Revisiting the Insular Celtic Hypothesis Through Working Towards an Original Phonetic Reconstruction of Insular Celtic
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The Role and Importance of the Welsh Language in Wales's Cultural Independence Within the United Kingdom
The role and importance of the Welsh language in Wales’s cultural independence within the United Kingdom Sylvain Scaglia To cite this version: Sylvain Scaglia. The role and importance of the Welsh language in Wales’s cultural independence within the United Kingdom. Linguistics. 2012. dumas-00719099 HAL Id: dumas-00719099 https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-00719099 Submitted on 19 Jul 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. UNIVERSITE DU SUD TOULON-VAR FACULTE DES LETTRES ET SCIENCES HUMAINES MASTER RECHERCHE : CIVILISATIONS CONTEMPORAINES ET COMPAREES ANNÉE 2011-2012, 1ère SESSION The role and importance of the Welsh language in Wales’s cultural independence within the United Kingdom Sylvain SCAGLIA Under the direction of Professor Gilles Leydier Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................. 1 WALES: NOT AN INDEPENDENT STATE, BUT AN INDEPENDENT NATION ........................................................ -
Trusmadoor and Other Cumbrian `Pass' Words
Trusmadoor and Other Cumbrian `Pass' Words Diana Whaley University of Newcastle Nobody ever sang the praises of Trusmadoor, and it's time someone did. This lonely passage between the hills, an obvious and easy way for man and beast and beloved by wheeling buzzards and hawks, has a strange nostalgic charm. Its neat and regular proportions are remarkable—a natural `railway cutting'. What a place for an ambush and a massacre!1 No ambushes or massacres are promised in the following pages, but it will be argued that the neglected name of Trusmadoor holds excitements of a quieter kind. I will consider its etymology and wider onomastic and historical context and significance, and point to one or possibly two further instances of its rare first element. In the course of the discussion I will suggest alternative interpretations of two lost names in Cumbria. Trusmadoor lies among the Uldale Fells in Cumbria, some five miles east of the northern end of Bassenthwaite Lake (National Grid Reference NY2733). An ascending defile, it runs south-east, with Great Cockup to its west and Meal Fell to the north-east. The top of the pass forms a V-shaped frame for splendid views north over the Solway Firth some twenty miles away. Trusmadoor is a significant enough landscape feature to appear on the Ordnance Survey (OS) One Inch and 1:50,000 maps of the area, yet it is unrecorded, so far as I know, until its appearance on the First Edition Six Inch OS map of 1867. In the absence of early spellings one would normally be inclined to leave the name well alone, a practice followed, intentionally or not, by the editors of the English Place-Name Society survey of Cumberland.2 However, to speakers or readers of Welsh the name is fairly transparent. -
Historical Background of the Contact Between Celtic Languages and English
Historical background of the contact between Celtic languages and English Dominković, Mario Master's thesis / Diplomski rad 2016 Degree Grantor / Ustanova koja je dodijelila akademski / stručni stupanj: Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences / Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, Filozofski fakultet Permanent link / Trajna poveznica: https://urn.nsk.hr/urn:nbn:hr:142:149845 Rights / Prava: In copyright Download date / Datum preuzimanja: 2021-09-27 Repository / Repozitorij: FFOS-repository - Repository of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Osijek Sveučilište J. J. Strossmayera u Osijeku Filozofski fakultet Osijek Diplomski studij engleskog jezika i književnosti – nastavnički smjer i mađarskog jezika i književnosti – nastavnički smjer Mario Dominković Povijesna pozadina kontakta između keltskih jezika i engleskog Diplomski rad Mentor: izv. prof. dr. sc. Tanja Gradečak – Erdeljić Osijek, 2016. Sveučilište J. J. Strossmayera u Osijeku Filozofski fakultet Odsjek za engleski jezik i književnost Diplomski studij engleskog jezika i književnosti – nastavnički smjer i mađarskog jezika i književnosti – nastavnički smjer Mario Dominković Povijesna pozadina kontakta između keltskih jezika i engleskog Diplomski rad Znanstveno područje: humanističke znanosti Znanstveno polje: filologija Znanstvena grana: anglistika Mentor: izv. prof. dr. sc. Tanja Gradečak – Erdeljić Osijek, 2016. J.J. Strossmayer University in Osijek Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Teaching English as -
Old and Middle Welsh David Willis ([email protected]) Department of Linguistics, University of Cambridge
