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+--- Thread: Wherefore art thou, aberil? (/thread-4745.html)
RE: Wherefore art thou, aberil? - Koen G - 03-02-2026
Language change is not a coin toss though, these things are regional. If someone says "abril" in an "april" region, they immediately stand out as a speaker of a different dialect.
Since people tended to write (the vernacular) as they spoke, looking for "aberil" may still be informative.
RE: Wherefore art thou, aberil? - Dana Scott - 04-02-2026
(09-06-2025, 10:19 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Depends a bit how long it was before 2012. Some people may have saved them but I do not have them.
Quote:Dana Scott recently referred members of the Vms list to a very interesting image from a French manuscript which, in turn, had many points in common with a small group of Regensberg/Salzburg ms – and the Vms
Dana may remember...
Nothing comes to mind at the moment. I will let the group know if I find something.
Regards,
Dana Scott
RE: Wherefore art thou, aberil? - eggyk - 04-02-2026
(03-02-2026, 07:44 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Language change is not a coin toss though, these things are regional. If someone says "abril" in an "april" region, they immediately stand out as a speaker of a different dialect.
Since people tended to write (the vernacular) as they spoke, looking for "aberil" may still be informative.
Before widespread education and standardisation, it may have been a coin toss from person to person.
A father may have said "april" and the son or grandson may have said "abril" and as long as everyone understood which word was being said they may not have even noticed the difference. If it was a larger change, like someone saying "Aprilis" instead of "Aberil" it would be noticeable.
Hopefully youtube links are okay, this is a video from Simon Roper demonstrating these kinds of differences over only 2 generations at a time: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(link is timestamped to the part i mean)
Additionally, if someone was a learned, literate person with knowledge of Latin, its entirely plausible that the person would code switch depending on the situation or context. Like in this example, where a german speaker clearly uses both "Apprilis" and "abrel", "Mayus" and "mayen", (as well as jenner/Gornug alongside the latin january and february).
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RE: Wherefore art thou, aberil? - Koen G - 04-02-2026
I also noticed the code-switching in several manuscripts: they were well aware of the Latin names, but especially in almanac-type manuscripts would include the vernacular names.
I maintain that looking for the exact spelling variant (aberil) remains helpful though. Language change is not a personal choice. It starts by affecting one (often elite) group or region in society, and then spreads from there over a wider area.
It's possible that the month name writer was in such an area that was in flux, in the middle of a transition. If they had used "p", this would be of little use since it's right there in the Latin "Aprilis". But the fact remains that they wrote the marked form (aprilis did not have "b"), so it remains useful to track where else people used that marked form.
It may well be that in their region, "b" and "p" had become indistinguishable in certain positions, so they freely switched. But once again, in that case it remains useful to track where this was done, because it's the marked form.
The least we can say is that the writer was from an area which allowed b-use. Cross-reference that with attestations of marked forms for the other months, and you can hopefully hone in on a source.