Talk:Welsh language/Archive 5

Spelling reformed

Is it true that the spelling of Welsh used to be something similar to that of various Gaelics, but it was reformed? Perhaps around the time y beibl came out in early 17th C. The modern spelling is pretty much completely phonetic, which is a great boon and may explain why Welsh is the strongest Celtic language. TomRawlinson (talk) 17:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's true Old Welsh and Middle Welsh spelling was more erratic than Modern Welsh spelling. I don't know anything about when or how it became regularized, though. OW/MW spelling has a little in common with Old Irish spelling, in particular the use of the letters 〈p, t, c, d〉 to stand for the sounds [b, d, g, ð] in non-initial position (a practice probably adopted by the Irish from the Welsh), but there are also differences (Irish has never used the letter 〈k〉, which was quite common in OW/MW, nor has it ever used 〈u〉 to stand for [v] or 〈g〉 to stand for [ŋ], both of which were common in OW/MW – the word [cyfwng] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) "space" could have been spelled kyuwg in MW!). —Angr 19:14, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• "may explain why Welsh is the strongest Celtic language", I think that the "strongest" Celtic language, in terms of population who use it every day is Breton (500,000; cf Welsh at < 400,000). Pbhj (talk) 02:51, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Was Welsh spoken in North west England?? Furthermore, was N.W. England in wales??

• Was North-west England once part of Wales, or the Celtic lands. The are many places around North-west England with welsh names. e.g. Bryn, Parr, Ness e.t.c. There are also alot of Welsh methodist churches around the north-west. I have found many maps to prove that North-west England was in wales or the Celtic lands at some point not so long ago.[1], [2]
  • Welsh wasn't spoken in Northwest England, but the closely related Cumbrian language was. Even after it was extinct, well into the 19th century farmers in the area used words derived from Cumbrian to count sheep. Remember, all of England and Wales (and large parts of Scotland, maybe even all depending on what Pictish is) spoke Brythonic languages related to Welsh, Cornish and Breton up until the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the mid-5th century. And as your maps show, western England was still Celtic-speaking for at least a century or so afterward. (Still, I wouldn't call the 6th century AD "not so long ago"!) As for the Welsh Methodist churches, that's probably a coincidence, since Methodism wasn't invented until several centuries after Northwest England was entirely English-speaking. —Angr 16:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
    • There are chapels throughout England that still hold services in Welsh (although their numbers are dwindelling), but these were built to serve immigrant Welsh communities as opposed to a continued Welsh speaking population that pre-dated the existence of England. A lot of these are/were in Liverpool/Wirrall built around the turn of the 20th century, also in the English Midlands mid 20th century as people migrated there to work in the car building industries. A list might be interesting? --Rhyswynne (talk) 08:52, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
      • I agree with the gist of Angr's comments except that Old Welsh was spoken in the Celtic kingdoms going up North-West England and into Southern Scotland. The earliest surviving Welsh poetry of Aneirin and Taliesin concerns events in the North, including the Battle of Catraeth (Catterick?). When physical contact between Wales and the 'Old North' was hindered by encroachment from the East (Irish and Norse pressure from the West also played some part) the language developed separately into Welsh and 'Cumbric' (a linguists' term I believe). As to the North-West being part of Wales - well you are going well back into the age of mythology here - because you could choose to believe that 'King' Arthur did unite all the Celtic tribes of 'Britain' under one flag. Even then you couldn't have said that Rheged in the North-West was part of, say, Gwynedd in North Wales - they were separate kingdoms with a shared language. Modern Welsh historians have posed the question 'When Was Wales?' Lloffiwr (talk) 11:20, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Article becoming a portmanteau / trivialised?

This article appears to be holding a bit of excess baggage.

