Re: New Brithenig words, part Deux.

On  Mon, 28 May 2001; andrew <hobbit@...> wrote :
> 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.
I shouldn't worry about this, as I said, this degree of palatalisation is
found in SE Brittany, which is the Brittonic dialect most in contact with
Romance. Interestingly, it also has final stress as does Brithenig. Whether
this is the Old Welsh/C/Breton stress retained (it shifted to the penult
elsewhere) or a "recent" switch back to final stress influenced by French is
something of a moot point.

>> 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.
Allophonic in other words? In WCB "here" the distinction is phonemic, both
sounds can be either stressed or unstressed, long or short.

>> 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.
Again, I don't see this as a fault or a problem, it just suggested to me that
you had Welsh in particular in mind.

>> 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.
Sorry, I don't understand, pray explain.

>> 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.
So what's your final position re nasal+voiceless stop groups? In Cornish
they remain (the t sometimes goes to s -- that's a special Cornish thing);
in Welsh they remain finally, otherwise /mp nt Nk/ >> /mh nh Nh/ which in
turn give /mm nn NN/ the /h/ only remaining when it begins a stressed
syllable. eg.

C. fenten  W. 'ffynnon pl. ffyn'honnau "spring" << L. fonta:na

>> 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.
/-ig/ might be a useful diminutive, although it's commoner in C&B than in W.

>> 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
> at 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 ... 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.
Dunno about Romance langs, but there's a fairly good Welsh dictionary and
other resources on line at :

http://www.cs.brown.edu/fun/welsh/LexiconForms.html

> I think WD Elcock says in _The Romance Languages_ that there are 300
> such [Latin] loans in Welsh.  I may never know if I have collected the set.
There are certainly quite a lot, mostly from the time of the Roman occupation
of Britain. They are thoroughly naturalised. The standard work in Welsh is
"Yr Elfen Ladin yn yr Iaith Gymraeg" Henry Lewis, Univ. of Wales Press 1943,
reprinted 1980 ISBN 0 7083 0769 8. I don't unfortunately have a copy and as
far as I know it's never been translated, pity, I'm sure it would be of
interest to Romance linguists. I can reel off a string of examples if you're
interested.

>> 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.
I've seen that book, good as far as it goes, but I don't have a copy to
hand.

>> 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.
I don't have McBain, but he's on line too at :

http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/

It's quite an old book, and his etymologies have to be treated with caution.
His vorinni- isn't the oblique stem, but a varient, I think to explain the
Irish by-form "foirinn". IMHO this is just a varient that arose within Irish.
The normal Irish form "foire(a)nn" along with WCB "gwerin" point back to
either /wori:na:/ or /wari:na:/ which might in turn have come from IE
/wore:na:/ since all /e:/'s go to /i:/'s in Common Celtic. By the time
British met Latin there were very few vowels distinguished only by quantity,
the only remaining long vowels being /a:/ ( > /O:/), /i:/, and
(/u:/ > ) /y/ ( > /i:/)
Latin /o:/, /u:/ fell in with British /ow/ ( << /aw, ow, ew/) which gave
/u:/ >> /y:/ <u>, the original /y:/ from /u:/ now having merged with /i:/.
Like Greek this is another case of all the vowels wanting to be /i/ !
Latin /e:/ fell in with British /ej/ and developed into /u:j/ <wy>
Of course if IE /*wore:na:/ had been taken into Latin as vore:na (?) this
might have been borrowed by British as worejna, and given Welsh *gorwyn or
Brithenig gworuin, who can say it didn't happen ? :-)

> Well, I hope this helps.
It does, please forgive the sermons!

>- andrew.
Keith

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