Discover Top Posts Tagged with #brythonic languages

do you know of any languages in north west england?

I'm assuming you mean indigenous languages?

Caveat, I'm not a linguist and there are very likely people out there with a lot more knowledge of this than me!

There was a language called Cumbric- if you've heard the "yan tan tethra" counting rhyme, that likely came from Cumbric. Cumbric is a Brythonic language, meaning it's closely related to Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Cumbric is believed to have been spoken between Lancashire and Cumberland- so North West England to the Lowlands of Scotland. Lots of place names in the area have Brythonic roots.

Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about Cumbric, and it's believed to have been lost in the 11th Century, although there are suggestions that it could have survived into the 12th Century and beyond as a community language.

As far as I'm aware, there aren't any confirmed written sources for Cumbric, there are some poems which may be written in Cumbric, or may be written in a dialect of Welsh. As far as I'm aware, there's no Cumbric revival, and we don't know enough of the language to resurrect it from (near) death as Cornish was.

I'm not an expert, but if you wanted to learn something close to Cumbric, I would guess the closest option would be Welsh, probably with the North Welsh dialect. However, other linguists who are more expert than me may want to weigh in!

I'll leave you with some lines of a poem which may be (old) Welsh, but may also (possibly) be Cumbric.

Pan elei dy dat ty e vynyd Dydygei ef penn ywrch penn gwythwch penn hyd Penn grugyar vreith o venyd Penn pysc o rayadyr derwennyd When your father went to [the] mountain He brought a head of buck, head of wild pig, head of stag Head of speckled grouse from [the] mountain Head of fish from [the] falls of Derwent

#languages #brythonic languages #cumbric #welsh #celtic languages #indigenous languages

Voices of the Ancestors

(Picture: King Penda of Mercia)

From the land of the dead

We call you From the darkest night From the shadowy sea From the hearts of the fathers From the bosoms of the mothers We call you

Through the whispers of the river in the forest Through the smile of the moon on a clear night Through the tears of the sun on a murky day Through the voice of the poet Through the wise words of the madman We call you

Through the song of the tree when the wind plays with its leaves Through the song of the rain in its branches Through the song of a bird on the first day of spring Through the song of the wolf under the moon Through the song of the crow over the battlefield We call you

Through the beauty of women and the strength of men Through the flames in the hearth Through the kiss of the iron Through the cry of the baby We call you

We are the word We are the music We are here We are with you We call you Voices of the Ancestors

By Cernunnos Crowulf

#heathenry #paganism #Asatru #Ásatrú #Vikings #Norse #Celts #Brythons #brythonic languages #Anglo-Saxon #Heathen #heathendom #heathenism

Early Greek and Roman scribes such as Herodotus (450 BC) and Polybius (200 BC) make reference to a loose ethnic grouping as the Keltoi or Galli in their written histories: a largely tribal society of warlike, iron-based communities. The similarity in stone inscriptions and artifacts discovered in Europe and Britain dating from this period points towards a form of shared language. The Keltoi described in the ancient Greek histories were the early Celts, dispersed as far north as the Iberian Peninsula and to the Scottish highlands in the north. Although there are undoubted similarities between these tribal groups in terms of linguistic unity (e.g. alphabetic symbols and verb, subject, object word order), the chronicles of the ancient historians are contradictory and confusing. The Roman writer Tacitus stated that the language spoken by the Gauls was very similar to the language spoken by the early Britons. Julius Caesar, however, saw little similarity and noted that the three principal tribes of Gaul spoke in noticeably distinct dialects. As a result, to view the Celtic languages as belonging to one unified ethnic grouping is problematic, with modern historians preferring to divide the various dialects and forms into two distinct groups: Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic. The first of these groupings, Continental Celtic, comprises Leontic (spoken in the southern Alpine region), Celtiberian (spoken in parts of north-eastern Spain and Portugal), Gallaecian (France and northern Alpine region). The second grouping, Insular Celtic, comprises two distinct linguistic families: Goidelic and Brythonic, which subdivide into other related languages. The former (Goidelic) includes Irish and Scottish Gaelic and Manx and the latter (Brythonic) Pictish and Cumbric (both extinct), British [Common Brittonic], Welsh, Breton and Cornish. As virtually all Continental Celtic is now extinct, exact geographical boundaries are a matter of vague approximation. In all probability, certain tribes were nomadic in aspect and this added to a crossing and merging of dialects, hence the conflicting views of Julius Caesar and Tacitus.

“The Story of English: How an Obscure Dialect Became the World’s Most-Spoken Language”

“Pictish is thought to have influenced the development of modern Scottish Gaelic. This is perhaps most obvious in the contribution of loan words, but more importantly it is thought that Pictish influenced the syntax of Scottish Gaelic, which bears greater similarity to Brittonic languages than does Irish.”

- Forsyth 2006, p. 1447; Woolf 2007, pp. 322–340

I hate reading things like this and not speaking any Scottish Gaelic because it PAINS me. I need to know more, I need to know HOW.

I need to be all up in my celtic sibling languages.

#brythonic languages #pictish #Gádhlig #alban #Prydain #languages #personol #personol ar gyfer ts

So, in the spirit of... uh... something, I’m thinking of making an attempt at learning Cornish this year.

Tumblr being Tumblr, I assume there are some Cornish speakers/learners on here, who might be willing to point me in a useful direction.

I’ve seen the Uni of Exeter course, but unfortunately, I can’t make the times of their beginner sessions.