The Welsh language
III Региональный конгресс молодежи и школьников
“Молодые исследователи севера”
Секция Лингвистика (английский язык)
The Welsh language
автор:
Ковальчук М. С. МПЛ, 10 класс
Научный руководитель:
Загородняя Л. М.
(учитель английского языка)
г. Мурманск, 1999
Тhe Welsh language
Ковальчук М. С. МПЛ, 10 класс
г. Мурманск
The Welsh language, like most of the languages of Europe, and many
of those of Asia, has evolved from what linguists term Indo-European.
Indo-European was spoken about 6000 years ago (4000 BC) by a
seminomadic people who lived in the steppe region of Southern Russia.
Speakers of the languages migrated eastwards and westwards; they had
reached the Danube valley by 3500 BC and India by 2000 BC. The
dialects of Indo-European became much differentiated, chiefly because
of migration, and evolved into separate languages. So great was the
variety among them that it was not until 1786 that the idea was put
forward that a Family of Indo-European languages actually exists. In
the twentieth century Indo-European languages are spoken in a wide arc
from Bengal to Portugal, as well as in countries as distant as New
Zealand and Canada, to which they have been carried by more recent
emigrants. The Indo-European Family is generally considered to consist
of nine different brunches, which in turn gave rise to daughter
languages. Welsh evolved from the Celtic brunch, as did its sister
languages - Breton, Cornish, Cumbric, Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx.
Сornish was a language of people who lived in Britain in the
Cornwall inlet and died out towards the end of the eighteenth century.
Dorothy Pentreath, who died in 1777, is usually considered to be the
last native speaker of Cornish. Manx was spread on the Isle of Man in
the Irish Sea, survived until well into the second half of the present
sentury and the last native speaker died at the age of 97 in 1974.
Other languages are still alive and a lot of people talks on them. But
nevertheless all this languages developed from the Celtic language and
the people who used this language were the Celts.
The Celts is a group of people who were classified as such by
communities who belonged to a separate cultural (and literate)
tradition. Celtic area is considered to be the north of Alps and
beyond the Mediterranean. It was observers from mediterranean lands of
Greece and Rome who called their neighbours Celts. But today
scientists ask the question who the Celts really are. The problem of
defining what is meant by the terms "Celt" and "Celtic" centres around
the relationship, if any, between material culture, ethnicity and
language. Judging by archaeology, documentary sources and linguistic
material the scientists came to the conclusion that by the last few
centuries BC, Celtic territory stretched from Ireland to eastern
Europe and beyond, to Galatia (see map). The Celts were technically
advanced. They knew how to work with iron, and could make better
weapons than the people who used bronze.
Early linguistic evidence for the Celts is extremely rare because
northern Europe was non-literate during most of the first millennium
BC. When writing was adopted in the Celtic world in the late first
millennium it appeared almost entirely in Greek and Latin. Early
Celtic evidence consists of inscriptions, coin legends and the names
of people and places contained within classical documents.
Now I would like to tell about the Brittonic brunch of Celtic
languages, which was spread over the territory of Britain. Because of
our knowledge of the Celts is slight, we do not even know for certain
how Britain became Celtic. Some scholars think that the Celts invaded
Britain, another - that they came peacefully, as a result of the
lively trade with Europe about 750 BC on wards. But we know for
certain that the language introduced into Britain was similar to that
spoken in Gaul (the territory of Celts in Central Europe); indeed, the
Celtic speech of Gaul and Britain at the dawn of the historic era can
be considered as one language, frequently, referred to as Gallo-
Britonic. Three successor languages of Brittonic evolved: Cumbric in
southern Scotland and north-west England, Welsh in Wales and Сornish
in south-west Britain. The speakers of all three of them were known by
their Anglo-Saxon neighbours as Wealas, or Welsh. The word is usually
considered to mean foreigner, but it can also mean people who have
been Romanized. To describe themselves, the Welsh and the Cumbric
speakers adopted the name Cymry and called their language Cymraeg.
Cymry comes from the Brittonic combrogi (fellow countryman) and its
adoption marks a deepening sense of identity.
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
|welsh |breton |Irish |gaelic |
|ty (house) |ti |teach |tight |
|ci (dog) |ki |cu |cu |
|du (black) |du |dubh |dubh |
|cadair (chair) |kador |kathaoir |cathair |
|gwin (wine) |gwin |fion |fion |
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
|WELSH |LATIN |
|pont (bridge) |pons |
|eglwys (church) |ecclesia |
|lleeng (legion) |legio |
|ystafell (room) |stabellum |
|trawst (joist) |transtrum |
|bresych (cabbage) |brassica |
Ireland never experienced Roman occupation but its settlers created
colonies in western Britain before the collapse of the Empire. They
were numerous in north-west Wales. That’s why there are a lot of Irish
place-names; for example Dinllaen, Gwynedd, and a lot of words of
Irish origin appeared in Welsh: cadach(rag), cnwc (hillock), talcen
(forehead), codwm (fall).
Old Welsh, the succeeding phase in the history of the language,
extends from about 850 to 1100. Again the evidence is slight of the
material that has indubitably survived unchanged from that period,
there is little beyond marginal notes and a few brief texts and poems.
Approximately in 930 a few settlements or Norse appeared in Britain. I
don't think that the norsemen influenced greatly on the Welsh
language, because only one Welsh word - iarll, from iarl (earl) - is
indisputably a Norse borrowing, but they influenced English (ugly,
rotten and husband - borrowings from Scandinavian language) and Scots
Gaelic.
Thus, by the end of the eleventh century, Welsh was a rich, supple,
and versatile language. It had an oral literary tradition which was
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