Re: MR: Wlonk (fwd)

[clevin@rci.ripco.com (Craig Levin)]

Poster: clevin@rci.ripco.com (Craig Levin)

> Poster: edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com (Ed Hopkins)

> Does this mean that there's very little difference in the sounds of
> the Catalonian name "Tirant lo Blanc" and a (hypothetical) Middle English
> name "Tiront low Wlonk" ?

Basically, you are correct. FWIW, I find the "name changes" which
Arthur and his knights end up undergoing as the legends spread
out from the Celtic fringe fascinating-Arthur, in Germany,
becomes Artus. Percival, of course, becomes Parsifal, also in
Germany. Lancelot gets remonikered Lanz and Lancilotto. Gwalchmai
presumably became Gauvain/Gawain because only a Welshman can
pronounce the former. Keeping character names constant even as
the text is translated around them is a modern thing; the only
exception I can think of are Tolkien's works, in which he
carefully researched analogies for each of the Germanic languages
for many of the characters and objects in Middle Earth. Of
course, he was one of the few people who spoke all of them, so
he's an exception who proves the rule...

> (BTW, If Old English is called Ango-Saxon, shouldn't Middle English be
> called Anglo-Norman?)

It would be nice, I suppose, but the students of French
literature in England beat us to it. It's my understanding that
the other reason is because a great deal of ME is intelligible
even to the untrained ear.

> I've been entertaining the notion of writing a monthly feature for
> whatever chronicler might be interested, presenting various obsolete
> words from the Period to introduce into Modern Atlantian.  (The
> tentative title is "Paleologisms").  Would this be a Good Idea at all?
> If so, would it be a Good Idea to avoid words that are as challanging
> to the modern tongue as "wlonk" is?

I like the idea!
-- 
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~clevin/index.html 
clevin@ripco.com
Craig Levin
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