Talk:Old Welsh

Requested merge

Please see Talk:Welsh language regarding a potential merge with British language (Celtic).--Mais oui! 14:30, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

periods of Welsh

Linguists usually classify 4 periods of Welsh as follows:

Early Welsh is considered to exist from the time that it definitely separated from Brythonic (which cannot be dated at all accurately for lack of written evidence but which is guessed to be the 6th or 7th century) to the end of the 8th century.

Old Welsh is considered to run from the beginning of the 9th century to the end of the 11th century

Middle Welsh is considered to run from the early 12th century to the 14th century and is followed by Modern Welsh.

The article on Old Welsh appears to cover the period of both Early Welsh and Old Welsh.

Ref: Datblygiad yr iaith Gymraeg, Henry Lewis, 1931, chapter 8 (in Welsh)

Lloffiwr 13:22, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Mistranslations

I don't know advanced welsh, so I may be wrong; Brawd isn't Judgement but it is Brother. I shall change this unless anyone can provide sufficient evidence otherwise. Diolch - Twicga — Preceding unsigned comment added by Twicga (talk • contribs) 11:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

This has already been changed back, but in case you were wondering, there are two Welsh nouns "brawd". The one you're thinking of is masculine, with a plural "brodyr", and means "brother" or "friar". The other is feminine, with a plural "brodiau", means "judgement" or "verdict", and is rarely found outside forms such as "Dydd Brawd" (the Day of Judgement, as we have here) and "brawdlys" (assize court). 𝐨𝐱𝐲𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐵𝑈𝑇𝐴𝑍𝑂𝑁𝐸 ⓊⓉ 17:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Surrexit/Surexit

Newidiais "surexit" i "surrexit" er mwyn dilyn orgraff safonol y Lladin. Wedyn, edrychais ar luniau o'r llawysgrif, ac mae'r gair wedi'i gamsillafu yno. A ddylid ei newid fel camgymeriad dibwys, ynteu'i gadw fel y mae yn y gwreiddiol? 𝐨𝐱𝐲𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐵𝑈𝑇𝐴𝑍𝑂𝑁𝐸 ⓊⓉ 20:48, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Well i gadw'r orgraff fel oedd hi yn y gwreiddiol/better to keep the spelling as it was in the original. garik (talk) 17:53, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Orthography for Old Welsh

Is totally missing here and at Welsh orthography. I came here looking for the odd letters I came across in the Laws of Hywel Dda: one looks like a stylized v or b & the other like a stylized 2. I assume they're some form of wynn and yogh but (a) they're unmentioned here; (b) they're rather different from the forms of wynn and yogh used here and may be different; (c) links to font support for them is missing.

Anyone knowledgeable enough, kindly go see the letters I'm talking about and let me know here and at my talk page what they are. — LlywelynII 07:25, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Found it. They're included in the Latin Extended Additional Unicode block:

LATIN SMALL LETTER MIDDLE-WELSH LL (U+1EFB)

LATIN SMALL LETTER MIDDLE-WELSH V (U+1EFD)

LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH LOOP (U+1EFF)

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER MIDDLE-WELSH LL (U+1EFA)

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER MIDDLE-WELSH V (U+1EFC)

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Y WITH LOOP (U+1EFE)

Now, any idea how to offer support? Everything in the LEA block displays for me except these three... =\ — LlywelynII 08:27, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

According the introduction to Laws of Hywel Dda the wynn-like character was "used for u or v but never w". From this I think we can say that the character was used for any U-vowels or /v/, rather like how Latin ⟨u⟩ was used, but could not be used for /w/ (which Latin ⟨u⟩ could be used for, so maybe Old Welsh already used ⟨w⟩ or something else for /w/ at this point. – Dyolf87 (talk) 13:01, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

"Ein Oes Oesau"

This is of little importance, but "ein oes oesau" does not exactly mean "for ever and ever". Literally it means "for ages to come" or something to that degree. I thought I should post it here rather than just add it in without checking to see if I'm correct or not. --ConCass (talk) 23:34, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Well if we're talking literal translations, oes oesau means "age of ages". However, Geiriadur y Prifysgol lists yn oes oesau and yn oes oesoedd as meaning (something like) "for ever and ever" since the 9th century. Certainly that's how the phrase is used now (although it's not much used now outside the Lord's Prayer), and I'm happy to trust Geiriadur y Prifysgol as a reliable source for older usage. garik (talk) 14:11, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

By the way, I believe the ``in of ``in ois oisau is an archaic spelling of yn, not ein. And I should add: If you have a reliable source that gives "for ages to come" as a more accurate translation of the phrase in the surrexit memorandum, please do contribute it! It may well be that the meaning of the expression has changed in force over time, whatever the University of Wales might say. garik (talk) 17:49, 21 September 2013 (UTC) edited by garik (talk) 17:56, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Phonology

This page is looking pretty sparse. In particular, I've come here several times hoping to find someone has added a phonology section. Is there anyone who cares enough about this page and has the time and expertise to do this? I'm not personally knowledgeable enough to get one started myself. --Scriptor Nemorensis (talk) 19:17, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Nothing on grammar?