1. The prolog is too long, there are now 2 sections of statistics - prolog and the "status" section
2. I think it would help to separate off the linguistics from the other sections perhaps by putting the linguistics info under a major heading
3. The paragraph starting "Welsh is a living language ..." which goes into the intricacies of filing a Welsh Language Scheme and winning approval from the WLB should in my opinion be spun off to a separate article on the Welsh Language Act.
4. The notes concerning "quasi official language" are a bit hand-wavey, they should include a note that other languages are also used by the Assembly and Councils for publicity (Urdu, Mandarin, etc.) or simply be removed; in any case doesn't this sort of contradict the preceding paragraph.
5. Info about Welsh language on coinage is not really a point about the language, it's trivia in this article, put it in a "coins of the realm" article or whatever - if you have this you might as well note the use of the Prince of Wales feathers on the 2p, or mention that building in Cardiff Bay with the welsh words on the side.
6. As there's a "Welsh Medium Education" article the "Welsh in education" section should go into that and a succinct summary of the article placed here instead.
7. Popular culture section is naff, you may as well put Pobol Y Cwm and Fireman Sam in there too.
8. Ditto the Welsh in IT section it's not encyclopaedic IMHO. Pbhj (talk) 04:04, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

New section: Welsh for Adults?

There's a lot here about Welsh in school education, it even has a seperate article - I think there should at least be a mention about Welsh for Adults (that's the term used by the Welsh Assembly and I can't think of a better one). I'm interested in the subject myself as my wife learned Welsh as an adult through an Wlpan and then partly through work. I've recently started to teach it part-time in the evenings.

Finding current information such as numbers of dysgwyr (learners) and range of qualifications should not be too difficult, especially as there has been a re-organisation of the sector in the last 18 months by the Assembly, where Wales has been split into 6 Dedicated Language Centres in an attempt to achieve consistency. But I don't know where to start regarding historical info like where was the first courses held, either by an educational establishment or on a voluntry basis by orgnaisations like Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg or Plaid Cymru etc. Does anyone think it's a good idea, or can point me in the direction of books/studies?--Rhyswynne (talk) 15:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

A comparison with other regions that have taken government sponsored militant nationalistic pride in a minority language would be interesting. France in the early 90s was noted for it's attempts to maintain a "pure" language untouched by English language (le weekend and all that), but French is a global language. Is there any other region that goes to this trouble for a minority language though? Breton? Given the global economic climate you'd think Wales would be trying to re-skill rather than teach such an anachronism. Pbhj (talk) 00:59, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the constructive comments, your opinions are greatly appreciated.--Rhyswynne (talk) 07:41, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

You are the model of tact and diplomacy, sir. I might have responded to Pbhj somewhat less temperately. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:26, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Irrelevant discursus on French

Timeineurope, why do you keep restoring the footnote about counting in French? Not only is it speculative and unsourced, it has nothing to do with Welsh. This article is not the place for a discussion – long enough to be a stub itself! – about counting in all French dialects from Belgium to the Congo. —Angr 16:33, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I took it out. French is already mentioned in passing (as it should be) in the section about numbers. Strad (talk) 04:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Dear me, this is getting tiresome. garik (talk) 10:53, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I'ver reported User:Timeineurope at WP:AN3. —Angr 11:48, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

letter sounds?

I imagine that the letters written as doubles, e.g., ff, sound different than single letters, e.g., f. It would mightily helpful to know the sounds of the letters, notwithstanding, it is understood, that the letters are said differently in different contexts which I read about in other places. --Fremte (talk) 20:47, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the information you're looking for is in the article Welsh alphabet. —Angr 21:04, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Change in pronunciation of ll?

A number of prominent British phoneticians claim to have detected a change in the pronunciation of the Welsh ll: it seems to be tending in the direction of [ç] rather than [ɬ]. However native speakers—other than phoneticians—don't agree. See John Wells's phonetic blog. Has anyone here noticed this? --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 20:42, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there anywhere where I can listen to what [ç] and [ɬ] sound like? Thanks for the link, it's very interesting, and in that post there's a link to another linguists' blog] which states:

Taking them in alphabetical order, first comes Aberteifi where the spelling I hear in various words by our speaker as [eɪ]. I'm more familiar with this as [əɪ] or as [aɪ] but I presume this is now a widespread educated Welsh practice.

Again, I'd like to know what [eɪ], [əɪ] and [aɪ] sound like, but I'm guessing here that he [Jack Windsor Lewis] thought that Aberteifi was pronounced Aber-tie-vee, whereas it's pronounced Aber-tay-vee by natural/fluent Welsh-speakers and always has been I'm sure,nad is not a recent development in the language. This is a common miss-conception by non-Welsh speakers, it grates me a little hearing Eisteddfod pronounced as Eye-steddfod rather than A-steddfod. Maybe I'm totally miss-understanding what he's saying here, but the reason I'm going on about it here is:

1. There's no comment facility on his blog, and

2. For all the great work linguists do, maybe they don't always get things right!--Rhyswynne (talk) 09:05, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

You've changed the subject somewhat ... JWL was , I believe, born in Wales.

