Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 July 7

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July 7

Loans from Welsh in Old English

Were Welsh words with /ɬ/, /r̥/, and /n̥/ loaned into Old English (possibly also early Middle English) with /hl/, /hr/, and /hn/? What about loans in the other direction?

(Somewhat inspired by 40bus' question about h-clusters.) Double sharp (talk) 09:21, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if there were enough Celtic loans into Old English for us to know.

Welsh ll came in later as fl, at least in 'Floyd' and 'flummery'. — kwami (talk) 10:49, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

We have a List of English words of Welsh origin, which as — kwami says above, are remarkably few considering that the English and Welsh have lived together for more than a thousand years. Alansplodge (talk) 11:28, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Swedish words of Finnish origin are of a similar magnitude... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:20, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I was afraid of that. :( But surely names of Welsh people and settlements must have been recorded by the English? Double sharp (talk) 11:44, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

They were and are recorded and used, since Welsh is a living language, but they did and do not generally give rise to words in the vocabulary of English. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 151.227.226.178 (talk) 15:24, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, yes of course. I was thinking of the period when Old English still had those consonant clusters.

So, just thinking of a prominent Welsh person from the medieval period whose name would've contained /ɬ/: surely Llywelyn the Great must've been mentioned in some contemporary English texts? How was his name spelled in those texts? Double sharp (talk) 15:31, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

400 years later, Shakespeare included a character in Henry V called Fluellen, which WP describes as "an Anglicised version of Llywelyn". Turner Street (talk) 12:10, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's like kwami's examples of Floyd and flummery. By then /hl/ did not exist in English, so /fl/ was perceived as closest to /ɬ/. What I was wondering was whether /hl/ was ever used to borrow Welsh words when that consonant cluster existed in English – but as indicated by kwami's latest response in this thread, the question may not be answerable due to the small size of the Old English corpus. Double sharp (talk) 17:02, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Alansplodge's example of Latin "Lhein" below is suggestive. This was very early Middle English, so perhaps the sound still occurred, or was remembered. If hw had become MdE wh by this time, we might expect hl to have become lh as well. So perhaps this is indirect evidence for what you're looking for?

Note that Llanddewi didn't get the same treatment. Perhaps /hl/ was only maintained in stressed syllables? I'm just speculating here. How important would English phonotactics or orthography be (if there even was an English orthography at the time for hl to have become lh -- unless that happened at the end of the OE era?) to a Welshman writing in Latin when the court language was Norman? It's likely someone has analyzed this somewhere. — kwami (talk) 19:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

If the spelling change from "hw" to "wh" reflected any phonetic change (not entirely clear to me), it would be from a cluster [xw] to a single sound [ʍ], not any reordering. Another motivation could have been just to assimilate the spelling to digraphs with "h" in second position (sh, ch, th etc). In Scotland, the spelling "quh" was occasionally used... AnonMoos (talk) 19:43, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I just meant as an orthographic change. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Okay, Rhyl gives some examples of how Middle English writers tried to represent Welsh /r̥/ around 1300: Hulle, Hul, Ryhull. But I'm not sure if Middle English had already lost /hr/ by then. Those examples are referenced to Owen and Morgan's Dictionary of the Place-names of Wales (2007), so that might be a good place to start researching this question. Now if only I had a copy. Double sharp (talk) 15:40, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Gerald of Wales, writing in Latin in 1191 (for a French-speaking English audience) in Itinerarium Cambriae or Journey through Wales, for example has Llanddewi Brefi as "Landewi Brevi" and Llŷn as "Lhein". Not sure if this helps. Gerald was presumably able to speak Welsh, but English was not the language of geographers or historians at this time. Alansplodge (talk) 19:02, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I think we're looking for something earlier. Presumably Old English would've maintained the distinctions that were available to it. The problem is attestation: the surviving Old English corpus is quite small (a single person can -- and does -- study the entire thing!), so it's possible that such names do not occur, or occur with such low frequency that we can't be sure if the surviving tokens are representative.

But Lhein is certainly suggestive. — kwami (talk) 21:21, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Nothing to do with Welsh, but proto-Germanic "hringaz" was borrowed into Finnish as "rengas"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Brittonic words for 18

And continuing the Celtic theme of my previous question: what's the history of the factor-names for 18? I'm referring to Breton triwec'h "three sixes" and Welsh deunaw "two nines". Cornish etek seems to be regular additive 8 + 10 instead, and English Wiktionary tells me that Breton and Welsh both have (presumably rarer? they're not on the main Wiktionary page listing translations of wikt:eighteen) regular alternatives (even if we restrict ourselves to the traditional vigesimal system for Welsh). Double sharp (talk) 16:00, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

The book "Lingo" by Gaston Dorren has a brief discussion of the irregularity of Breton number words, where 78 + 59 is three-six-and-three-twenty plus nine-and-half-hundred. He also says that Welsh (unlike Breton) has regular forms for calculating with, as opposed to the irregular forms for counting. Some modern languages of India also have a rather complicated system of sub-100 number words... AnonMoos (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Sino-Xenic toponyny

What are some factors that have traditionally played a part in determining whether places in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam use native toponyms or Chinese-derived toponyms? Primal Groudon (talk) 18:25, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Seoul traditionally had no Chinese characters corresponding to its name, unlike many other Korean placenames of any importance... AnonMoos (talk) 18:39, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Although the names of Japanese places like Fukuoka, Kumamoto and Nagasaki are written in Japanese with kanji (福岡; 熊本; 長崎), the names themselves are generally Japanese. The characters for Nagasaki are read in Chinese like Chángqí (Hanyu Pinyin romanization).  --Lambiam 09:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

In Hokkaido, we find place-names like Sapporo 札幌 or Furano 富良野 which are originally Ainu, but were adapted phonetically into Japanese and then given kanji with the appropriate sound. Double sharp (talk) 10:05, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

My focus for this question is on the etymology of the toponyms, not the script used to write them. Primal Groudon (talk) 19:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This is a very interesting question! I was able to find online a text called “Standardisation of place names in countries influenced by the chinese writing system” by Hiroshi Tanabe. It goes into detail about it. I’m quoting it here: (Redacted) 82.48.30.149 (talk) 13:45, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

"Kanji" is the Japanese name for Chinese characters, in China it's "hanzi", in Korea "hanja" and in Vietnamese "chữ Hán". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

It probably depends on the fact that the author is Japanese (it was a quote from him). Just a question: why was the quote redacted? --195.62.160.60 (talk) 15:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

The original PDF of Tanabe and Watanabe's document is here. (It's from the institution of one of the authors, so it should be fine.) Double sharp (talk) 15:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

It was perceived as a copyright violation, without giving credit to the original authors of the paper, I believe. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

wp:deny
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
(edit conflict) Unlike Wikipedia content, where attribution is sufficient, copyright may prevent reproduction unless permission is obtained. 92.29.246.121 (talk) 16:46, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah. When I said "it should be fine", I meant "it should be fine to link". Certainly not to quote at as much length as it had been quoted before redaction. Double sharp (talk) 06:41, 12 July 2024 (UTC)