CAMOW CWNTAF YN GWMBRAIC: First Steps in Cumbrac

( No rights are reserved. Any part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, and transmitted, in any form, and by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and otherwise, without prior
permission of the publisher.)
Table of Contents

   Introduction
      List of Abbreviations
      Cumbric Place-Names
      Phonology
      An English-Cumbric Dictionary
      A Cumbric-English Dictionary
      A Cumbric Grammar

  To enjoy the back-ground colour of your choice allow blocked content.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

      Red  Yellow  Green

INTRODUCTION

Pa beth Cwmbraíc?

Cwmbraíc yw'r eno'r yath P-Celtic o'r yin planth val Welsh, Cornish, ac
Breton. Cwmbraíc leidasa achraís yr Alban, Cleth y Laígre, ac y cleth
parthow Canol y Laígre.

Literal Translation

What thing Cumbric? Cumbric is the name (of) the tongue P-Centic of the one
family like/as Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Cumbric used to be spoken
over-cross the Albany, North the Logres, and the north parts (of) the Middle
(of) the Logres.

What is Cumbric

Cumbric is the ancient P-Celtic language of Scotland, Northern England, and
parts of the North Midlands. The British P-Celtic languages, which consist
of Breton, Cornish, Cumbric, and Welsh, are descended from Prythonic, the
language of the Ancient Britons. Cumbric is regarded in Scotland as
something of a curiosity, useful for diciphering place-names and family
names, but useful for little else, but Cumbric in England is an Ethnic
Awareness and Justice concern in that since the beginning of the twentieth
century concerted efforts have been made to steal the folk consciousness of
the Northern English by denying their Celtic and Scandinavian roots, and by
substituting ersatz Saxon roots instead. Ethnic Awareness and Justice in
England is concerned to secure the right of every non-Saxon English persons
to be regarded as being English irrespective of race or religion, such as
for example not only Celtic English, but also English Black and other. The
obvious model for Cumbraic is Nance's highly successful reconstruction of
Cornish, which Nance called Kernewek. Nance famously replied to his critics
that Kernewek may or may not have been exactly the same as original Cornish,
but it was a form of Cornish, and as such Kernewek has gone from strength to
strength. Malcontents have reconstructed another veriety of Cornish called
Cornoak. This of course has not lessened Nance's eminence as a Celtic
scholar, but is has put Kernewek to the question with regards to its
authenticity. In order to avoid a similar embarassment with regard to
Cumbraic I have renounced all copyright in order that other Celtic scholars
might make their own individual contributions. The most glaring difference
between Kernewek and Cwmbraic in their respective reconstructions is the
fact that Cornish medieval mystery plays were available to Nance whereas
Cumbric left no such trances. Despite this there is a wealth of written
infomation in the form of Cumbric place-names together dialect words and
Cumbric words that have entered Standard English. Victorian scholars of
Cumbric revealed veritable mines of Cumbric vocabulary. Mr. Whittaker in
Volume Two, pages 233 to 329, in his History of Manchester, has provided a
list of three thousand North Country Cumbric words that have entered the
vocabulary of Standard English. Furthermore Mr.Davies supplied in a paper
that he contributed to The transactions of the Philological Society in 1885
another long list of North Country Cumbric words that have passed into
Standard English. Mr. Davies commented that many low, burlesque, and obscene
words in the Lancashire dialect can be traced back to Cumbric. Furthermore,
Mr. Garnet in Volume One, page 171, of the Transaction of the Philological
Society, also supplied a similar list of Cumbric words. Elements of grammar
also exist in some of the Cumbric place-names that indicate that Cumbric
grammar was not all that different from medieval Welsh grammar. In addition
translations of the Cumbric verses of Aneirin and Taliesin into Welsh
present further proof of the close parallel between Welsh and Cumbric
grammar. Cumbric can therefore continue where it left off, especially since
the grammar of Breton possesses elements that are identicle to medieval
Welsh. Differences in grammar can be found in Cumbric, especially in the use
of the definite article, but the one difference above all others that
establishes Cumbric as an idependent language seperated from Welsh is the
retention of the vowel-W before nasal plus stop, which is also a feature of
Breton. Study of surviving Cumbric place-names present the unique ability of
Cumbric to adopt non-Celtic words. This allows Cumbraic to adopt the
international words of science and technology instead of creating Celtic
