Re: Breton (WAS: first try at conlanging)

On Mon, 7 Jan 2002 21:28:31 EST
Elliott Lash <AL260@...> wrote:

> In a message dated Mon, 7 Jan 2002  2:20:52 PM Eastern Standard Time, Dan Jones <dan@...> writes:
>
> > Elliott Lash escreva:
> > >There are Bretons on the list?! Wow, Mat an traou ganeoc'h? Karout a ran
> > >an Brezhoneg.
> >
> > <nods and smiles, feigning comprehension> Er, si.
>
> Surely you meant: Er, ya.
> Actually, I just had an epiphany last night. In Breton the word for yes is Ya. Now,
> this might be taken immediately as a Germanic Loan word (c.f. German Ja,
> English Yeah, so forth). But then again, maybe it's a Celtic Cognate of this
> word. I say this because it also appears in Welsh: ie "yes" (only used in
> some circumstances). Or maybe we're just dealing with one loan word, borrowed
> from the Anglo-Saxons, and then brought to France by the
> Bretons...hmm..wonders.


<unlurk>

a probably wrong guess at a cognate -
In Irish (and maybe in scottish gaelic) in answering a question one can
sometimes say 'sea' "it is" , pronounced /Sa/, but the S is probably
slightly palatalised.

Then again it's likely a contraction of 'is ea' in speech (I don't really
know how to pronounce 'is ea' convincingly except to make it like 'sea'.
In this Ir. 'ea' is Eng. 'it' and Ir. 'is' is the copula ( ~ Eng. 'is').

If I have a point it might be that since in Irish the word for yes (typically
you'd just repeat the verb with or without negation, to answer a question)
probably comes from the copula, might it be the same in Breton?
I know that Irish & Breton aren't really so closely related, despite being
both Celtic, but I'd still be suprised if the Brythonic/p-branch side of
the family didn't have a copula. Anyway how would you say 'it is' in Breton?
Anything like 'ya' or 'sea'?

(It often seems easier to me to find cognates between Irish and Latin than
Irish and the Brythonic languages, though it's sometimes hard to tell what
words were monastic borrowings from latin.)

Probably words for 'yes' etc are the wrong place to look for cognates, though.
Probably should be looking in basic vocab.

<relurk>

Stephen Mulraney