Old Welsh () is the stage of the
Welsh language
Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic languages, Celtic language of the Brittonic languages, Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales by about 18% of the population, by some in England, and in (the Welsh c ...
from about 800 AD until the early 12th century when it developed into
Middle Welsh
Middle Welsh (, ) 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 ().
Literature and history
Middle Welsh is ...
.
[Koch, p. 1757.] The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from
Common Brittonic
Common Brittonic (; ; ), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, is a Celtic language historically spoken in Britain and Brittany from which evolved the later and modern Brittonic languages.
It is a form of Insular Cel ...
around 550, has been called "Primitive"
[Koch, p. 1757.] or "Archaic Welsh".
Phonology
The
phonology
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
of Old Welsh is as follows.
* Older was diphthongized into in (stressed) final syllables, but it was retained elsewhere. Whilst this persisted as a diphthong in Middle Welsh, in Modern Welsh /aw/ has collapsed to following the stress shift to the penultimate, except in monosyllables.
* and were allophones of and in unstressed non-final syllables. In Middle Welsh these merged to .
* Old Welsh and became and in Modern Welsh final syllables, in dialects where /ɨ/ has not merged with /i/.
Texts
The oldest surviving text entirely in Old Welsh is understood to be that on a gravestone now in
Tywyn
Tywyn (; ), formerly spelled Towyn, is a town, community, and seaside resort on the Cardigan Bay coast of southern Gwynedd, Wales. It was previously in the historic county of Merionethshire. It is famous as the location of the Cadfan Stone, a ...
– the
Cadfan Stone
The Cadfan Stone () is a 7th-9th century stone that has the earliest known Welsh language inscription, specifically in Old Welsh. The stone is located inside St Cadfan's Church, Tywyn, Gwynedd.
History
The stone was once thought to mark the g ...
– 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
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has c ...
; ''
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 ...
,'' for example, is preserved in
Middle Welsh
Middle Welsh (, ) 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 ().
Literature and history
Middle Welsh is ...
. A text in Latin and Old Welsh in the ''
Lichfield Gospels'' called the "Surrexit Memorandum" is thought to have been written in the early 8th century but may be a copy of a text from the 6th or 7th centuries.
[Medieval Vision: The Visual Culture of Wales. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2003, pg. 25.]
Surrexit Memorandum
Text
Words in bold are
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, not Old Welsh.
Translation
Tudfwlch son of Llywyd and son-in-law of Tudri arose to claim the land of Telych, which was in the hand of Elgu son of Gelli and the tribe of Idwared. They disputed long about it; in the end they disjudge Tudri's son-in-law by law. The goodmen said to each other 'Let us make peace'. Elgu gave afterwards a horse, three cows, three cows newly calved, in order that there might not be hatred between them from the ruling afterwards till the Day of Judgement. Tudfwlch and his kin will not want it for ever and ever.
Features
*The text shows many of the early spelling conventions of Welsh, when the basic Latin alphabet was used to represent the phonology of Old Welsh. At this stage, the use of to represent the lateral fricative and to represent had not been developed. The Latin letter was used to represent both the consonant /w/ and vowel /u/.
*
Initial mutations, a major feature of later
Welsh, do not appear in orthography at this point.
*Not all language used in the ''Memorandum'' was inherited by later Welsh. The following are words with clear Modern Welsh descendants:
Page 141 (on which the text is written) also has a Latin memorandum above the Old Welsh text. It appears to hold more text written below the main text, and a mysterious section where text appears to have been erased, both of which are partially overwritten with Old English text. No translations or transcripts have yet been offered for this section.
It is unknown why that particular page was used for the glosses, as little or no text appears to have been added to any of the other pages in the
Lichfield Gospels.
See also
*
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 and in the urban areas of t ...
References
*
*
External links
Old and Middle Welshby David Willis, University of Cambridge
Languages attested from the 7th century
Welsh, 1
History of the Welsh language
Welsh language
Extinct languages of Europe
Medieval history of Wales
{{Wales-hist-stub