37: Northeast Welsh dialects & prehistoric language

Written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost on this website. This article/page was published on the 8th August 2024. This page contains the following pain sections: Introduction, The use of gyn (local form of “with”) as a postposition:, Consonant changes, Contraction of syllables:, Unusual, potentially unique root words, References:. This article/web page contains 1581 words.

Note (added a little after original time of publication, because I forgot to mention it): I also published a Kindle ebook with information about Wales, which is completely unrelated to the article you are currently looking at. The Kindle ebook is titled: Historic and mysterious Cumbria and Britain (only published in Kindle format) and was published on the 28th of July 2024 (not on the 29th of July as I accidentally wrote initially, but on the 28th).

 

Introduction

 

The Welsh language has many dialects, which can be localised to an individual valley for example. Previously I have written about the spoken varieties of Welsh in Eryri, Gwynedd, which are widely heard throughout the Welsh media. I have also written about the Gwentian and Pembrokeshire dialect groups of South Wales, although perhaps it could be said that these together with Eryri Welsh are more like Welsh languages than dialects of a single language; in my opinion. The Welsh of northeast Wales is quite different from other varieties of Welsh too. The dialects of northeast Welsh, from areas like Flintshire and Denbighshire are not widely discussed, and I would say are even less discussed than Gwentian and Pembrokeshire Welsh. Below I will begin by discussing some of the features of northeast Welsh which I have been able to pick up on.

 

The use of gyn (local form of “with”) as a postposition:

 

A common feature of Northeast Welsh appears to be that the local word for “with”, gyn, is used commonly as a postposition after a pronoun rather than as a preposition. My Welsh friend Josef Roberts has said that this can also be heard, nowadays, in the Welsh of Gwynedd. However, we are both unsure about whether or not the use of this word as a postposition may be quite ancient and indigenous to the language of Northeast Wales. I think it possible.

The use of gyn as a postposition can be seen in for example fi gyn – “with me”, ti gyn – “with thee”, hi gyn – “with her”, ni gyn – “with us” etc. In Gwynedd Welsh, I would say gen i, gen ti, ganddi (hi), gennan ni. South Welsh speakers will often instead say gyda fi, gyda ti, gyda hi, gyda ni. This word for “with” in Welsh is connected to an ancient root word found widely in Indo-European languages, meaning “with”. It may be related to Finnish kanssa – “too”, “with”. It is probably not of significant meaning but of interest that Finnish can use kanssa for when one wants to say “with me", for example, as a postposition with the noun or pronoun in the genitive case, E.g. minun kanssa – "with me", and that this is kind of similar to how northeast Welsh dialects have forms like fi gyn.

 

Consonant changes

.Consonant changes can be observed when looking at northeast Welsh compared with other varieties of Welsh (not surprisingly). For example, the form nacwes (1) for nag oes – “there is not.” Having a voiced form, [k] in positions like this, is similar to the preference for voiceless intervocalic stops in Gwentian. The form -wes for more standard Welsh oes, is also something that can be found in South Welsh varieties.

.The form sgoden (1: Dewi o Dreffynnon) exists for llygoden – “mouse”. The word llygoden – “mouse”, from llygod – “mice” is related to the word llyg – “shrew”. The word llyg for “shrew” is attached to the suffix -od to create a specified meaning “mice”. In the northeast Welsh form, the same suffix -od is used, but the initial root sgo- is of unknown meaning, well, at least to my knowledge. But, owing to how llyg or the ancestral word was used in the formation of llygod and the singulative form llygoden in more standard Welsh, perhaps sgo- was attached in a similar way, because sgo- may have referred to a rodent for instance in a pre-Indo-European language of northwest Wales.

