The Welsh language

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It is very interesting to show common and different things between the words of these languages. You can sea these comparison in following table.

Cognate Celtic words

You see that almost all words are similar to each other, that’s why they were united in one brunch.

The transition from Brittonic to Welsh took place somewhere between 400 and 700 AD. The major problem in tracing this transition in paucity of evidence. Not a sentence of Brittonic has survived. The language was almost certainly written down, but the writing materials used more probably perishable, the more highly esteemed Latin being used for permanent inscriptions. Brittonic, like Latin, was a synthetic language; that is, much of its meaning was conveyed by a charge in the endings of words, as in Latin puella (girl), puellae (to the girl), puellarum (of the girls). In an analytic language, like Welsh, the relation of one word to another is conveyed by the use of prepositions or by the placing of the word in the sentence. It is difficult to date the change from synthetic to analytic, from Brittonic to Welsh, with any certainty. It is generally accepted that it had occurred by about 600 AD but it may have taken place in the spoken language much earlier. The most obvious sign of the change was the loss of the final syllables of nouns; when bardos (poet), aratron (plough) and abona (river) had become bardd, aradr and afon, Brittonic had become Welsh.

There are four periods in the history of the Welsh language: early, old, middle and new. Early Welsh, a phase in the history of the language, extending from its beginning to about 850, only survives in a few inscriptions and marginal notes or glosses. The most interesting of the inscriptions is that on a memorial in the Paris church of Tywyn in Мeirionnydd. It was carved in about 810 and consist of the words cingen celen tricet nitanam (the body of Cingen dwells beneath). Although the inscription incomprehensible to the Welsh speaker of the present day, the words celen, tricet, and tan (in nitanam) are related to the modern forms celein (corpse), trigo (dwells) and dan (beneath). In that time took place the influence of Latin and Irish. The Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD and their power had collapsed by 410 AD and Britannia ceased to be the part of the Empire. Of course during all that period Latin was influxing Welsh because it was the language of law and administration.

Words of Latin origin in Welsh

Реферат опубликован: 12/04/2009