As for the sounds, you can hear them by clicking on ç and ɬ. You may have to go through the tiresome process of downloading the software to listen to Ogg files. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:03, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it was slightly off subject sorry, although what I was getting at that maybe sometimes, linguists and phoneticians could be wrong, and seeing (well, hearing at least) things that are not there - regardless of where they were born :-). Thank you for the sound links - I need to download further software to listen, so will do that at home and come back here then with comments.--Rhyswynne (talk) 10:53, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm a native speaker and a linguist, and I suspect there may be something in it. I don't live in Wales, which may give me some useful extra distance, but I've certainly heard some Radio Cymru and S4C presenters (I certainly recall a weatherman once) whose ll sounded a bit odd to my ears, and odd in the direction of [ç]. Unfortunately, my computer at work won't let me play the sounds on the BBC website — I'll have to wait till I get home. However, it wouldn't surprise me if the sound was changing slightly in some areas. I'd imagine it would be more like a [ç]-influenced [ɬ] than a clear [ç] (that would certainly be more like what I'd noticed before), but who knows? I'll report my impressions when I get a chance to listen to the BBC recordings. Oh, and on the topic of Aberteifi: [eɪ] is standard, although vowels vary somewhat from area to area, so some speakers will be closer to [ai] than others; [abertaivi] is, however, mostly an anglophone pronunciation in my experience. And on the topic of eisteddfod: it's rare to hear a native speaker who pronounces the initial syllable as anything more than a schwa ([əˈstɛðvɔd]). It's often dropped altogether. garik (talk) 11:41, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've clicked on both ç and ɬ, and I can see that one sounds related to the other, on the other hand, the pronunciation of ɬ which is given doesn't seem to be all that close to how I pronounce 'll'. I can't say that I've heard anyone pronounce it like ç, but like Garik I don't live in the country any more either. -- Arwel (talk) 13:10, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I've just listened to the BBC page, and I have to say I agree with John Wells. The recordings are almost certainly of a native speaker, but he most definitely doesn't pronounce "ll" as I do (it's not [ɬ]), and it is indeed quite close to [ç]. Very interesting! garik (talk) 21:36, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Welsh syntax

Noticing that we have articles on Welsh phonology and Welsh morphology, I've created an article called Welsh grammar that links to both, as well as to a currently non-existent article called Welsh syntax. I notice, however, that the Welsh morphology article goes somewhat beyond its remit in treating topics that are really properly syntactic rather than morphological. What are people's opinions? Should we move some of the more syntactic stuff from there to a new article called Welsh syntax, or rename the Welsh morphology article Welsh grammar? (This should probably all be discussed here.) garik (talk) 14:36, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I answered at Talk:Welsh morphology#Welsh syntax and hope others would do the same. —Angr 15:19, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

Here is a copy of history page of the Welch language article.

1. (cur) (last) 20:42, 30 July 2008 ClueBot (Talk | contribs) m (40,459 bytes) (Reverting possible vandalism by P00bez to version by Taffymand. False positive? Report it. Thanks, User:ClueBot. (450834) (Bot)) (undo)
2. (cur) (last) 20:42, 30 July 2008 P00bez (Talk | contribs) (32 bytes) (← Replaced content with 'Welsh is an extinct language') (undo)
3. (cur) (last) 20:37, 30 July 2008 P00bez (Talk | contribs) m (40,574 bytes) (undo)

P00bez changed various details of the article and introduced errors on purpose and insults to welch speakers. When I was about to undo this vandalism, someone else did. Since the revert notice suggest to report in case it actually was vandalism, well here is the reporting : I saw the two versions myself, no doubt saying things like Disregard that, Welsh people cannot count, since they are all mythical creatures. is pure vandalism... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.93.122.187 (talk • contribs) 20:54, 30 July 2008

It said to report the reversion if it was a false positive, i.e. if P00bez's changes weren't actually vandalism, which they were. Thanks, though. The Wednesday Island (talk) 20:55, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep, the vandalism was caught and reverted by a bot. They do tend to be quicker than us mere humans. —Angr 20:57, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

PS: The word is 'Welsh' not 'welch'. AlexTiefling (talk) 23:18, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

-Sorry for spelling mistake and thank you for your quick answer. /Bruno / 30 July 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.93.122.187 (talk) 02:35, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "board" :
  • [http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk/cynnwys.php?pID=more&langID=2&mID=2&type=Pubs&cpID=90| Main Statistics about Welsh from the Welsh Language Board]
  • [http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk/cynnwys.php?pID=109&nID=2122&langID=2 Welsh Language Board].