Old and Middle Welsh David Willis ([email protected]) Department of Linguistics, University of Cambridge 1 INTRODUCTION The Welsh language emerged from the increasing dialect differentiation of the ancestral Brythonic language (also known as British or Brittonic) in the wake of the withdrawal of the Roman administration from Britain and the subsequent migration of Germanic speakers to Britain from the fifth century. Conventionally, Welsh is treated as a separate language from the mid sixth century. By this time, Brythonic speakers, who once occupied the whole of Britain apart from the north of Scotland, had been driven out of most of what is now England. Some Brythonic-speakers had migrated to Brittany from the late fifth century. Others had been pushed westwards and northwards into Wales, western and southwestern England, Cumbria and other parts of northern England and southern Scotland. With the defeat of the Romano-British forces at Dyrham in 577, the Britons in Wales were cut off by land from those in the west and southwest of England. Linguistically more important, final unstressed syllables were lost (apocope) in all varieties of Brythonic at about this time, a change intimately connected to the loss of morphological case. These changes are traditionally seen as having had such a drastic effect on the structure of the language as to mark a watershed in the development of Brythonic. From this period on, linguists refer to the Brythonic varieties spoken in Wales as Welsh; those in the west and southwest of England as Cornish; and those in Brittany as Breton. A fourth Brythonic language, Cumbric, emerged in the north of England, but died out, without leaving written records, in perhaps the eleventh century. -
Place-Names of Inverness and Surrounding Area Ainmean-Àite Ann an Sgìre Prìomh Bhaile Na Gàidhealtachd
Place-Names of Inverness and Surrounding Area Ainmean-àite ann an sgìre prìomh bhaile na Gàidhealtachd Roddy Maclean Place-Names of Inverness and Surrounding Area Ainmean-àite ann an sgìre prìomh bhaile na Gàidhealtachd Roddy Maclean Author: Roddy Maclean Photography: all images ©Roddy Maclean except cover photo ©Lorne Gill/NatureScot; p3 & p4 ©Somhairle MacDonald; p21 ©Calum Maclean. Maps: all maps reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/ except back cover and inside back cover © Ashworth Maps and Interpretation Ltd 2021. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2021. Design and Layout: Big Apple Graphics Ltd. Print: J Thomson Colour Printers Ltd. © Roddy Maclean 2021. All rights reserved Gu Aonghas Seumas Moireasdan, le gràdh is gean The place-names highlighted in this book can be viewed on an interactive online map - https://tinyurl.com/ybp6fjco Many thanks to Audrey and Tom Daines for creating it. This book is free but we encourage you to give a donation to the conservation charity Trees for Life towards the development of Gaelic interpretation at their new Dundreggan Rewilding Centre. Please visit the JustGiving page: www.justgiving.com/trees-for-life ISBN 978-1-78391-957-4 Published by NatureScot www.nature.scot Tel: 01738 444177 Cover photograph: The mouth of the River Ness – which [email protected] gives the city its name – as seen from the air. Beyond are www.nature.scot Muirtown Basin, Craig Phadrig and the lands of the Aird. Central Inverness from the air, looking towards the Beauly Firth. Above the Ness Islands, looking south down the Great Glen. -
K 03-UP-004 Insular Io02(A)
By Bernard Wailes TOP: Seventh century A.D., peoples of Ireland and Britain, with places and areas that are mentioned in the text. BOTTOM: The Ogham stone now in St. Declan’s Cathedral at Ardmore, County Waterford, Ireland. Ogham, or Ogam, was a form of cipher writing based on the Latin alphabet and preserving the earliest-known form of the Irish language. Most Ogham inscriptions are commemorative (e.g., de•fin•ing X son of Y) and occur on stone pillars (as here) or on boulders. They date probably from the fourth to seventh centuries A.D. who arrived in the fifth century, occupied the southeast. The British (p-Celtic speakers; see “Celtic Languages”) formed a (kel´tik) series of kingdoms down the western side of Britain and over- seas in Brittany. The q-Celtic speaking Irish were established not only in Ireland but also in northwest Britain, a fifth- THE CASE OF THE INSULAR CELTS century settlement that eventually expanded to become the kingdom of Scotland. (The term Scot was used interchange- ably with Irish for centuries, but was eventually used to describe only the Irish in northern Britain.) North and east of the Scots, the Picts occupied the rest of northern Britain. We know from written evidence that the Picts interacted extensively with their neighbors, but we know little of their n decades past, archaeologists several are spoken to this day. language, for they left no texts. After their incorporation into in search of clues to the ori- Moreover, since the seventh cen- the kingdom of Scotland in the ninth century, they appear to i gin of ethnic groups like the tury A.D. -
The Relationship Between Official National Languages and Regional and Minority Languages: Ireland
