Am 05/28 01:50 kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET yscrifef:
> Brithenig seems a bit of an odd creature now I look at it more closely. It
> has some very un-Welsh features, like the change of /k, g/ to /tS, dZ/
> before front vowels.
This would have to be one the biggest mistakes that I consider I made in
Brithenig. Unfortunately I included it as a feature when I first began
working on this language in 1996 and it has become intrenched.
There's a slight palatalisation of /k, g/ in N. Wales
> but you have to go to Pays de Vannes (Bro Gwenned) before you find
> affricates developing; and it lacks some common Brittonic developments
> such as /a:/ >> /O:/ and /i:/ >> /i/ but /i/ >> /I/ (i.e quality becoming
> the distinctive feature rather than length).
/a/ and /a:/ merge in Romance languages which is a feature that has
influenced Brithenig. The /i/~/I/ distinction in Brithenig appears to
be stress related.
On the other hand it has
> some features only found in Welsh (not in Cornish or Breton) like the
> unvoicing of non-lenited /l/ and /r/; the spelling of [D] as <dd> and
> [v] as <f> (a relatively recent Welsh development);
The orthography has become another intrenched feature. Oh, well.
gwers << versus with
> the meaning "lesson"; gwallt "head of hair" with an /a/ which is a Welsh
> irregularity, C, B and Irish all having /o/; "bring" and "take" translated
> as gweair cum and gweddir cum exactly paralleling Welsh do^d a^ and mynd a^.
That one removed a dilemma that threatened to become a minor headache.
> Brithenig seems not to have the Welsh change of -nt- >> -nh- or -nn- but
> you have plant - children, plenhin - child, whereas W. has plant - plentyn,
> so here you're more W. than the Welsh.
This sound change was not included until after the webpages were posted.
I referred to it once in the Sessiwn Ghemruis archives as 'a guilty
little secret' or words to that effect. I have not consistantly
'retro'd' the pages to include this feature, especially the lexicon
pages.
Here BTW you've used -in to make
> a singular from a collective. Also with glaserfin "blade of grass",
Yes, I know. This ending originally started as a familiar diminutive,
but I have since made use of it as singular from collective marker.
> I assume glaserf is a collective "grass" << glasto-herba lit. "green grass"
> (as opposed to hay) paralleling W. glas-wellt
>
Yes. When I need to create a new word for Brithenig I start by looking
a the Welsh dictionaries to see if I can find a word or a phrase that I
can calque into Brithenig. Then I look at Romance dictionaries to find
a common Romance word, in case I may need to fall back on that
alternative. Loans from English occur only when one of these two
sources agree. I am proud of the results I have obtained but it is a
sound and labourious process especially the time I have to go into the
university library to hog the dictionaries. This will inevitably
happen.
> All in all, Latin loans in Welsh look pretty much like the equivalent words
> in Brithenig, and British loans in Brithenig come through looking like the
> equivalent Welsh words, thus :
> gwidr/gwydr; gwin/gwin; gwirdd/gwyrdd; Llyn/Llun; gefell/gefell;
> glas/glas; gnad/gnawd; grei/gre; gwag/gwag; gwan/gwan; gweil/gwyl /gu:Il/;
> Gwener/Gwener ...
>
I think WD Elcock says in _The Romance Languages_ that there are 300
such loans in Welsh. I may never know if I have collected the set.
> That's what I meant by "styled on Welsh".
>
I think you just about covered it. If you want to know the origins of
Brithenig find a copy of _Celtic: A Comparative Study_, by DB Gregor and
turn to page 52, footnote 11. I think that is the page that contains
the text that is the germ of Brithenig. I merely developed it from
there.
> BTW how did you come up with _gworuin_ (common people etc.) where WCB have
> gwerin from something like /wari:na:/
>
I see my mistake. McBains Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic
Language has the attested Old Celtic forms *vore:na:, vorinni-, I've
obliviously gone and used the nominative form rather than the oblique.
> Possibly Brithenig has two phonemes /i/ and /I/ both written <i>?
>
Yes, it does. <i> is /i/ when stressed and /I/ when unstressed. I
think that rule can be found under the alphabet page.
Well, I hope this helps.
- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus hobbit@griffler.co.nz
http://hobbit.griffler.co.nz/homepage.html
Your voice has been heard.