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To: AuH2ORepublican

Sounds kinda Sylvester the cat to me. Ssssssssufferin succotash.

How many languages do you know?

Celtic languages seem daunting for an English or Spanish speaker. I had an “Encyclopedia Britannica” computer program as a kid and they had soundboards for various languages, I loved how the numbers 1-10 sounded in Irish.


17 posted on 01/17/2017 11:56:08 PM PST by Impy (Toni Preckwinkle for Ambassador to the Sun)
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To: Impy

Fluently, only English and Spanish. But I have some knowledge of French and German vocabulary and can follow somewhat when reading most Romance (i.e., Latin-based) and Germanic languages (try to read Dutch and sound it out and you’ll be surprised how much you can make out).

Celtic languages, of course, are a whole other ballgame, but I became fascinated with Welsh orthography and pronunciation a couple of years ago and have done a bit of reading and watched videos to try to learn as much as practicable (without devoting too much time to it). I have found it quite rewarding even though I’m not sure that I’ll ever learn enough to carry out a conversation, particularly when I discover words that seem familiar to those in Spanish and turn out to have come from Latin due to centuries-long Roman rule over Wale (e.g., the Welsh word for “church” is “eglwys,” which, like the Spanish “iglesia,” is derived from the Latin “ecclesia”), or words that have been adapted into English (e.g., “tad, sometimes pronounced “dad,” is the Welsh word for “father”), or even words that seem familiar but turn out to be from the same Proto-Indo-European root as words in Spanish or English (for example, the Welsh word for yellow is “melyn,” which comes from “mel,” which means “honey” not only in Welsh but also in Latin (it became “miel” in Spanish) and Greek, all of which are Indo-European languages). Another interesting example: The Welsh word for “goldfish” is “pysgodyn aur,” with a first word that sounded to me like “pescado” (the Spanish word for a fish that has been caught, including those served as food) and a second word being reminiscent of the Latin “aurum” (which is the reason why gold’s chemical symbol is “Au” and the Spanish word for gold is “oro”); it turns out that both of those Welsh words came from Latin, with the first coming from a form of the Latin “pisces” (meaning “fish”; the Latin “pisces” and the German “fisch” both have the same Proto-Indo-European root, with a switch from F to P (or vice versa; I can’t remember which) being something fairly common as languages evolve) and the second word indeed coming from the Latin “aurum.”

OK, that’s enough Welsh etymology for today. : ) Suffice it to say, I indeed am fascinated by Welsh, as well as its fellow Brittonic languages (Breton and the brought-back-from-extinction Cornish), which descended from Brittonic; they are somewhat similar to its fellow insular Celtic languages, the Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and the brought-back-from-extinction Manx), which descended from Old Irish, but for some reason I like the Brittonic languages better. But, yes, Irish numbers do sound cool.


18 posted on 01/18/2017 5:40:57 AM PST by AuH2ORepublican (If a politician won't protect innocent babies, what makes you think that he'll defend your rights?)
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