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> Yr Iaith, about the Welsh language
gwenynen 
Posted: 06-Feb-2006, 02:16 PM
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I wasn't sure if what I want to say fits any of the existing threads, so I decided to start a new one.

I read an excellent article in Jan/Feb issue of the Cambria magazine. It's by Siôn T. Jobbins about the legacy of the notorious Blue Books. What's caught my attention was his suggestion, what'd happen if all the Welsh who are concerned for the future of the Welsh language decide to speak only Welsh whether he's fluent or just a learner. It'll be quite interesting to see the result.

If I ever go to Wales, I want to try it; I'd speak only Welsh or Japanese. smile.gif


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Weithiau, mae'r ateb i'n problemau o dan ein trwynau, dim ond bod angen i ni gymryd cam yn ôl ac edrych eto. - Stuart Kerner
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Antwn 
Posted: 06-Feb-2006, 06:22 PM
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Well Gwen, if you feel that way, you can always post just in Welsh here for practice! (hint hint) Forgive me for rubbing it in ...but seriously though, lets post in the Advanced Welsh (Cymraeg yn unig)...maybe start some new subjects there! We have a place to use only Welsh here and now.

Cymraeg Gynta! clap.gif

Mr. Jobbins is right on one point, the way the language will be preserved is if people choose to use it so much that it becomes an integral part of daily life everywhere.


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Yr hen Gymraeg i mi,
Hon ydyw iaith teimladau,
Ac adlais i guriadau
Fy nghalon ydyw hi
--- Mynyddog
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gwenynen 
Posted: 07-Feb-2006, 08:55 AM
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Sure, go ahead, Antwn! I can't think of a good starter for the Advanced thred at the moment, but we'll follow your lead if you post something.

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Antwn 
Posted: 08-Feb-2006, 04:43 PM
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Okee dokee...got to think of something myself !!!
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austaff 
Posted: 10-Feb-2006, 10:15 PM
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lets give it a whirl I will post something there and perhaps we can all join in from there please feel free to correct anything I have thats wrong because thats how we learn thumbs_up.gif
so lets go gang


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Siarls 
Posted: 19-Sep-2006, 06:42 AM
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By the way, did you guys know that you are learning the oldest surviving language in Europe?

It's also the native language of the island of Great Britain. English is a foreign tongue on our island! The proof is in place names. Hundreds of names across England and Scotland are Welsh in origin, a few examples are

Dover (south east England)
Carlise (north England near Scottish border)
Glasgow
Cumbria (region in north east England; note the similarity with the word Cymru)
Even the words Eire (Ireland in Irish), Alba (Scotland in Gaelic) and Gaelic are said to be Welsh in origin.

The first piece of recorded Welsh literature was written in south west Scotland.


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Gwlad, gwlad, pleidiol wyf i´m gwlad
Tra môr yn fur
I'r bur hoff bau
O bydded i´r heniaith barhau
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Siarls 
Posted: 19-Sep-2006, 06:44 AM
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Carlisle* is the correct spelling.

Of course, you can see the Welsh in the word. Cardiff, Carnarvon, Carmarthen...
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Antwn 
Posted: 30-Sep-2006, 12:52 PM
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Have you seen this show on S4C Siarls? You have to have broadband I think to watch on your puter

http://www.s4c.co.uk/bandllydan/c_index.shtml
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Siarls 
Posted: 12-Oct-2006, 07:44 AM
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I have just come from a History of the Italian Language lecture. One of my modules this year.
We were looking at the family of Indo-European Languages and how eventually they became the individual languages of Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Quite distant from English, Welsh is not far away from Latin and Italian.
This gives us a list of similarities between the Indo-European languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indo-...-European_roots

According to Sir William Jones who was of the English colonising classes in the Indian subcontinent, there are too many simlarities to be coincidental. Since then, the theories have been developed and even a reconstruction of the original Proto-Indo-European Language from which all of our languages (except Gwen's Japanese of course) descend.

This is a great site for the History of the Welsh Language
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/sites/language/

I do also have a handout from my lecture with a family tree model for the Indo-European languages (Schleider and Lehmann). This family tree shows the closeness of the Celtic and Italic languages, and the distance from Germanic and Slavic languages.
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Antwn 
Posted: 12-Oct-2006, 12:47 PM
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Hi Siarls. Yeah, I can see the Latin influence in Welsh in words like pont, caru/cariad and I'm sure there are many others. Is this closeness just in the vocabulary? I can understand Welsh absorbing Latin words from when the Romans were in Britain, but there doesn't seem to be much grammatical similarity between Latin and Welsh to me. What did your lecture say about that? Welsh seems to have some very distinct properties like SVO word order, the use of possessive pronouns (ei weld e/see him) and of course initial consonant lenition, which is characteristic of the Celtic family. To my knowledge, these traits are missing in other IE languages. SVO word order is the least represented among world languages, so I've read - though every configuration occurs.

Proto IE is interesting. I have a book on languages at home which has a passage in PIE - which is an extrapolated language basically, but its interesting to look at. The longer a language has to develop in relative isolation the more complex it becomes. Some languages that have retained a great number of inflections are supposed to be closer to IE than those like English which have lost much of theirs.

English is such a hodgepodge language. In a seminar I heard it was mentioned that English is the only IE language to have lost its grammatical gender. At about the same time (during the Viking conquest when the Vikings stayed) it also lost its acusative endings and reflexive markers. This was the first big shift in English prior to the Norman invasion.

Its all interesting stuff. Makes we want to get in a time machine just to hear what was spoken and what it sounded like. I'd really like to go back and see how close Brythonic was to Welsh, and what Pictish was like.

I'd like to learn some Slavic languages someday, though I hear they're very complex. Czech has 9 case declensions I believe and Russian is also complex. Despite the fact that people complain about pronouncing Welsh, I never had a problem with it (except rolling the r) but I might with Czech and Russian.
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Siarls 
Posted: 16-Oct-2006, 02:45 AM
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Well, I think my lecturer said that Russian had 8 case declensions - so have fun, Antwn!!!

I have looked at some Brythonic. Abona "river". I can't remember other words we were given but wikipedia has a good article on Brythonic languages.

Grammar was not discussed in the lecture. I can't find any information on grammatical links between Indo-European languages - they only give lexical examples. I shall ask my lecturer, though.
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