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English And Welsh
"English and Welsh" is J. R. R. Tolkien's inaugural O'Donnell Memorial Lecture of 21 October 1955. The lecture sheds light on Tolkien's conceptions of the connections of race, ethnicity, and language. Publication It was first published in ''Angles and Britons'' in 1963 and was republished in ''The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays'' in 1983. Contents Tolkien begins with an overview of the terms " British", "Celtic", " Germanic", "Saxon", "English" and "Welsh", explaining the last term's etymology in ''walha''. Tolkien also addresses the historical language contact between English and Welsh since the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain, including Welsh loanwords and substrate influence found in English, and conversely English loanwords in Welsh. Comparing the Germanic ''i''-mutation and the Celtic affection, Tolkien says: In the final part of the lecture Tolkien explores the concept of phonaesthetics, citing "cellar door" as a phrase recognised as sounding beautif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England And Wales
England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is English law. The devolved Senedd (Welsh Parliament; cy, Senedd Cymru) – previously named the National Assembly of Wales – was created in 1999 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom under the Government of Wales Act 1998 and provides a degree of self-government in Wales. The powers of the Parliament were expanded by the Government of Wales Act 2006, which allows it to pass its own laws, and the Act also formally separated the Welsh Government from the Senedd. There is no equivalent body for England, which is directly governed by the parliament and government of the United Kingdom. History of jurisdiction During the Roman occupation of Britain, the area of present-day England and Wales was administered as a single unit, except f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welsh Loanwords In English
This is a list of English language words of Welsh language origin. As with the Goidelic languages, the Brythonic tongues are close enough for possible derivations from Cumbric, Cornish or Breton in some cases. Beyond the acquisition of common nouns, there are numerous English toponyms, surnames, personal names or nicknames derived from Welsh (see Celtic toponymy, Celtic onomastics). List As main word choice for meaning ; bara brith : ''speckled bread''. Traditional Welsh bread flavoured with tea, dried fruits and mixed spices. ; bard : from Old Celtic ''bardos'', either through Welsh ''bardd'' (where the bard was highly respected) or Scottish ''bardis'' (where it was a term of contempt); Cornish ''bardh'' ; cawl : a traditional Welsh soup/stew; Cornish ''kowl'' ; coracle : from ''corwgl''. This Welsh term was derived from the Latin ''corium'' meaning "leather or hide", the material from which coracles are made. ; corgi : from ''cor'', "dwarf" + ''gi'' (soft mutation of ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonaesthetics
Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in North America) is the study of beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words. The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by during the mid-20th century and derives . Speech sounds have many aesthetic qualities, some of which are subjectively regarded as euphonious (pleasing) or cacophonous (displeasing). Phonaesthetics remains a budding and often subjective field of study, with no scientifically or otherwise formally established definition; today, it mostly exists as a marginal branch of psychology, phonetics, or poetics. More broadly, the British linguist David Crystal has regarded phonaesthetics as the study of "phonaesthesia" (i.e., sound symbolism and phonesthemes): that not just words but even certain sound combinations carry meaning. For example, he shows that English speakers tend to associate unpleasantness with the sound ''sl-'' in such words as ''sleazy'', ''slime'', ''slug'', a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Contact
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum. Language contact occurs in a variety of phenomena, including language convergence, borrowing and relexification. The common products include pidgins, creoles, code-switching, and mixed languages. In many other cases, contact between speakers occurs but the lasting effects on the language are less visible; they may, however, include loan words, calques or other types of borrowed material. Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of The English Language
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language originated as a group of Ingvaeonic languages which were spoken by the settlers in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages, displacing the Celtic languages (and, possibly, British Latin) that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence on the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain dur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essays By J
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's ''An Essay on Criticism'' and ''An Essay on Man''). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Monsters And The Critics