.As I discussed previously in some of my work on Pembrokeshire Welsh etymologies, what we call the Q-Celtic and P-Celtic division in languages must not be as strict a definition as we think, because some words in Welsh show variations in [p] and [k] sounds in different dialects. In other words, the variation in [p] and [k]/[kw] in Celtic languages as a whole, which has sometimes been used to talk about the different branches of Celtic, is actually observable as a variation in [p] and [k] sounds within Welsh dialects, albeit to a rather limited degree. An example from northeast Welsh is the word cwffio – “to box” (1: Chris Bailey o Dreffynnon) is equivalent to more standard Welsh paffio. The word cuff – “to box”, also exists in English. But since this word has no Indo-European etymology, there is no reason I think to assume that the word entered northeast Welsh via English. Rather I think it far more likely that this word existed in prehistoric languages, and that the [k] and [p] variations, like in several other words, could have existed long before these root words became established with their given phonetic forms in English and in Welsh.

 

Contraction of syllables:

 

In the northeast dialects of Welsh, there are some interesting examples of where phrases are shortened, and there is often a loss of or changing in the position of certain syllables or sounds. For example dawch – “good day to you plural” (1: Gwen o Benycae Wrecsam), normally dydd da i chi. I find the etymology of dawch difficult to explain, except by the complete removal and/or replacement of syllables: but why, for this phrase? The -wch ending is for the second person plural, and the first part, da- may just mean “good”. An, in a sense, pre-Celtic verbal phrase? Another interesting example is wmbo (1: Llinos, Llansannan / Llangernyw) for dwi ddim yn gwypod – “I do not know”. Again this is hard to explain, except by that the w may be equivalent to dwi, the m may be equivalent to the -m in ddim, and the bo may be equivalent to the -po- in gwybod. And/or is this phrase wmbo connecting to an ancient, pre-Indo-European verbal form, meaning “I don’t know”? My friend Josef Roberts has told me that wmbo is common in the Welsh of Bethesda today, Bethesda being in Snowdonia and to the west of the dialect area discussed in this article

 

Unusual, potentially unique root words

 

Northeast Welsh dialects do also contain an unusual vocabulary of root words, three of which, with etymological notes, are given below:

1). odi – to snow (1: Moira Brown o'r Rhos yn wreiddiol and Dafydd Roberts). Normally in Welsh, to say “to snow” is bwrw eira, literally “to throw snow”, compare also bwrw glaw – “to rain”, literally: “to throw rain”. I think it fairly likely that odi is a very ancient word, and so far I have been unable to find any possible cognates.

2). shilin – a small, precious thing (1). I have no thoughts on this word’s etymology, but the presence of the initial [ʃ] before [I] might imply an older [s]. Or, it is possible that this word is entirely pre-Indo-European in origin.

3). twca (1) and (1: Gareth, Nantglyn) - a kind of knife, likely I think related to Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *dac- “flint knife” (2), found in Egyptian and in East Chadic.

 

I hope that this article was an interesting read. I will be doing further research on the dialects of northeast Wales, and on the ancient aspects to language and prehistory in these areas. Hopefully in the future I will also be able to more specifically talk about individual, localised dialects within northeast Wales, whereas in this article I refer to the dialects as a whole.

 

References:

The use of gyn in northeast Welsh is something that I was already familiar with from general knowledge of Welsh dialects. However, all of the other words given in bold and from northeast Welsh, followed by (1) or (1:...) were sourced from the online page by the BBC titled: Tafodiaith y gogledd ddwyrain. This page contains a list of words and phrases in northeast Welsh, beginning with a list collected by the BBC between 2005 and 2005. All words in this article from this list, that are from the BBC’s research between 2005 and 2009 are simply given the reference number of (1). Further down on the aforementioned web page, there are other contributions of northeast Welsh words and phrases by different individuals. In this article (the one in front of you), these words are given with the reference (1:, followed by name of the individual who gave them, as given on the aforementioned BBC web page, then with closing bracket ). If a word is given by two individuals, this is stated also, i.e. (1:… and …). Note that the BBC article is written in Welsh, so naturally I have translated the meanings of these words as I would give them in English.

.Reference (2) is the source for the Proto-Afro-Asiatic etymology *dac- (in relation to twca), and is from the the lexical items as presented by Alexander Militarev and Olga Stolbova, which I sourced from starlingdb.org, website by Sergei Starostin.