By Hook Or By Crook: A Journey in Search of English. David Crystal

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СКАЧАТЬ every Horse or other Beast of Draught drawing any Coach, Sociable, Berlin, Landau, Chariot, Vis-a-Vis, Chaise, Calash, Chaise-marine, Curricle, Chair, Gig, Whisky, Caravan, Hearse, Litter, Waggon, Wain, Cart, Dray, or other Carriage, any Sum not exceeding One Shilling:

      For every Horse, Mare, Gelding, or Ass, laden or unladen, and not drawing, the Sum of Sixpence: but if there shall be more than one such Horse, Mare, Gelding, Mule, or Ass, belonging to the same Person, then the Sum of Sixpence shall be paid for one of them only, and the Sum of Threepence only for every other of them:

      For every Drove of Oxen, Cows, or Neat Cattle, any Sum not exceeding Five Shillings per Score, and so in proportion for any greater or less Number:

      For every Drove of Calves, Pigs, Sheep or Lambs, any Sum not exceeding Three Shillings and Sixpence per Score, and so in proportion for any greater or less Number:

      And for every Person crossing or passing on Foot, without any beast or Carriage, any Sum not exceeding Two-pence.

      The sign shows the eighteenth-century liking for capital letters on nouns considered to be important – Coach, Mare, Pigs, Horse, Berlin, Person, Chaise…, of course, as these are the critical factors; but also Number, Sum, and Foot, which the sign-writer felt needed extra prominence. The fashion for noun capitalization died out by the end of the century.

      After you’ve crossed the cob, quite suddenly you turn right for Portmeirion. You have to be on your toes not to miss the turning. If you encounter a sign saying Penrhyndeudraeth, you’ve gone too far. That name means ‘headland with two beaches’. In 1998 it became the first broadband-networked village in the UK.

      Actually, you don’t have to go as far as Penrhyndeudraeth. Another sign just after the turning tells you that you’ve missed it.

      The road down to the village winds for a mile through woodland and into the car park by the arched gatehouse which is the entrance to Portmeirion. You pay to get in, unless you’re staying there, or dining in the hotel. But it’s worth every penny. You’d have to travel to Portofino to have a comparable experience.

      In his account of the development of Portmeirion, Clough Williams- Ellis describes his creation as full of ‘wilful pleasantries, calculated naivetes, eye-traps, forced and faked perspectives, heretical constructions, unorthodox colour mixtures, [and] general architectural levity’. That’s exactly what it’s like. There is cheeky joy everywhere.

      Noël Coward was one of many literary visitors. He stayed for a week in the Watch House, arriving one Saturday and leaving the next. In between he wrote Blithe Spirit.

      I called in to the Prisoner shop, and bought yet another book on the subject. As I left, I said ‘Be seeing you,’ to the man behind the counter. He said, ‘And you,’ through a thin smile. The rest of his face held an expression of extreme pity.

      A sunny day, and Portmeirion was full of tourists. It’s a small place, really, with one steep windy road leading down to the sea, and innumerable recesses and side turnings beckoning you towards intricately landscaped gardens and visually teasing ornate façades. On a tall pedestal, at the head of the long flight of steps leading to the harbour, is a bronze statue of Hercules, standing in for Atlas, in a heroic kneeling pose, carrying a huge stone globe on his shoulders. Prisoner aficionados would of course see this as an allusion to the huge bouncing balloon-entities, controlled by the Village guardians, that prevented people escaping.

      Thomas Telford turns up in Portmeirion. A tall building overlooking the piazza was erected in honour of the bicentenary of his birth, in 1957. They call it Telford’s Tower. Today it is a self-catering cottage for three.

      The compact layout of Portmeirion tends to push people towards each other. That day in June it seemed there were more English accents per square metre here than anywhere else in the world. And foreign languages too. I heard five in as many footsteps.

      I walked down to the water’s edge, by the hotel. A group in front of me were speaking Welsh. Having been listening to so many English accents, it took me a bit by surprise. And yet this is a corner of the traditional heartland of Welsh. Once upon a time it would have been English that caused the surprise on the banks of Cardigan Bay. And indeed, in some Gwynedd villages English is still the exception rather than the rule.

      Welsh has been the success story of the twentieth century when it comes to plotting the future of the world’s endangered languages. And endangered they certainly are. It is thought that half the languages of the planet, some three thousand in all, are unlikely to survive to the end of the present century.

      That’s one language dying out somewhere in the world, on average, every two weeks.

      About two thousand of those languages have never been written down. That’s the savage part. For when a language dies that has never been written down, it is as if it has never been. And that means the irretrievable loss of another unique vision of what it means to be human.

      Many of those endangered languages have only a few dozen or a few hundred speakers. Welsh, by contrast, has over half a million. About a fifth of the people of Wales speak Welsh, and the numbers are steadily increasing. It is the only Celtic language to have done so well. The activism of the 1970s and the subsequent Language Acts, giving measures of protection to the language, helped enormously. Plus radio and TV channels in the medium of Welsh.

      I sat in the stone boat next to the hotel and looked across the Dwyryd estuary. It was early afternoon, and the tide was coming in. Some people were walking on the estuary sands in the distance. They would have to watch out. The sea comes in very quickly here, and it’s easy to get cut off.

      When was English first spoken along the banks of this estuary, I wondered. And when Welsh? And what was the language that was here before Welsh? Nobody knows how many languages have been spoken on earth since the human race developed the ability to speak. Some people think as many as 150,000. Maybe more. The six thousand or so we have left today are only a fraction of what may have been.

      Sometimes you can see a trace of an earlier period of language inhabitation. In the territory between Spain and France you will find Basque, unrelated to any modern language, and in structure quite unlike the Indo-European languages surrounding it. People think it is the last example of the languages which were spoken in Europe before the invaders from Asia arrived.

      The tide had almost reached the group walking on the sands, but they seemed oblivious. Some Portmeirion regulars were sitting nearby, bemoaning the way some people ‘don’t take any notice of the warnings’. The hotel staff were used to it. A man with a megaphone came out and bellowed. The walkers scuttled. I asked him whether this happened often. ‘Not so much these days,’ he said. ‘The time of the high tide is printed on the ticket.’

      His accent wasn’t local, and I couldn’t immediately place it. ‘You don’t sound as if you’re from these parts, then?’ I asked. I can never resist an unfamiliar accent.

      Nor an unfamiliar name. Once I was looking for a particular old edition of Hamlet, and called an antiquarian book company that I thought might have it. The person who answered the phone said she would look, and asked me to call her back. ‘Ask for Lassarina,’ she said.

      I couldn’t stop myself. ‘That’s a lovely name,’ I said. And as I said it, I thought, she’ll think this is a come-on, so I hastily added, ‘You see I’m a linguist and I’m interested in the history of names and I’ve not come across that one before and do you know what it means and how do you spell it?’ Then I thought, that sounds totally implausible, СКАЧАТЬ