From: guto rhys
Message: 16287
Date: 2002-10-16
I recently had a conversation with a Dutch academic who talked about a Celtic substratum in Holland being responsible for certain dialectal features in this part of the Netherlands. He made reference to the lengthening of the vowel in the local pronunciation of the word for 'sheep'. He had read an article by a respected linguist.
While not dicounting this theory I found it highly unlikely on many grounds such as
*the area perhaps, having experienced Roman occupation, could have been largely or partially Latin speaking by the arrival of Germanic dialects,
*any Celtic language certainly would have been extinguished by the end of Roman control, or soon after,
*Celtic had short vowels and therefore those early bilingual speakers should have easily pronounced early Germanic long vowels (I'm sure the situation is rather more complicated),
*a Celtic substratum may not be necessary to explain this feature, it could be an internal change,
*lack of corresponding changes in other Germanic areas which were previously Celtic speaking.
etc.
Could anyone throw any light on this article, or this issue
Guto