A funny linguistic subway experience + some questions about nouns of days...

Eric ániyë

On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 08:03:20PM +0000, Raymond Brown wrote:
 > Welsh day-names are also derived from British Vulgar Latin, and you may be
 > interested to know them (the second word is genitival in function):
 > dydd Sul (sundat)
 > dydd Llun
 > dydd Mawrth
 > dydd Mercher
 > dydd Iau
 > dydd Gwener
 > dydd Sadwrn

 Is <dydd> a native Welsh word, or is it also from Latin?

According to Macbain's Etymological Dictionary of Scottish Gaelic, the word
dydd is a Celtic word related to the Gaelic prefix  Di- "day". Other words
that are related are:

  Old Irish/Irish  dia
   Cornish   det (< dedh)
   Breton     dez
   Common Celtic *diyas or *deyes

The dental element in Brittonic languages comes from the original medial /j/

Elliott