DumZiBoT (talk) 06:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Welsh-medium education

Looking at this term, I was confused. What is Welsh-medium education? Is it to be understood in contrast to Welsh-high and Welsh-low or Welsh-small and Welsh-large? After some time, I realized that it meant using Welsh language as a medium for education, i.e. education in which the medium is the Welsh language. Is this a standard term in the UK? Is it typical to talk about "Welsh-medium education" and "English-medium education" in news reports and/or everyday conversation? Thanks. LordAmeth (talk) 00:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that "X-medium education" is a standard term for education using language X as a medium of instruction. —Angr 06:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

As someone who spent his formative years in Welsh-medium education, I can confirm that this is the term standardly used in English to refer to it, at least in Wales, and presumably the rest of the UK. garik (talk) 11:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

And the same in Ireland as well where they have 'Irish medium eduction' and in the USA where they have 'Spanish medium education' as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EoinBach (talk • contribs) 12:37, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Vocabulary

Vocabulary section states: Welsh vocabulary draws mainly from original Brythonic words (ŵy, carreg), and loans from Latin (ffenest, gwin) and English (sicr, fideo). Now, cy: helps me to work out egg and rock, wine I already knew, and video is, I assume, transparent, but presumably ffenest is from fenestra and I'm stuck on sicr. Could someone provide the translations in English, please? Man vyi (talk) 14:39, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

 Done —Angr 18:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Aha, sicr from Middle English... no wonder it was mystifying. Thanks! Man vyi (talk) 05:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

There's an interesting pattern of words getting borrowed in Welsh from English and then the English diverging. There are other less extreme examples where the English has become antiquated or dialectal like ffrog==frock or sbectol==spectacles. The Wednesday Island (talk) 15:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

This is the kind of thing that happens whenever one language borrows from another — any language has numerous similar examples; English is full of words borrowed from Norman French, where the modern standard French has diverged. If you're interested in Welsh especially, you may find it worth considering words like llidiart ("gate"), which is from an Old English compund (hlidgeart or something similar) that's no longer used in English. The borrowings from Latin also offer an interesting window onto the kind of Latin taught to the Britons. Ascendere survives in modern Welsh as esgyn — so we know that <c> still represented a stop, rather than a fricative, in British Latin. Similarly, vinum (whence gwin) was clearly more like /winʊm/ than /vinum/. garik (talk) 16:25, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

A level survey

The following was added today:

In 2003 an A-level study was carried out, a poll was performed to find out how many people in comprehenisve schools that could speak 
Welsh fluenty and how many people disliked/liked the subject and language. The statistics were outrageous. A shocking 98% of all people 
surveyed disliked Welsh as a language, which meant that only 2% of people in comprehensive schools around Wales liked Welsh. What was
even worse was the statistic for how many people could speak Welsh fluently. Only 1% (50 people) Could speak fluently out of the 5000
people surveyed.

Obviously it's POV and unsourced, so I removed it; but if anyone has a source, it may be worth mentioning this survey (if it exists) in the education section. Anyone? garik (talk) 13:08, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Even sourced, a survey showing how many people "like" a language is utterly irrelevant to anything. —Angr 13:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. I don't know the details of this survey (it may well have been poorly carried out in the extreme), but in a case like that of Welsh, where a language is taught to large numbers of non-natives, evidence of attitudes to that language is valuable. It would certainly be interesting, and far from irrelevant, if there were evidence that attitudes towards Welsh had improved or deteriorated over the course of the twentieth century. That said, if the survey asked nothing more than "do you enjoy this subject", then it is indeed of little use. But I for one would be interested in knowing if that's the case or not. garik (talk) 13:52, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

194.83.245.115 appears to be mainly interested in vandalism, so I doubt this is true. Moreover, it doesn't mention the distinction between first-language and second-language variants of the Welsh A-level (first-language A-level students presumably are fluent and more than 2% have a high regard for the language), and it lapses from a study about A-levels into a study about comprehensive schools in general. Strad (talk) 20:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Welsh in popular culture - remove from main page?

