaker. Actually I suppose > Finnish and Estonian are a bit more different than Italian and Spanish. English may be one of the best examples. I'm sure it is easier for a Finn to understand an Estonian, and certainly easier for a Spaniard to understand an Italian, than it was a hundred years ago (before radio and TV) for Yorkshireman to understand someone from Dorset (I speak of the rurals, rather than the cityfolk). Jim is correct, English is a stolen language (better said, borrowed). The island was invaded from all sides, the Danes of the midlands and north - the Gaelic speaking Irish Scots into Scotland (wiping out the Picts, who had their own form of Gaelic). The Gaelic Britons in the south, driving the Cymri (another form of Gaelic, and quite similar to the native language of Brittany) into the hills of the west. The Roman incursion, and much later the Teutonic English of the Angles and Saxons. And finally the Norman French (who were themselves new to French having been Skandinavian invaders to Normandy only about a hundred years before). Such a small island to have so many swift invasions of differing languages, some retained and some lost in part. A Texan can understand a Brooklynite, or a Down Easter, better than some of the Brits could understand each other a hundred years ago. My mother was a cockney from London, and I can still run off some of her quotes and be totally incomprehensible to most English speakers. Best, Jon