neologisms such as the Welsh teledu for television. Nance expanded the
limited vocabulary of Cornish words that were available to him by converting
Welsh words into Cornish, so there is no reason why Welsh words cannot also
be converted into Cumbric. Even the vocabulary of Breton has been expanded
by borrowings from Welsh. The edition of the Times newspaper of the 3rd.
January 1991 carried a report that first appeared in Le Mond, according to
which Lukiann Kergoat, the head of Breton and Celtic Studies at the
University of Rennes, and chairperson of a committee called Kreizhenn ar
Geriauin, intended to create twenty thousand new Breton word in order to
bring Breton up to date by respelling Welsh words. Evidence of the late
survival of Cumbric as a spoken language exists in the place-name Cumwhinton
meaning Quinton's Valley that contains the French personal name Quinton. In
addition the survival of Cumbric field-names and the presence of three
Cumbric words in a medieval Further support for the persistence of Cumbric,
even as far south as Lincolnshire, is found in Shepherd's Enumeration, which
in fact was mainly used by knitters. Perhaps the most interesting thing to
have arisen during Cumbric's reconstruction is the discovery that Cumbric is
the missing link between Welsh and Cornish. A Welsh speaker might consider
Cumbric to be archaic, but if Cumbric may appear to a Welsh speaker to be
medieval in a modern setting, for example to say I enter the house in
Cumbric you would use Biblical Welsh and say mi a mwnd yn y tec rather than
the more contemplorary Welsh wyf i'n mynd yn y teg. This may indeed sound
medieval to a Welsh speaker but not to a speaker of Cornish or Breton. There
is a further twist. Certain diphthongs such as AI can be pronounced either
as short-E or short-A, for example Nothern English Penyghent is matched by
Scottish Pennigant, both morphemes ghent and gant being derived from the
morpheme gaínt in the original pen y gaínt. A study of Cumbric also reveals
a semantic links between Welsh and Cornish, for example the Welsh wordchwyl
corresponds in form but not in meaning to the Cornish word whyl, the
semantic link being the Cumbric word chwyl as in the Northcountry Brigantian
word wheel meaning a pothole beneath a fors or waterfall, and the Yorkshire
place-name Wheldrake meaning Dragons Cave. The Welsh word chwyl means a turn
or turning and the Cornish word whel means a mine. Cumbric provides the
semantic link between Welsh chwyl and Cornish whel in that the Cumbric word
chwyl refers to a pothole beneath a fors, the churning stones being clearly
visible as the cause of the wheel. Furthermore the place-name Wheldrake
reveals that Cumbric chwyl came to mean any pothole, or even a cave, which
semantically is only a short step to the meaning of Cornish word whel.
Incidentally the spelling of the morpheme whel in Wheldrake is identicle to
Cornish spelling. Late Cumbric underwent a series of sound changes that
distinguished it from Welsh, for instance the place-name Leswalt, which when
recorded was pronounced as leeswalt, arose from the two ancient Cumbric
words llis and gwellt meaning lliswellt or a grassy court. Llis and gwellt
is of course the same as modern Welsh llys and gwellt (i.e. Lyswellt), but
the sound change of short-E before labials to short-A turned Lliswellt into
Lliswallt, which in Welsh means not grassy court but hairy court
(i.e.Llyswallt). Because late Cumbric was a spoken language rather than a
written language no attempt was made to create Celtic neologisms when
encountering non-Celtic languages, for example Blennerhasset in Cumberland
is derived from the two Celtic words blaín and yr meaning hill+the, and from
the two Scandinavian words haí+sætr meaning hay+meadow, so we get
hill+the+hay+meadow, which with a little knowledge of Welsh grammar tells us
that the name in plain English means crest of the hay meadow. This ability
of Cumbric to adopt loan words from other languages has three consequences
when increasing the vocabulary of Cumbraíc, or reconstructed Cumbric.

  1.. Scandinavian words that exist in English and Welsh may be adopted.

  2.. Gaelic words that exist in English and Scots may be adopted.

  3.. The international words of science and technology may be adopted
instead of attempting to find Celtic equivalents.
To conclude, the reconstruction of a Cumbric vocabulary, though challenging,
presents no serious problem, but although Cumbric changed considerably over
the centuries it preserved archaisms such as the retention of short-u and
short-o before nasals plus stop, for example the first morpheme of
Cumberland is short-u and not short-E. Cumbric grammar is identicle to
Medieval Welsh grammar, for example Cumbric place-names, such as Larbet and
Eccle Fechan, have even preserved elements of Cumbric grammar. It should
also be pointed out the many Romano-British laws, taxes, policing, and modes
of ...

read more »