Should the Welsh in popular culture section be move off the main page into sub articles? It has been tagged: Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (April 2008) ∞☼Geaugagrrl^(T)/_(C) 01:09, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I for one won't miss it. garik (talk) 11:26, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Me neither. I say, just remove it, don't move it to a separate article. —Angr 11:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes. There's nothing there worth going in a separate article. garik (talk) 12:29, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I concur. Marnanel (talk) 16:23, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

 Done ∞☼Geaugagrrl^(T)/_(C) 17:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Where did [ɣ] come from?

Sorry, maybe I should've checked here before I changed [kəmˈrɑːɨɣ]/[ə ɣəmˈrɑːɨɣ] to [kəmˈrɑːɨg]/[ə gəmˈrɑːɨg]. I'm from the Welsh Wicipedia and was wondering why [ɣ] is used instead of [g]? Last time we used [ɣ] was in Brythonic which eventually disappeared. Just wondering how it ended up here for modern Welsh? Llusiduonbach (talk) 13:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but my browser shows [kəmˈrɑːɨg]/[ə gəmˈrɑːɨg] before your edit, after your edit, and after angr's edit. As far as I can tell, the article doesn't give the pronunciation as [kəmˈrɑːɨɣ]/[ə ɣəmˈrɑːɨɣ], and never did. And the two symbols are distinguished perfectly clearly on this talk page. Can anyone enlighten me? garik (talk) 13:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

It's me! Or rather, it's my browser - it must be. I'm using Firefox and ɡ looks like γ or ɣ in the article but the same ɡ looks like g in here in the discussion (as it should). It was right all along. Mae'n flin 'da fi = Sorry! Llusiduonbach (talk) 14:17, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that your browser is using the font "MS Reference Sans Serif" to display IPA; see Wikipedia:International Phonetic Alphabet#Voiced velar plosive. Setting up your css style sheet to display IPA text in a different font, or removing MS Reference Sans Serif from your computer should fix it. —Angr 18:53, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Problem solved - thanks! Llusiduonbach (talk) 12:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Tolkien & Welsh

J. R. R. Tolkien was greatly inspired by Welsh (and Finnish) to develop dialects for his literary works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Some mention ought to be made of him in the article and not merely in the references. Krishvanth (talk) 18:35, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not really relevant here. The fact that he was inspired by Welsh is not actually of great importance to the Welsh language. —Angr 20:34, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's an interesting cultural fact. FilipeS (talk) 21:53, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

But we have articles on Tolkien's constructed languages; it should be mentioned there. It's not really relevant to an article on Welsh. —Angr 04:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

It's only an "interesting cultural fact" for one culture, and that culture isn't the one the article's about. Next thing people will be adding Blaidd Drwg or something :/ . The Wednesday Island (talk) 12:42, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Many articles have "Cultural links" or "Tolkien in Popular Culture" or similar. Tell people in Torquay they've no right to John Cleese! TomRawlinson (talk) 19:24, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

And this article used to have a section called "Welsh in popular culture". As you can see, it was removed. I'd be in favour of removing almost all such sections from Wikipedia. They tend to become depositories for all sorts of pointless trivia. garik (talk) 16:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Removal of "Welshin popular culture?!

I'm shocked that important parts of "Welsh in popular culture" have been removed from this article. Parts that can only be very, very important to anyone who loves the Welsh language. These are the parts that have been excised just in the last few days:

• In Henry IV, part 1, Shakespeare has Owen Glendower (Welsh: Owain Glyndŵr), the Lady Mortimer and some Welsh women all speaking Welsh on stage. The play was written in the sixteenth century and set around 1400. (I heard this played on a 78 rpm record player by our English teacher in a school in Somerset - it's importance spreads far beyond Wales).
• A number of rock and electronic groups have recorded extensively in Welsh, including Datblygu, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, and Super Furry Animals, whose all-Welsh album Mwng reached no. 11 in the British charts. Welsh-language albums have been released more recently as solo projects by Gruff Rhys and Euros Childs (members of Super Furry Animals and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci respectively). TomRawlinson (talk) 21:49, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Tag Questions

