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Old Welsh Language
Old Welsh ( cy, Hen Gymraeg) is the stage of the Welsh language from about 800 AD until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh.Koch, p. 1757. The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from Common Brittonic around 550, has been called "Primitive"Koch, p. 1757. or "Archaic Welsh". Texts The oldest surviving text entirely in Old Welsh is understood to be that on a gravestone now in Tywyn – the Cadfan Stone – thought to date from the 7th century, although more recent scholarship dates it in the 9th century. A key body of Old Welsh text also survives in glosses and marginalia from around 900 in the Juvencus Manuscript and in . Some examples of medieval Welsh poems and prose additionally originate from this period, but are found in later manuscripts; ''Y Gododdin,'' for example, is preserved in Middle Welsh. A text in Latin and Old Welsh in the ''Lichfield Gospels'' called the "Surrexit Memorandum" is thought to have been written in the early 8 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in 2021 of 3,107,500 and has a total area of . Wales has over of coastline and is largely mountainous with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon (), its highest summit. The country lies within the Temperateness, north temperate zone and has a changeable, maritime climate. The capital and largest city is Cardiff. Welsh national identity emerged among the Celtic Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, and Wales was formed as a Kingdom of Wales, kingdom under Gruffydd ap Llywelyn in 1055. Wales is regarded as one of the Celtic nations. The Conquest of Wales by Edward I, conquest of Wales by Edward I of England was completed by 1283, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juvencus Manuscript
The Juvencus Manuscript (Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 4.42; cy, Llawysgrif Juvencus) is one of the main surviving sources of Old Welsh. Unlike much Old Welsh, which is attested in manuscripts from later periods and in partially updated form, the Welsh material in the Juvencus Manuscript was written in the Old Welsh period itself; the manuscript provides the first attestation of many Welsh words. Around the second half of the ninth century, someone copied two Old Welsh poems into the margins: a nine-stanza ''englyn'' poem on the wonders of God's creation (generally known as the 'Juvencus nine'), and, on folios 25-26, a three-stanza poem which seems to represent a warrior lamenting his misfortunes (known as the 'Juvencus three'). These are the earliest surviving ''englynion''. The parts of the manuscript containing the 'Juvencus three' were cut out of the manuscript and stolen in the early eighteenth century by the antiquary Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709), but were found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medieval Languages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—most recently part of the Eastern Roma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Languages Attested From The 7th Century
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of methods, including spoken, sign, and written language. Many languages, including the most widely-spoken ones, have writing systems that enable sounds or signs to be recorded for later reactivation. Human language is highly variable between cultures and across time. Human languages have the properties of productivity and displacement, and rely on social convention and learning. Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between and . Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, writing, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Latin
British Latin or British Vulgar Latin was the Vulgar Latin spoken in Great Britain in the Roman and sub-Roman periods. While Britain formed part of the Roman Empire, Latin became the principal language of the elite, especially in the more romanized south and east of the island. However, in the less romanized north and west it never substantially replaced the Brittonic language of the indigenous Britons. In recent years, scholars have debated the extent to which British Latin was distinguishable from its continental counterparts, which developed into the Romance languages. After the end of Roman rule, Latin was displaced as a spoken language by Old English in most of what became England during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of the fifth and sixth centuries. It survived in the remaining Celtic regions of western Britain but died out in those regions too by about 700, when it was replaced by the local Brittonic languages. Background At the inception of Roman rule in AD 43, Gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consonant Mutation
Consonant mutation is change in a consonant in a word according to its morphological or syntactic environment. Mutation occurs in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all modern Celtic languages. Initial consonant mutation is also found in Indonesian or Malay, in Nivkh, in Southern Paiute and in several West African languages such as Fula. The Nilotic language Dholuo, spoken in Kenya, shows mutation of stem-final consonants, as does English to a small extent. Mutation of initial, medial and final consonants is found in Modern Hebrew. Also, Japanese exhibits word medial consonant mutation involving voicing, ''rendaku'', in many compounds. Uralic languages like Finnish show consonant gradation, a type of consonant mutation. Similar sound changes Initial consonant mutation must not be confused with sandhi, which can refer to word-initial alternations triggered by their phonological environment, unlike mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lichfield Gospels