Pádraig Ó Riagáin The relationship between official national languages and regional and minority languages: Ireland Achoimre I gcaitheamh an naoú haois déag agus thús an fhichiú haois is i measc na n-aicmí feirmeoireachta ba bhoichte a d’fhaightí lucht labhartha na Gaeilge, go príomha, agus iad sna limistéir ab iargúlta laistigh den aicme sin. Ainneoin dinimic an mheatha, ó thaobh líon na gcainteoirí Gaeilge de, a bheith seanbhunaithe, sheol an stát nua neamhspleách straitéis leathan teanga sa bhliain 1922 atá mar fhráma polasaí go dtí an lá inniu. Bhain an stát nua Éireannach leas as a chuid údaráis d’fhonn cur leis an luach siombalach, cultúrtha agus eacnamaíoch a bhain le líofacht sa Ghaeilge. In ainneoin an polasaí sin, is mó ná riamh na brúnna agus na deacrachtaí atá roimh líonraí scaipthe lucht labhartha na Gaeilge. Níl líonraí na Gaeilge sách mór ná sách cobhsaí, mar sin, le deimhniú go labhrófaí an Ghaeilge ar bhonn leathan go leor chun an chéad glúin dhátheangach eile a dheimhniú. Teacht slán is ea athbheochan. Ba mhar sin riamh é in Éirinn ó 1922 ar aghaidh. 1. Introduction Together with the related languages of Scottish Gaelic and Manx, Irish comprises the Goidelic group of insular Celtic languages. While it is clear that the language was brought to Ireland by sections of the Celtic peoples who migrated from mid-continen- tal Europe, a precise date for its introduction into Ireland cannot be established. How- ever, evidence from written records suggests that Irish was spoken on the island from at least the early centuries of the Christian era. -
Breton Patronyms and the British Heroic Age
Breton Patronyms and the British Heroic Age Gary D. German Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique Introduction Of the three Brythonic-speaking nations, Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, it is the Bretons who have preserved the largest number of Celtic family names, many of which have their origins during the colonization of Armorica, a period which lasted roughly from the fourth to the eighth centuries. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the Breton naming system and to identify the ways in which it is tied to the earliest Welsh poetic traditions. The first point I would like to make is that there are two naming traditions in Brittany today, not just one. The first was codified in writing during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and it is this system that has given us the official hereditary family names as they are recorded in the town halls and telephone directories of Brittany. Although these names have been subjected to marked French orthographic practices, they reflect, in a fossilized form, the Breton oral tradition as it existed when the names were first set in writing over 400 years ago. For this reason, these names often contain lexical items that are no longer understood in the modern spoken language. We shall return to this point below. The second naming system stems directly from the oral tradition as it has come down to us today. Unlike the permanent hereditary names, it is characterized by its ephemeral, personal and extremely flexible nature. Such names disappear with the death of those who bear them. -
INTRODUCTION Galloway 1986
INTRODUCTION Galloway 1986 The Annual Conference of the Scottish Society for Northern Studies has become something of an institution. The Society exists to foster links, historical and contemporary, between Scotland and the Scandinavian world. The Conference has taken on a life of its own and functions both as an annual social event and as a local history travelling roadshow. At its best it provides a forum where amateur and professional can meet, relax and speculate across a wide range of disciplines - history, geography, archaeology, place-name studies and others. When the Conference takes place in the Gaidhealtachd, as in Benbecula in 1985, it functions as a ceilidh in the best and widest sense, and draws inspiration from the Gaelic tradition. But the Scandinavian credentials of the Society are never forgotten. In the Northern Isles and in Caithness they are very much to the fore. In other parts of Scotland Scandinavian connections can be uncovered where least expected. However, the reverse is also true: the rumour of Scandinavian influence can prove to be much exaggerated. Such was the case with Galloway. The belief that the Vikings once played a key role in Galloway is widespread, fostered by such local historians as M'Kerlie, Wentworth Huyshe, W. G. Collingwood and John E. Robertson. At the Conference, however, speaker after speaker searched for Scandinavian influence, but could find little or none. The Society's past president, Ted Cowan, now professor of History at Guelph, Ontario, launched a particularly telling attack on the Scandinavian hypothesis, the swash-buckling delivery of which did not entirely mask its scholarly credentials. -
New Approaches to Brittonic Historical Linguistics Abstracts
