Seven Words (Linguistics)

[admin]

The vexed question of why English contains so few 'Celtic' words was recently revisited by Peter Harper:


I don't know whether recent loans like corgi and druid (derwydd) really count. Crag (craig) and cairn (carn) must be certain. Coombe (cwm) and brock (broch) ie badger. I think Dad might be one (tad, but often mutated as dad, is the ordinary word for father). I could probably find quite a few more just browsing through a small Welsh dictionary.

Found this on a web site:
The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ article "English Language" and the
Reader's Digest _Success with Words_ cite the following words:

From Irish: balbriggan, banshee, blarney, bog, bonnyclabbe,
brogue, colcannon, curragh, donnybrook, drumlin, dulse, Eire, Fenian,
Gael, galore, hooligan, leprechaun, lough, machree, mavourneen, ogham, poteen, shamrock, shillelagh, smithereens, tanistry, Tory, whiskey.

From Scots Gaelic: cairn, clan, claymore, glen, loch, pibroch, plaid, slogan, sporran.

From Welsh: coracle, corgi, cromlech, cwm, eisteddfod, flannel,
metheglin, pendragon.

From Breton: menhir, penguin.

From Cornish: brill, dolmen, gull.

But these seem rather arcane, though if true I'm impressed by flannel, gull, clan, slogan, galore which I would never have guessed.

Peter Harper

[Geoff Gardiner]

Coombe (cwm)

Coombe is old English, and not necessarily a loan from the Welsh cwm. Perhaps they have a common ancestry.

Students of British place names have tended to exaggerate affinities with Welsh. For instance we are told that Lydiard, near Swindon, was Lidgerd in 901, and the 'gerd' part is from the Welsh 'garth' meaning hill. Actually garth is Welsh for garden too, but in that meaning it is likely to be a borrowing from the Norse, 'gard', a farm, and that surely is the more likely origin of Lydiard, given that Wiltshire is rife with Saxon names.

[DPCrisp]

By "Saxon names" you, of course, mean English names taken for Saxon by place name schoolers.

Note that G = Y. I dunno about Welsh garth, but Lidgerd could be pronounced "Lidyard", exactly the same as Lydiard. (In fact, it must be probable that the pronunciation has not changed, otherwise the disappearance of a hard G has to be explained.)

Is there any reason to think yard is more Norse than English?

[Mick Harper]

[DPCrisp]

A cwm/coombe is a deep hollow or valley, esp. on the side of a hill; a valley running up from the sea.

Anthropomorphising the landscape: sounds like it's the same word as quim.

[Mick Harper]

Ah, but is quim Welsh or English, my little dicky-dido?

[Nick]

I recently read a very interesting theory in Green English by Loreto Todd [O'Brien, 2000]. He claims, quite convincingly that "she" comes from Irish s�. It certainly dunnae come from those blurry Anglo-Saxons!

[Tatjana]

[Pulp History]

Equally as interesting......... why are there so many English words in Welsh?? Words which the Welsh must surely have needed / used before the alleged arrival of the English......

examples:

English Welsh

Clear Clir
Brown Brown
Triangle Triangl
Square Scwar
Orange Oren
Cat Cath

I'm sure I'll find others, but surely the Welsh language had a way of describing the colour of mud before the good old AS came along??
_________________
Question everything!

[DPCrisp]

[Hatty]

I looked up 'brown' in Welsh and was given two words, brown and gwinau; it's not uncommon for alternatives to coexist, cf. fawn (the 'correct' ie. 'English' term) and beige (incorrect coz it's Frenchy).

The 'gwin' bit is reminiscent of 'gwen' which I think means fair or beautiful (gwyn means white). If you look up 'fair' you get loads of words:
ffair n.f. (ffeiriau)
cain adj.
glwys adj.
gweddol adj.
mirain adj.
symol adj.
teg adj.
mwyn adj.
mad adj.

[Pulp History]

Okay, so there are alternate words available...... are there alternate words for 'triangle' and 'square', other than 'triangl' and 'sgwar'??

If not it seems rather odd that the peoples and language who allegedly were responsible for the construction of megalithic structures did not have words for basic shapes, essential for trigonometry and design.
_________________
Question everything!

[DPCrisp]

[Pulp History]

[DPCrisp]

I'm not with you. Orthodoxy has it that triangle and square come from Proto-Indo-European via Latin and Greek. Never mind the contradiction in coming from everyone's common roots and coming through a specific branch, the suggestion that they might have come from Welsh (whose Indo-Europeanness is debatable, by the way) to all other European languages would give them apoplexy. Well, a fit of the giggles, anyway.

Not that I'm saying they did come from Welsh, just that it's such a guessing game... On the side of Welsh origins, though, I would reiterate that close relationships have been shown between Celtic, Phoenician, Greek and Hebrew (not a very PIE pedigree and sure to be hotly denied) and therefore table the motion that there may be a vast influence from Celtic throughout Europe, masquerading as Greek influence.