Our article on Tag questions starts with a general section which mentions various languages, and then has a full section on English, for the obvious reason that English tag questions are so much more complex and interesting than those in most other languages. It would be highly desirable to get something in there on tag questions in Celtic languages. If they are as simple as French n'est-ce pas then a brief mention in the first section would do, but if as I suspect, they are as complex as the English ones, then a new section at the bottom would be needed. I have a sneaking suspicion that the English system, which is untypical of Germanic languages, is modelled on Celtic, and it would be great to see just how far it is parallel. Can some of the competent Welsh speakers here turn their attention to this? --Doric Loon (talk) 16:23, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Welsh - a romance language?

Since Welsh appears to draw almost its entire vocabulary from Latin - with the Celtic bits easily explainable by the Irish occupation of most of Wales in the Dark Ages - in what way is it a Celtic language? After all, it is descended from the language of a Roman province, just like French, Spanish, etc. ðarkuncoll 00:21, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Er, no. Welsh has a grammatical structure which is distinctively Brythonic, with many constructions that are not found in any Romance language. Although it clearly has a lot of Latinate vocabulary, this is due to the Roman presence in Wales during the first half of the first millennium CE, and the Normans a thousand years later. And what Irish occupation? (In any case, Irish is a Goidelic, rather than Brythonic, language, and so you can't explain the Celtic aspects of Welsh solely from that source in any case. AlexTiefling (talk) 00:27, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

You might as well say English was a Romance language because of all the French influence. Vocabulary is not how these things are decided. The Wednesday Island (talk) 00:29, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

The Irish occupied most of Wales from the end of Roman rule for a century or two, and set up some of the kingdoms of that period, such as Dyfed. For some reason, this seems to have been airbrushed out of Welsh history, at least as far as Wikipedia is concerned. ðarkuncoll 00:33, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

What's your evidence for this claim? (Even if you've got evidence, it doesn't help your linguistic argument, for the reason described above.) AlexTiefling (talk) 00:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh I don't know - history and stuff. Go and check it out. You might be surprised. ðarkuncoll 00:47, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm more than passingly familiar with British history. That's why I suggested that you, as the one making the claim, might want to supply me with some evidence. And while I understand that there was a significant level of Irish migration into Wales during the so-called Dark Ages - witness Ogham runestones, etc - I'm unaware of any evidence to support anything that could credibly be described as 'occupying most of Wales'. And I still don't feel that this unverified claim does anything to back up your argument at the top of this section, for the reasons I've already outlined. Welsh has almost nothing structurally in common with Latin, and its Celtic characteristics more resemble Cornish and Breton than Irish. AlexTiefling (talk) 01:00, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

When I said Welsh, I suppose I should have mentioned Cornish and Breton as well. All of these languages are descended from the Roman provincial speech of Britain. ðarkuncoll 01:17, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Can you please provide some sort of evidence from a reliable source that either this, or your claim about an Irish occupation of most of Wales in the first millennium CE, is believed by someone other than, and more credible than, yourself? You can assert these things as often as you like, but I would much rather you backed up your claims. AlexTiefling (talk) 01:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, actually as I recall from my Welsh history lessons in secondary school nearly 40 years ago, there was some Irish occupation/raiding in the first century after the Romans left, and they had something to do with the establishment of the kingdom of Brycheiniog (Brecon), and Cunedda and his followers were imported from the Edinburgh area to throw them out, but from the linguistic point of view the argument that they had much influence on the Welsh language is fundamentally a load of dingo's kidneys. -- Arwel Parry _(talk) 02:51, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

