Re: Arthur

["Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@macline.co.uk>]

At 23:33 20/1/98, Peter C. Skye wrote:
........
>Ray,
>
>I must have missed a round of correspondence somewhen.

Possibly not.

>I had no idea that
>you were the devout Catholic I offended, much less that you were a convert.

I hadn't mentioned that I was a convert.  I'm on several lists and some
people are aware of my religion; but I sort of lose track of where this is
and is not known.

>
>My considered opinion is that attitudes are like cheeses: some mellow, some
>sharpen.

They generally mellow with age.  In younger days I'd happily argue for
three hours on the doorstep with a Jehovah's witness (yes, I have done
that).  But now, I realize that my chances of changing his/her mind are
probably zilch & the same applies the other way (not implying that my mind
is not open, but I think I acually do know already what they teach).

>As for differences, I can laugh at Monty Python's Holy Grail.  Can you
>laugh at the Life of Brian?

Not sure I'd laugh much at the former (I haven't seen either film). Tho I
can take, say, about half an hour of Pythons, they soon become tedious to
me.  My humor is that of "The Goons" - strictly radio - the outrageous
humor that came from (originally) four ex-servicemen who got through WWII
alive & were, so to speak, just full of simple joie de vivre despite the
austerity in post-war Britain.  They were the humor of my teens (Ah, happy
days!).  I'm afraid the Pythons have always struck me as Cambrige
undergrads fooling about - sorry, just one of those generation differences,
I guess.

Anyway, back to Brithenig.

My interest was & still is primarily linguistic.  Andrew discovered that I
knew some Welsh & had lived in Wales (for 22 years, in fact) & got me
interested in Brithenig.  I will admit now I was a little skeptical at
first.  I thought is this another "celtophile" who doesn't really know
anything about real Celts.  Is Brithenig going to be 'pseudo-Welsh'?

I need not have worried.  Andrew is a true scholar who has clearly done his
research well.  When I actually saw Andrew's Brithenig page I was
impressed.  IMO he has kept the language entirely _plausible_; it is most
certainly a _Romance_ language that has come under strong Brittonic
influence.  But no Brittonic feature appears which cannot be justified from
a possible development with the Romance framework.  I sense, sometimes,
that Andrew would have liked to have made it more Welsh-like, i.e. verb
first position, but has resisted adding features which could not be
plausibly explained.

Though not a historian, I sense that Andrew is treating the history of the
Kemr exactly the same way: avoiding unlikely, extravagant excesses &
keeping it within the bounds of plausibility.  I think Andrew's objective
approach is the right one to take.  I was just cautioning in my original
posting about bringing in subjective interpretations; maybe I should've
expressed myself a little more tactfully.

Ray.

PS - the odd signature is the result of some recent exchanges on the
AUXLANG list  :-)




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Written in Net English                 Humor not marked
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