Cornish Arguments Thread

 

I would argue that because a place undergoes a name change that doen't necessarily mean that the working inhabitants change; therefore you could go from calling somewhere e.g. Llyr's valley and rename it e.g. Horsa's Tun and replace the landowner or landholder but the peasants may well continue to be the same people and still, at least for some generations, speak the old language amongst themselves.  In the 60's I knew an elderly Welsh lady who had lived in Exeter with her daughter and son-in-law for 20 years but who spoke not a word of English (fortunately they were both native Welsh speakers).  Generally penetration into the hinterland of highland Britain including the area West of the Exe was a much more gradual process than seizing control of the strategic routes and towns and in a largely untutored rural proletariat I find it hard to believe that total linguistic change would have come about in much less than 3 or 4 generations.  The survival of British names for natural features such as Avon as a river name also suggests that the Anglo-Saxons coalesced with the native population rather than extirpating it and its language.  Until the Normans arrived with their obsession with book-keeping, tax raising and other instruments of feudalism I suspect that linguistic and indeed cultural change may have been more gradual than we were taught, at least at 'ground level'.

 

Most of the Welsh birds I've known weren't particularly pure......