V Tree
A large V shaped pine tree on the Antony estate near Torpoint...
Seaton Beach
Located at the bottom of the Seaton River valley this sand and shingle beach is popular with families. At low tide it joins up with Downderry around the headland...
Seaton River
The Seaton River as it flows out of the valley and through the village of the same name...
Portwrinkle
Looking down over the one time fishing village of Portwrinkle. In the background is the start of Whitsand Bay as it stretches 4 miles down the Rame Peninsula...
P. S. Well, this computer illiterate finally fooled around long enough to learn that I never changed my e-mail address when I moved a year ago. I surely thought I had done that. Now I know the answer to my problem of not receiving notifications.
Bardh, in answer to your question, there is an article in Barddas magazine, Tachwedd/Rhagfyr 2007 by the editor in which he talks about several Cornish poetry books. He also quotes "Y'n Skiber" and follows it with a Welsh translation.
Later, he quotes "An Gegin Boeth" and comments, "a oes angen cyfieithu" (is it needed to translate). Of course, it is not as he shows with the Welsh translation for "The Warm Kitchen". The similarity between the two languages is striking.
I would be quite happy to post these little penillion but I am not certain that is legal. Copyright, you know.
Hazel - if you're struck by the similarities between Welsh and Cornish, you may be interested in the background to "an" and "y(r)".
Both come from the proto-Celtic word *Sindos, meaning, approximately, "this". It's a common feature of Indo-European languages to develop definite articles from demonstratives - the same happened with Latin ille and iste, which gave rise to the definite articles in the modern Romance languages. But I digress.
*Sindos, in the process of development, lost its final syllable and changed the "s" to an "h" (that's why you have Afon Hafren and we have the river Severn, both from Sabrina). This left *hind. The initial 'h' was then lost, leaving "in(d)".
You can see that we're now very close to the Cornish "an". But whence the Welsh "y(r)"? Well, Breton gives a clue. It actually has different forms of the article for different phonological environments - an, al and ar. It is probable that it had variable form in the common ancestral form of Cornish, Welsh and Breton. Welsh standardised on the -r form, keeping the vowel as "i", spelling it "y", and then later changing the pronunciation to the modern obscure sound. Cornish standardised on the "-n" form (which is the actual underlying one, from *Sindos), and Breton kept the variable forms.
Karl... that was one of the most interesting postings I've ever seen on this website... pity there aren't more people like you around who can stun us with amazing information like that. Happy New Year to you.
I got interested in Cornish because of my interest in British languages generally, and because I found an old Caradar Cornish Simplified (not well named!) in a second-hand bookshop in Wallingford. My copy is filled with pencilled in notes of Welsh cognates and translations. Mind you, a number of the cognates might be cognates because Jenner and Nance nicked them from Breton to fill up gaps. IIRC, the policy was to create a Cornish form if the word existed in both Welsh and Breton.
I get obsessed with questions like "why is the definite article so different in Cornish and Welsh" and plug on until I find an answer. Although the languages are noticeably similar, I'm told by Welsh speakers that they can make little or no sense of spoken Cornish, and a knowledge of Middle Welsh and ideally Old Welsh is needed to make headway with the written language. One Welsh speaker told me it was a bit like looking at Dutch or Frisian as an English speaker - you feel like it should make sense to you, but it doesn't quite.
Karl, that is indeed a mignificent education. It is a bit early in the morning here for me to absorb it all but I shall return. You mentioned Breton. A friend recently told me that Breton is even closer to Welsh than Cornish. I've not seen as much Breton; so, cannot say. Nevertheless, I do enjoy knowing the sources of words and I have a great love of languages, period. Diolch yn fawr/Thank you very much. Hazel
Not quite. Breton is closer to Cornish than Welsh is. If Cornish and Breton are brothers, Welsh is a cousin. By comparison, Irish would be a fourth cousin once removed.
Theoretically, Breton and Cornish are both equally different from Welsh. In reality, Cornish and Welsh are probably closer to each other than Breton and Welsh. This is because Cornish and Welsh speakers both also speak English, and so can understand English loanwords (which are common in both) even if the same word isn't borrowed in their own language (e.g. you'll understand 'Wolcum' for 'Croeso' because you know the English word "Welcome"). Breton's loan words come rather more from French. If you know French, then Breton might be easier to understand than if you don't.
There are apocryphal tales of Breton onion sellers being understood in South Wales. I take this with a pinch of salt. However, that Bretons were able to quickly learn Welsh I can believe.
Karl, I shall have to confirm this "not-apocryphal" story. I have a friend who grew up speaking Welsh and he tells of the onion sellers coming to their town. He says he was indeed able to understand them. I take your point about the French connection but first-hand confirmation holds water.
I once read an interesting autobiography in which a former Breton onion seller recalled that he always thought his command of Welsh was rather good - until he realised that Welsh speakers believed that it was Breton. That may be the source of the myth that Welsh speakers can understand spoken Breton easily. They normally can't.
I'm sure they did understand them. Probably because they were speaking Welsh rather than Breton. As I said, it would be easy for a Breton to learn Welsh - much easier than for an English speaker, anyway. I also think it quite likely that a Breton speaker would be able to learn which Breton words and constructions were understood by Welsh speakers and which weren't. Breton as spoken in Brittany is quite different from Welsh. They have had 1500 years of separate development.
The real test is to go to some Breton language pages, download the sound files and see whether you can understand them. Text is a bit misleading because you can be thrown by the orthography.
That's probably about it. Breton speakers speaking Welsh with a strong Breton accent. Welsh speakers, knowing that Breton was related to Welsh, might well think they were hearing and understanding Breton. It's a bit like confusing a strong Glaswegian accent with actual Scots.
Now, I'll agree there but that is true in the language I do know fairly well - Welsh. I can read it quite well, write it fairly well but I cannot understand a thing they say most of the time. Hearing is so different from seeing. Yes?
You understand written Welsh because you're familiar with the orthography. You might be thrown by Breton because you're not. To put it another way, Breton and Welsh might look more different than they are (or less) because the orthography is different. For example, you might get misled by words containing "ch", because that doesn't represent the same sound as the Welsh "ch" - which, IIRC, is represented by "c'h" in Breton.
Pokorny's post is in Breton. If you can't follow it, it's pretty good evidence that your Welsh knowledge isn't much help in understanding Breton, which is what would be expected. Welsh, Cornish and Breton are not generally considered mutually intelligible at all.
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