Re: Okay, so it *didn't* work
| From: | Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, January 8, 2002, 13:10 |
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Dear Clint,
Yes, Breton looks, and sounds, beautiful. For my money it's the most
beautiful-sounding language in the world. There are folks out there who
would have you believe that Welsh and Breton are mutually intelligible.
Don't you believe it! Obviously on the level of the occasional word there
are many similarities, but the mutations are all different - not necessarily
in terms of phonetics, but in the conditioning environments. For example,
Welsh lenits after feminine singular nouns, Breton doesn't, and so on. Welsh
definitely has the easiest mutation system of any of the Celtic tongues.
Breton arose in an already heavily-celticised (i.e., Gaulish) area, but was
enriched by immigration from Brythonic speakers from SW Britain around the
time of the Anglo-Saxon incursions. The mutation system which most closely
resembles Breton is that of Cornish. Breton even looks good (I feel that
Welsh looks foul but sounds fair, to borrow a remark of Aragorn's!)
The orthography of Manx is essentially English. It looks horrible - very
un-Celtic!
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Clint Jackson Baker" <litrex1@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 12:05 AM
Subject: Okay, so it *didn't* work