Re: USAGE: Yet another few questions about Welsh.

On Saturday, July 3, 2004, at 12:16 , Joe wrote:

> So, I went to Wales, as one does.  Bought some books while I was over
> there(A New Testament and a Language Course, actually).  It's nice to
> see that a Celtic language still thrives to such a degree.
Yep.

> But some things I'm curious about.  Historical ones, mostly.  Firstly,
> where does the definite article '(y)(r)' come from?  All other Celtic
> languages, Brythonic and Goidelic, seem to use 'an'.
All from the same source - IIRC demostratives *sindo- ~ *sinda-

The initial s- becomes h- and, being always unstressed, is lost. The vowel
is weakened to [@] or [a], giving us [@n] or [an]. As for the Welsh forms,
  Breton gives a clue to what's happened. In Breton the definite article is:
an - used before words beginning d-, h-, n-, t- or a vowel;
al - used only before words beginning with l- ;
ar - used before all other consonants.

In other words, the final consonant of this unstressed proclitic has been
modified to make pronunciation easier in different environments. Something
similar happened in proto-Welsh, and Welsh came to use _yr_ /@r/ to the
exclusion of other earlier forms. Of course, modern welsh has carried the
weakening process even further, so that in most environments it's now just
_y_ /@/.

> Secondly, how
> tenuous is the 'Italo-Celtic' link?  They do seem fairly similar in some
> ways, different in others.  One similarity I've noticed, though it may
> seem tenuous, is that they both have *k_wenk_we(Welsh 'pump', Irish
> 'coic', Latin 'quinque') as 'five', rather than *penk_we.
Depends who you ask, I guess. Personally, I think it's strong. It has been
claimed that one reason Gaul became Latin speaking so soon after Caesar's
conquest was that Gaulish was structurally quite close to Latin.

>  Thirdly, the
> orthography.  I can understand, historically,  using <f> for /v/(and, as
> a result, <ff> for /f/).  As they used the Latin alphabet, <v> was
> probably representing /w/ in Latin at the time, right?
|v| and |u| were not distinguished in writing in roman alphabets till very
much later.

> But why did they
> use <u> for /1/?  Historical sound changes?
Yes. |u| represents the older [u] as we see in VL borrowings. But, as in
north Gaul, it suffered fronting. Probably even in the VL period of
Britain & north Gaul Latin 'long u' was pronounced [u\] (IPA barred-u), a
high, central rounded vowel. This is the vowel we hear today in the
pronunciation of 'good' in some Lowland Scots dialects (traditionally
represent by the spelling 'guid') and in the 'Ulster Scots' of northern
Ireland.

In the case of French, the vowel moved to the front, giving the familiar
[y] of modern French. In Welsh, on the other hand, it remained high,
central vowel bit became unrounded, i.e. [1]. In south Wales the vowel
eventually fronted and is pronounced the same as |i|, i.e. [i:] _or_ [I]
(depending upon length).

This type of sound change is found elsewhere.  A similar thing in Greek. Y
originally represent [u]; already in 5th cent BCE Athens & in Ionia it
appears to have become [y] (although [u\] is a possibility). Other
dialects retained [u] and, indeed, Doric retained [u] until well in the
Hellenistic period, where [y] had become standard. But by the 4th cent. CE
it appears already to have become [i] as in Modern greek.

> If so, what did <w>
> originally represent?
I guess what VV (or, cursive, uu) did elsewhere. The double-u was devised
on the continent to represent the [w] of the Germanic languages at a time
when the Latin |v| had become [v]. The combo was used before vowels, hence
the |u| would be understood to be a consonant, but doubling it showed that
the consonant wasn't [v], but more like [u], i.e. [w]. Of course, this is
still the usage in modern English and modern Welsh  :)

But Welsh were more innovative after they had adopted the combo. The
double-u was also employed before consonants. Here, of course, it meant a
vowel similar to |u| (i.e. [u\]), but more like [w], i.e. [u].

The French scribes also had the same problem. How to represent [u], when
|u| had become [u\] or [y]? They opted for |ou|, the Welsh scribes opted
for |uu|.

Ray
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