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Monty Says Something in Welsh | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 57 of 76 16 November 2013 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, the question why languages evolve in this or that direction is rather philosophical and cannot really be answered. Linguists can only examine how languages change and if there are regularities explaining this process.
But, to make one point clear, I'm not saying "there is lenition because there was lenition", but rather "there is lenition because consonants were weakened between vowels which have later disappeared". This is, as tarvos pointed out, a rather common phonological process. Anyway, this is as close to why the consonants were weakened as we can get and, in my opinion, a rather satisfactory explanation for the existence of today's consonant mutations in the Celtic languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4597 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 58 of 76 18 November 2013 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Very interesting information. This makes me want to get back to Welsh, as well as delving
into Old Irish! Thank you both! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4700 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 59 of 76 18 November 2013 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
The lenition process is a how, the why is that lenition makes it easier for people to pronounce certain words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7149 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 60 of 76 20 November 2013 at 7:08am | IP Logged | |||||
I just saw this comic strip on Scandinavia and the World and immediately thought of your log, Montmorency.
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4821 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 61 of 76 20 November 2013 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks Chung :-)
English people often think that Welsh has no vowels, which is of course incorrect, but it does look a bit that way at first. After some googling I found a sufficient number of academic papers (and I probably had only scratched the surface) to make me realise that the subject of mutation in Celtic languages would keep conference rooms full of historical linguists happily occupied for weeks, so my thoughts about it were obviously rather superficial. The ideas that Josquin put forward seem consistent with some of the papers I skimmed through, and seem to make sense. Changing the subject slightly, although mutations still come into it, I've been interested to discover that possessive pronouns and object pronouns seem to work in pretty much the same way, if not identically. Taking the verb "caru", "to love": "dw i'n dy garu di" - "I love you". caru has soft-mutated to garu. "dw i'n ei charu hi" - "I love her" - charu has aspirate-mutated The noun "gwaith" - "work" "dy waith di" - "your work". Note the soft mutation (which in this case means losing the "g"), and the same pronoun(s) as in "I love you". In the case of nouns, the second pronoun ("di" in the case of "your") is often dropped, unless it needs to be emphasised. I'm not sure if this also happens with verbs, but if so, I think it's less common. I haven't mastered all of the various pronoun forms yet, so there are probably more subtleties yet to come. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 62 of 76 21 November 2013 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One minor correction to what I said earlier:
The beginning of intial mutations was not in Proto-Celtic, but somewhere between Primitive Irish and Old Irish, or between Primitive Welsh and Old Welsh respectively. That means the time of c. 500 AD. The continental Celtic languages didn't posess mutations, so it's interesting that both the Goidelic and the Brythonic languages developed them, as it seems, more or less independently from each other. I'm still reading on this topic, so I might come back with some more observations later. Edited by Josquin on 21 November 2013 at 8:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tahl Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4281 days ago 26 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Spanish, Finnish | Message 63 of 76 22 November 2013 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
Dropping the second pronoun happens both with nouns and verbs ("loving her," "her car," etc.), but in general is more common in more-formal Welsh, especially in writing. In spoken Welsh, having both pronouns in there helps the flow, somehow. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4821 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 64 of 76 24 November 2013 at 2:09am | IP Logged | |||||
Diolch, Tahl. At my level, it helps me if I use them (keep them in) every time. As you say, helps with the flow, or the rhythm (or both), perhaps. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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