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Der gemeinsame Wandel der inselkeltischen Sprachen wie auch des Englischen vom vorwiegend synthetischen Typus zum vorwiegend analytischen Typus läßt sich vermutlich auf einen ca. 1500 Jahre dauernden intensiven Sprachenkontakt zwischen diesen Sprachen zurückführen. Heute ist das Englische die analytischste Sprache der Britischen Inseln und Irlands, gefolgt vom Walisischen, Bretonischen und Irischen. Letzteres ist von den genannten Sprachen noch am weitesten morphologisch komplex.
Laudation zur Verleihung des Doktogrades ehrenhalber an Herrn Prof. em. Dr. phil. Helmut Lüdke
(2008)
Classical writers either glorified the Celts and their cult officials, the druids, thereby demonstrating "soft primitivism", or they vilified them ("hard primitivsm"). Both types of primitivism reflect the self-assessment of the classical cultures concerning their own identity and the level of their cultural status rather than providing hard-core information about Celts and druids. Outside the archaeological evidence there is no reliable information about these. And even the archaeological evidence is very much open to controversial interpretation This situation leave much room to personal speculation, high-flung imagination and even fantasy. TRI
The five Potsdam "Studientage zum Englischen Mittelalter (SEM)" (1999-2003) served a number of purposes. These are fully discussed in this article. The first and foremost idea was to provide a yearly forum for young scholars in English medieval studies to present their research to other scholars in the field and to test their market value ("Nachwuchsfoerderung"). After Potsdam, the SEM meetings are circulating between those universities in the German speaking countries, which feature a Medieval Studies Programme in their departments of English and American Studies. This programme serves to boost their academic profile and etablish centres of excellency for English medieval Studies on the Continent. Networking is another prime objective of the SEMs. See http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/sem/sem.htm etc.
This article discusses the problem why the English language used in Ireland ("Irish English") as the second national language, has to date enjoyed so little prestige among everyday users of it, whereas it found enthusiastic recognition among Anglo-Irish writers since the beginning of the 19c. While no educated speaker of Irish English would target an RP pronunciation any more, the use of Irish English grammar and lexis is still stigmatised as smacking of the "brogue." The hypothesis is advanced that, in spite of its independence since 1921 and its "Celtic Tiger" economy since entry into the EU in the 70s, the Republic of Ireland has still not fully entered the post-colonial stage in matters of language and education, where pride in Identity and Otherness is reflected in the conscious use and engineering of a nationally distinctive variety of English, such as in Australia, New Zealand or Canada.There is still no national dictionary of Irish English, no national grammar, no national broadcasting and TV handbook, no national dictionary of Irish English. The title of the article quotes from a publication which attests to the strong linguistic minority complex which many Irish people still seem to suffer from.
Breton and Irish, two Celtic and strongly endangered European minority languages, enjoy (or suffer) different fates of official recognition. While France does not officially recognise Breton as an independent language and has no even signed the European Charter of Minority Languages as most other EU countries did, Irish is by its constitution the first national language of the Republic of Ireland and therefore enjoys a very high official prestige. It is an obligatory subject in the schools and all EU documents need to be translated both into Irish and English. In spite of this difference of status and prestige, both languages have suffered, during the past 50 years, from a dramatic loss of speakers, as the young generation sees no need to preserve a regionalised minority heritage in a world of globalised communication and exchange. While both inherited languages were, traditionally and sociologically speaking, the medium of communication of the rural population, albeit with a long and venerable written tradition reaching back to the middle ages, the language of the future is that of the urban middle classes learnt as a second language (L2) und for all intents and purposes not used as a community language in the home. Middle class Breton and Irish are token languages, serving its users as identity markers in order to set themselves off from the English and French, most of whom only speak English and French and have no additional regional language. The linguistic gap between the inherited rural and the new urban varieties is great, so that older native rural speakers do not understand school Breton and school Irish. It is predictable that only the urban varieties will survive for still quite a while, whereas the rural varietes are unlikely to escape language death due to the ongoing change of living conditions in the rural areas and the absence of localised language engineering.