"''Beowulf'': The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem '' Beowulf''. It was first published as a paper in the ''Proceedings of the British Academy'', and has since been reprinted in many collections. Tolkien argues that the original poem has almost been lost under the weight of the scholarship on it; that ''Beowulf'' must be seen as a poem, not just as a historical document; and that the quality of its verse and its structure give it a powerful effect. He rebuts suggestions that the poem is an epic or exciting narrative, likening it instead to a strong masonry structure built of blocks that fit together. He points out that the poem's theme is a serious one, mortality, and that the poem is in two parts: the first on Beowulf as a young man, defeating Grendel and his mother; the second on Beowulf in old age, going to his death fighting the dragon. The work has been praised by critics in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sindarin
Sindarin is one of the fictional languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for use in his fantasy stories set in Arda, primarily in Middle-earth. Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the Elves. The word is a Quenya word. Called in English "Grey-Elvish" or "Grey-Elven", it was the language of the Grey Elves of Beleriand. These were Elves of the Third Clan who remained behind in Beleriand after the Great Journey. Their language became estranged from that of their kin who sailed over sea. Sindarin derives from an earlier language called Common Telerin, which evolved from Common Eldarin, the tongue of the Eldar before their divisions, e.g., those Elves who decided to follow the Vala Oromë and undertook the Great March to Valinor. Even before that the Eldar Elves spoke the original speech of all Elves, or Primitive Quendian. In the Third Age (the setting of ''The Lord of the Rings''), Sindarin was the language most commonly spoken by most Elves in the Western par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonestheme
A phonestheme (; phonaestheme in British English) is a pattern of sounds systematically paired with a certain meaning in a language. The concept was proposed in 1930 by British linguist J. R. Firth, who coined the term from the Greek ''phone'', "sound", and ''aisthema'', "perception" (from ''aisthanomai'', "I perceive"). For example, sequence "sl-" appears in English words denoting low-friction motion, like "slide", "slick" and "sled". A phonestheme is different from a phoneme (a basic unit of word-differentiating sound) or a morpheme (a basic unit of meaning) because it does not meet the normal criterion of compositionality. Within C.S. Peirce's "theory of signs" the phonestheme is considered to be an "icon" rather than a " symbol" or an " index". Identification Phonesthemes are of critical interest to students of the internal structure of words because they appear to be a case where the internal structure of the word is non-compositional; i.e., a word with a phonestheme i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonaesthetics
Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in North America) is the study of beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words. The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by during the mid-20th century and derives . Speech sounds have many aesthetic qualities, some of which are subjectively regarded as euphonious (pleasing) or cacophonous (displeasing). Phonaesthetics remains a budding and often subjective field of study, with no scientifically or otherwise formally established definition; today, it mostly exists as a marginal branch of psychology, phonetics, or poetics. More broadly, the British linguist David Crystal has regarded phonaesthetics as the study of "phonaesthesia" (i.e., sound symbolism and phonesthemes): that not just words but even certain sound combinations carry meaning. For example, he shows that English speakers tend to associate unpleasantness with the sound ''sl-'' in such words as ''sleazy'', ''slime'', ''slug'', a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sprachbund
A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness. A grouping of languages that share features can only be defined as a sprachbund if the features are shared for some reason other than the genetic history of the languages. Because of this, attempts to classify some language families without knowledge about the history of the languages can lead to misclassification as sprachbunds and similarly some sprachbunds are incorrectly classified as language families. History In a 1904 paper, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay emphasised the need to distinguish between language similarities arising from a genetic relationship (''rodstvo'') and those arising from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affection (linguistics)
Affection (also known as vowel affection, infection or vowel mutation), in the linguistics of the Celtic languages, is the change in the quality of a vowel under the influence of the vowel of the following final syllable. It is a type of anticipatory (or regressive) assimilation at a distance. The vowel that triggers the change was later normally lost. Some grammatical suffixes cause i-affection. In Welsh, "word" and "device suffix" yield "dictionary", with in becoming . The two main types of affection are a-affection and i-affection.Benjamin W. Fortson, ''Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction''. 2nd edition. Blackwell, 2010. , p. 317, 321, 328. There is also u-affection, which is more usually referred to as u-infection. I-affection is an example of i-mutation and may be compared to the Germanic umlaut, and a-affection is similar to Germanic a-mutation. More rarely, the term "affection", like " umlaut", may be applied to other languages and is then a synony ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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