New Approaches to Brittonic Historical Linguistics Abstracts Gwen Awbery Aberystwyth University / University of Wales Trinity St David Historical dialectology and Welsh churchyards Memorial inscriptions on gravestones are an important source of evidence for dialect variation in Welsh in the past. They exist in truly enormous numbers, are found throughout the country, commemorating people from all walks of life, and the tradition of using Welsh in this context goes back to the mid-eighteenth century. Most revealing are the poems which form part of the inscription. Some have rhyme schemes which work only with very specific features of dialect; others are slightly garbled versions of poems by well-known writers, where the influence of dialect features can explain the changes made to the original. Since the location and date of each inscription is known, it appears possible to build up a picture of where and when these dialect features were in use. The situation is not totally straightforward, however, and there are inevitably problems which arise in dealing with this material, ranging from the need for extensive and time- consuming fieldwork, to the difficulties of reading inscriptions on worn and damaged stones, and the disconcerting tendency of some poems to show up in unexpected locations. Bernhard Bauer Maynooth University Close encounters of the linguistic kind: the Celtic glossing tradition The project Languages in Exchange: Ireland and her Neighbours (LeXiN) aims for a better understanding of the linguistic contacts between British Celtic and Irish in the early medieval period. The focal point of the investigation forms the “Celtic glossing tradition”, especially the vernacular glosses on the computistic works of Bede and on the Latin grammar of Priscian. -
The Celtic Languages in Contact
Late Modern Irish and the Dynamics of Language Change and Language Death Feargal Ó Béarra (National University of Ireland, Galway) 1. Introduction My comments are informed by the experience of the last 20-25 years, as someone who grew up in the Cois Fharraige Gaeltacht in south Conamara, and who has seen the language retreat further and further westwards and inwards as the Gaeltacht continues to dwindle. In these few years, I have also seen the last remaining pockets of Gaeltacht in areas such as Bearna, Na Forbacha, Mionlach, Leamhchoill, and Maigh Cuilinn all but disappear, never to return. There are few things in Ireland as complicated or as controversial as the language question. We agree on very little. Be that as it may, I believe we can all agree that the form of Irish spoken today is not that of 25 years ago, for example. What passes for Irish today would not have passed for Irish 25 years ago. Others will say to me that what passed for Irish 25 years ago would not have passed for Irish in 1958 when An Caighdeán Oifigiúil1 was published and so on. Of course, this should come as no surprise to us as languages are always in a state of flux. In most cases, except in the case of contemporary Irish, as I hope to show in this paper, language change is a fairly natural and unconscious devel- opment which forms an essential part of the life cycle of any language. Each generation creates its own version of the language it acquires from the previous generation. -
3. Celtic Languages
Freie Universität Berlin Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften Appropriating New Technology for Minority Language Revitalization: The Welsh Case DISSERTATION zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doktor der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) Vorgestellt von Mourad Ben Slimane Appropriating New Technology for Minority Language Revitalization Gutachter: 1. Prof. Dr. Gerhard Leitner 2. Prof. Dr. Carol W. Pfaff Disputation: Berlin, den 27.06.2008 2 Appropriating New Technology for Minority Language Revitalization Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been written without the continuous support as well as great help of my dear Professor Gerhard Leitner. His expertise, understanding, and patience added considerably to my research experience. I would like to express my deep gratitude for him because it was his persistence and direction that encouraged me to complete my Ph.D. My special thanks goes out to Professor Carol W. Pfaff for giving me the opportunity to do a seminar on endangered languages at the John F. Kennedy Institute, which has been very useful for my thesis and professional experience. Thanks to Professor Peter Kunsmann, PD Dr.Volker Gast, and Dr. Florian Haas for kindly accepting to serve on my defense committee. I would also like to thank the Freie University of Berlin for the financial support that it provided me with to finish my research. The Welsh Language Board has also been very supportive in offering me recent literature on the development of Information Technology during my visit to Wales. Thanks to Grahame Davies from BBC Wales who provided me with many insights at different points in time with regard to Welsh new media and related matters.