From the 'surexit memorandum', it becomes immediately clear that Old Welsh already lost its case inflection, or at least largely so. If you look at related and nearby languages, this seems to have happened remarkably early. Shouldn't the article mention that? Steinbach (talk) 11:22, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Even more interestingly, it completely cut off its former case endings (compared to Old Irish reworking its cases with stem changes and altered endings) as opposed to the Romance languages which preserved to some extent the old case endings, particularly in regards to gender. The reasons for this are obscure, and apparently haven't been significantly discussed academically, along with why the majority of languages in the major part of the former Western Roman Empire appear to have rapidly lost their case endings from fairly complex systems in at least the 4th century to greatly reduced systems as of the 7th century, with only Old Irish by that period apparently maintaining an Ancient Greek-level of declension, especially considering the irregular preservation of case systems in the Germanic, Slavic, Greek, and Albanian languages. Oddly, it seems the languages with the least inter-lingual contact with Vulgar Latin are the best preserved in this respect. Andecombogios 20:06, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. This explanation remains unsatisfactory to some extent (why was British, a Celtic language only distantly related to Latin, loss its inflection so readily under Vulgar Latin influence, and why didn't the Germanic languages get affected?), but it is universally accepted that major language changes are usually the result of intense language contact, especially when they spread so quickly.

Old Welsh and Middle Welsh share many features and there's very little to tell them apart. Maybe it would be better if we had one article for Old and Middle Welsh. – Dyolf87 (talk) 15:25, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

That's... not true? Old Welsh and Middle Welsh phonology are quite different from each other, and the grammar is strikingly dissimilar. Have a read up on Evans' A Grammar of Middle Welsh. Andecombogios (talk) 00:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Phonology

"At this stage, the use of ll to represent the lateral fricative /ɬ/ (liuit > Llywyd) (...) had not been developed." But was it present in the first place? The sound /ɬ/ is absent from Cornish and Breton, so it's likely to have developed after the Brythonic languages split. Also, its presence in modern Welsh is closely related to the soft mutation, which turns /ɬ/ into a plain /l/. The article already tells us that mutation was not represented orthographically. This means that it was probably in an early stage at most. So is there any reason to assume that it occurred in old Welsh? Steinbach (talk) 15:06, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

My understanding is that /ɬ/ was a development in Middle Welsh (where it could be spelt ⟨ll⟩ or ⟨lh⟩. The Mutation of /ɬ/ > /l/ represents a blocking of the change of all initial /l/ words to /ɬ/, being in intervocalic position when after a preposition, pronoun or other particles – same with /r̥/ > /r/. I don't think /ɬ/ or /r̥/ existed in Old Welsh. – Dyolf87 (talk) 12:47, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

EDIT: Further to my last I found the following in a book called An Introduction to Early Welsh by John Strachan, published in 1909: "(f) The voiceless l is in O[ld] W[elsh] written l at the beginning of a word, e.g. lau 'hand' = Mid.W. llaw, elsewhere ll, e.g. mellhionou gl. violas. In Mid. W. it is in all positions written ll or ỻ. For the voiceless r = Mod.W. rh. Early Welsh has no special symbol; it is written r." (Quoted exactly save for a few symbols which had to be replaced for ease of reading.) So it seems that /ɬ/ did exist during the Old Welsh period, or at least it was believed to have in 1909. – Dyolf87 (talk) 15:01, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

This is all just speculation really, but Strachan’s context would be the inconsistent, often non-existant marking of mutations in Old Irish. The inconsistencies, later usage and grammatical tracts show that the mutations were there though. Textual evidence is very important, but I don’t think you can easily use the lack of orthography alone to argue that the mutation didn’t exist. ⚜ Moilleadóir ✍ 06:21, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

That's a little backwards, isn't it? 'Lack of evidence is not an argument for lack of evidence'. Why would one ever treat the presence of mutations in Old Welsh as a null hypothesis? It is an assumption, and requires evidencing. Orthography is primary evidence, later developments are secondary, so if the orthography doesn't show mutations, that makes the presence of mutations less likely. Making analogies from Old Irish is also not appropriate, as Goidelic and Brythonic had become separate language families by ~800 CE. I also do not think that a text source from 1909 can be considered authoritative over 100 years later, especially given that in 1909 the Neogrammarian hypothesis was in its infant stages. I think the best solution is to delete anything speculative. There does appear to be a medial /ɬ/ in the Surrexit memorandum for gelhi (Gelli), so there is evidence that it was already present in Old Welsh, just not for initial consonants yet. Andecombogios (talk) 23:42, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Phonology (again)

I'm not sure I like Willis as a sole source for Old Welsh phonology. He makes very poor distinction between Old and Middle Welsh, treating them as generally analogous. He cites both Schrijver (1995) and Jackson (1952) for his phonological section, yet the piece by Schrijver he cites is in near-total opposition to Jackson, and Willis includes phonological material that is in neither Schrijver nor Jackson but seem to be 'tribal wisdom' additions. Notably, the presence of voiceless nasals, which are not present according to Schrijver and are not fully developed in Old Welsh according to Jackson, and the presence of a voiceless /r/, which Evans (1962) states is not distinct from voiced /r/ in Middle Welsh. He also proposes that Old Welsh has /ɣ/ anywhere /g/ is elided in Middle or Modern Welsh, which I have not seen claimed elsewhere, and seems to be there purely as a post-hoc rationale for elision of /g/ in Welsh. Obviously, it is not necessary for a plosive to become a fricative before eliding (ex. the UK pronunciation of 'butter'). I would prefer to take an approach similar to the Welsh-language article and merely show the correspondences between Old Welsh forms and Modern Welsh outcomes, as Old Welsh phonology is a poorly-studied issue (given that our important papers on the matter are apparently one each from 1952, 1995, and 2009, and the 1995 is in heavy disagreement with the 1952). Andecombogios (talk) 01:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)