There are Irish Ogham inscriptions in Wales, but if anything the influence was the other direction, as most Latin loanwords in Irish seem to have been filtered through Brythonic. I quite agree that "You might as well say English was a Romance language because of all the French influence", but unfortunately people say that on Wikipedia talk pages as well. —Angr 07:35, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes linguistic classifications on wikipedia are dumb (like Saxon being closer to English than Jutish), but Welsh is clearly Celtic based on its grammar, history and most used vocabulary. Regarding Irish, there are "Primitive Irish" inscriptions in Wales and western "England" from the late Roman period/early middle ages, but it is quite impossible to tell if the language of these is ancestral to Welsh or ancestral to Goidelic (the diagnostic P-Q difference of a later era, and possibly of this one, is not representable in the script). The fact that early medieval Welsh princes claim descent from the "Old North", from Prydyn (Pictland) or from Ireland is as likely connected to the fact their non-Romanised nature gave these areas more prestige and that they served as holding zones for older Celtic culture reimported later (reused by early medieval military bards in ex-Roman Britain, turning into sources for our history) as any historic reality. As Angr says, outside medieval aristocratic fantasy, the bulk of influence, religion, literacy (the Irish alphabet is allegedly based on how Britons pronounced Latin in late Antiquity), world view, building, etc, was the other way. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 08:07, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

This isn't a topic worthy of much discussion. The claim that Welsh draws almost its entire vocabulary from Latin is simply false, as is the claim that its Celtic vocabulary can be explained as derived from Irish. Welsh is indeed descended from the language of a Roman province; the reason that it's different from French and Spanish is that it's not primarily derived from Latin. garik (talk) 14:37, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Welsh in the Court System

Have just stumbled upon an article on HMCS website about the development of Welsh in the court system and thought it might be of some use http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/cms/12003.htm 81.111.119.98 (talk) 17:36, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Old Welsh declension

The root of the feminine noun for "science/learning":

gweddon-

and the singular case stems are (nom, acc, dat, voc respectively):

-ieth

-iwm

-iem

-ias

and the plural case stems are (nom, acc, dat, voc respectively):

-iethi

-ine

-ina

-inas

So the noun has 8 inflected forms: gweddonieth, gweddoniwm, gweddoniem, gweddonias, gweddoniethi, gweddonine, gweddonina & gweddoninas.

Why does the article state otherwise? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.23.152 (talk) 17:22, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Where did you get this information from? —Angr 18:31, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Material removed from "Welsh in education"

_ _ Bcz i was only consulting the article re Hugh Jones, i haven't looked into whether the sections other than Welsh language#Welsh in education need the same kind of cleanup. Nor do i have the patience to usefully critique, e.g., the indecipherable first sentence, which i would divide into about three sentences if i had time to do the research that would disclose which of the plausible meanings accords with the facts.
_ _ The following ended a sentence about an editorial. It could conceivably be expressing a second point made by the editorial, in which case it would still need to be rewritten (e.g. by indicating more explicitly than "tho" what connection the editorialist called attention to in juxtaposing them). But my gut tells me that was added as the author's attempt to further document English misdeeds; doing that sounds called for, but SYN rules out doing it along the lines of

although the population was generally literate in Welsh because of the activities of Sunday Schools and the need to read the Bible

or even the clearer

although the population was generally literate in Welsh because of the activities of Sunday Schools, where participation involved reading the Bible.

bcz the claim that it is relevant to the rest of the 'graph would be a PoV one.
_ _ It is not implausible that all three of the Commissioners were unsympathetic, but it is PoV to suggest that someone could know that about them, and it is raging bigotry to attribute it to their church affliation:

... all Anglicans hence unsympathetic to the non-conformist majority in Wales

(Raging bigots are of course not per se disqualified from editing; i mention that only bcz it's hard to imagine anyone who can't recognize ragingly bigoted utterances as PoV, yet succeeds in writing NPoV.)
The close of that chunk of removed material --

... and were monoglot English-speakers.

-- avoids that pitfall, but it is another SYN violation.
_ _ (Non-conformity, BTW, is not an organization, but a state of being; this cannot be compared to Protestantism, where a few centuries of bitter wars whose battle lines were repeatedly laid out in the knowledge that Catholics and protestants would line up along them, and where many protestants presumably polemicized about a need for protestant solidarity, producing a widely recognized movement and pseudo-organization. Hence upper-case N only at the start of a sentence. John Ap John was, i presume, a Welsh non-conformist, but i feel sure he lumped most Welsh non-conformists with the Anglicans and Catholics.)
_ _ Application of "responsible for" to an Act of Parliament is either an unencyclopedic metaphor, or PoV. Find out whose PoV it is, and attribute it as such. --Jerzy•t 07:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)