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From: rathmann@brahms.berkeley.EDU (Michael Ellis such as he is)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.celtic
Subject: Re: Celtic Languages
Message-ID: <165@cartanBerkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 31-Oct-86 04:16:59 EST
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Posted: Fri Oct 31 04:16:59 1986
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> James Moore

> There is a professor in the linguistics department here at Berkeley
> who teaches Breton.  From what I gather, the language is, sadly,
> slowly dying out. -- James

     I was just talking with some French travellers who told me that
     Breton was commonly used in domestic speech, but they were unable
     to offer very much concerning its business, legal, or academic usage.
     (This is all hearsay: if anyone knows better, please set us straight!)
     It seems to me that any language that is still used domestically,
     is still alive, since native speaking ability is still being
     transmitted during infancy. 

     As far as Celtic language studies, UCB is better than any
     university I'm familiar with: currently medieval Welsh is being
     offered, and both Irish Gaelic and Breton are available from time
     to time subject to student interest; there is also a "Celtic
     Colloquium" which schedules a few events each year. 

     As far as I can tell, Welsh, like most provincial languages, has
     been extremely conservative; grammatical irregularities seem to
     have been fairly well preserved across the centuries such that,
     except for orthographic and minor pronunciation changes, the text
     of the Mabinogi is not enormously different from what is spoken
     today (from what I can determine), whereas English or French from
     the same period would be almost incomprehensible to modern
     speakers. With knowledge of spelling changes, a modern Welsh
     dictionary suffices for translating the ancient literature. My
     guess is that Gaelic and Breton have been equally conservative. 

     As the sad story of the Celtic languages has largely been one of
     being overwhelmed by invaders, the Celtophile naturally wonders
     what traces they may have left on the conquerors' tongue, perhaps
     as some form of "language substratum" to modern English, French,
     and perhaps Spanish.

     For instance, there are certain similarities between the phonemic
     system of Welsh and English, such as the presence of the "th"
     sounds in "thin" and "then" (written "th" and "dd" in Welsh), and
     the back-central unrounded vowel in "but" as well as the dubious
     barred-i of some phonemic representations of English (written "y"
     in Welsh), the aspiration of initial unvoiced stops, and a number
     of other subtleties. On the other hand, Welsh possesses some
     pretty weird sounds, like the unvoiced liquids rh, ll, nh, mh,
     ngh; excluding these, the phonetic qualities of Welsh words are
     more natural to my ear and tongue than any other language I've
     heard, including the other Teutonic languages. Except for Dutch.

-michael