The Lichfield Gospels (recently more often referred to as the St Chad Gospels, but also known as the Book of Chad, the Gospels of St Chad, the St Teilo Gospels, the Llandeilo Gospels, and variations on these) is an 8th-century Insular Gospel Book housed in Lichfield Cathedral. There are 236 surviving pages, eight of which are illuminated. Another four contain framed text. The pages measure 30.8 cm by 23.5 cm. The manuscript is also important because it includes, as marginalia, some of the earliest known examples of written Old Welsh, dating to the early part of the 8th century.Encyclopaedia Wales; University of Wales Press; main editor: John Davies; page 577 Peter Lord dates the book at 730, placing it chronologically before the Book of Kells but after the Lindisfarne Gospels. Marginal entries indicate that the manuscript was in the possession of the church of St Teilo in Wales at some point in the 9th century and eventually came into the possession of Lichfield Cath ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Y Gododdin
''Y Gododdin'' () is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named '' Catraeth'' in about AD 600. It is traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin and survives only in one manuscript, the ''Book of Aneirin''. The ''Book of Aneirin'' manuscript is from the later 13th century, but ''Y Gododdin'' has been dated to between the 7th and the early 11th centuries. The text is partly written in Middle Welsh orthography and partly in Old Welsh. The early date would place its oral composition soon after the battle, presumably in the ''Hen Ogledd'' ("Old North"); as such it would have originated in the Cumbric dialect of Common Brittonic.Elliott (2005), p. 583. Others consider it the work of a poet from Wales in the 9th, 10th, or 11th century. Even a 9th-century date would make it one of the oldest survivi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Raris Fabulis
''De raris fabulis'' ("On uncommon tales", "On curious tales" or "On rare expressions") is a collection of 23 or 24 short Latin dialogues from 9th- or 10th-century Celtic Britain. The dialogues belong to the genre known as the colloquy. These were pedagogical texts for teaching Latin in monastic schools. ''De raris fabulis'' survives in a single manuscript, the Later Oxford Codex (''Codex Oxoniensis Posterior''), now Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 572 (SC 2026), at folios 41v–47r. The manuscript was produced in Cornwall, and dates to the second quarter of the 10th century. The script is Anglo-Caroline. The text itself may have been composed in the 9th century in Wales. The manuscript was in Winchester by the 11th century (and possibly as early as the late 10th), and by the end of the 11th century was at St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury. The unascetic nature of monastic living implied by the dialogues and a reference to a probably fictitious victory of the Britons over th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cadfan Stone
Inside St Cadfan's Church, Tywyn, Gwynedd is an inscribed stone cross called the Cadfan Stone (or the ''Tywyn Stone''). On it are the earliest known inscriptions in the Welsh language, specifically in Old Welsh. Recent scholarship dates the inscriptions to the 9th century. They were previously considered to be older. Ifor Williams dated them to the 8th century, and a late 7th century or early 8th century date was suggested by Kenneth H. Jackson. A date between the 7th century and the 9th century is suggested by ''Coflein'', the website of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Originally the stone stood over 2.3 metres tall, but it now measures 2.18m tall by 0.25m and 0.2m. Below is the interpretation given in the most recent study of the stone (sides A, B, C and D) by Nancy Edwards. ;A/D. ''Tengr(um)ui cimalted gu(reic) / Adgan // anterunc du But Marciau'' 'Tengrumui wedded wife of Adgan (lies) fairly near ('' or '' very near) to Bud (and) Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Welsh
Middle Welsh ( cy, Cymraeg Canol, wlm, Kymraec) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh ( cy, Hen Gymraeg). Literature and history Middle Welsh is the language of nearly all surviving early manuscripts of the ''Mabinogion'', although the tales themselves are certainly much older. It is also the language of most of the manuscripts of Welsh law. Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker. Phonology The phonology of Middle Welsh is quite similar to that of modern Welsh, with only a few differences. The letter ''u'', which today represents in North Western Welsh dialects and in South Welsh and North East Welsh dialects, represented the close central rounded vowel in Middle Welsh. The diphthong ''aw'' is found in unstressed final syllables in Middle Welsh, while in Modern Welsh it has be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
