Some new Brithenig words?

On Mon, May 21, 2001 at 10:52:42PM -0400, Padraic Brown wrote:
> How do these look?
Well, assuming that the changes from Latin > Br. are roughly the same
as those from Latin > Welsh (which may not be true of course ... )
>
> biber < L. bibere (drink)
byfer ['b@ver] assuming the /i/ in bibere is short;

> cas < L. caseus (cheese)
Gives W. caws, C. keus, B. keuz which mean that the /a/ of caseus was
long (confirmed by glance in Latin Dict.) The equivalent British vowel
was somewhere between /a/ and /O/ and in stressed monosyllables (as here)
it developed into a diphthong in W. and a front/central rounded vowel in
C. & B. which kept it distinct from /a/ and /o/ from Latin and British
short vowels as quantity distinctions were eroded and replaced by quality
differences. What do you do with Latin /a:/? BTW Irish must have
borrowed this word early from British, they have ca\ise [kO:S@] <
[ka:Se] < [ka:sj-]

> ciasser < OF chasser (chase)
Cornish has chasye from the same source but with a native verbal noun
ending. If this existed in W. it would be "tsiasio" !!!

> ffi^ < OF/L fi (fie)
Turns up in Cornish as "fi", Cornish took lots of words from OF/MidE

> fol < OF fol (fool, clown)
Shouldn't you spell this "ffol" like Welsh ffo^l "foolish". In Cornish
fol means 1. adj. foolish, crazy, wild; 2. noun madman.
When something's a complete waste of time we say it's "gwari fol" i.e.
a silly game.

> lebrin < L leporinus (hare)
Looks OK assuming the Latin /i/ is long.

> sabat = OF savate, It ciabatta, Sp zapato (shoe)
It would depend rather when it was borrowed, eg how much Romance evolution
it took part in, and how much British evolution it missed. Unless it was
borrowed with a germinate /tt/ it should probably be sabad, although that
might well be the word for "sabbeth". Welsh certainly often turns final
/-t/ in loans into /-d/ to fit in with the native pattern.
I don't know enough Romance to figure out why Sp has /p/ where It. has /b/
and Fr. /v/.

> sarcir < L sarci:re (fix, repair)
seirchir because -rc- gives -rch- and the initial vowel would suffer
i-affection.

>
> How does Narbonosc deal with the Arabic word "jarrah" (clay
> pot). I'd guess /dZara/.
Would it have been /dZ-/ or /g-/
>
> Padraic.
>

Reply