#53331
01/21/2002 3:01 AM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Are these two languages connected? There seems to be an auditory similarity at least.
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#53332
01/21/2002 4:32 AM
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Welsh is a Celtic language akin to Gaelic and Breton, and the extinct Manx and Cornish. Norwegian is a Germanic language akin to Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic, and more distantly to English, Dutch, and German. The Celtic and Germanic languages both come from Indo-European, as do Latin and the Romance languages, Greek, the Slavic languages, Farsi, Sanskrit and some other Indian languages, Hittite, and Tocharian, and lots more. Ethnologue lists 443 Indo-European languages at: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?name=Indo-European&subid=629Bingley
Bingley
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#53333
01/21/2002 7:19 AM
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Welsh is a Celtic language akin to Gaelic and Breton, and the extinct Manx and Cornish.
How exactly are we defining the extinction of a language? Is it extinct when the last native speaker dies? There are still people (strange, strange people) who speak Cornish, although not as a mother tongue. My great-grandmother (d. 1950ish) used many a Cornish phrase in her speech (see below). Would the dodo still be extinct if we recreated it from DNA?
Do we be off wit' yer daft nanny. Translated into Aussie as "Gee you talk a lot of s**t".
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#53334
01/21/2002 7:38 AM
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Extinction with the last native speaker's death seems a reasonable yardstick to me (and yes I know the Vatican still uses Latin). After all I have been known to say nggak iso from time to time, but that doesn't mean I can speak Javanese. I assume your great-grandmother's expression means roughly "Be off with you, you daft ninny", which my grandmother (from the south of Scotland) used to say from time to time, so it would seem to be more from the English spoken in Cornwall rather than from the Celtic Cornish tongue.
Bingley
Bingley
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#53335
01/21/2002 5:12 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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Genetically, there's no connexion closer than the Indo-European level. Germanic and Celtic aren't especially close to each other linguistically despite their physical neighbouring.
I can't hear any similarity in the phonetics. The consonants are quite different; Norwegian has a complex vowel system, and is tonal.
Although the Vikings did settle in Ireland, and in northern British England (Cumbria), where something akin to Welsh would have been spoken, I'm not aware that Norse languages had any impact on the Celtic ones. Whereas the Norse influence on English was significant (sky, skirt, they, etc.).
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#53336
01/22/2002 10:19 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
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Thanks, Old Nick, for your explanation. But was that a "yes" or a "no"? 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#53337
01/26/2002 6:36 PM
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Are these two languages connected? There seems to be an auditory similarity at least.
Spot on Jackie!! Welsh is, in a way, connected with Norse language but so much as Northern England English dialect and even Scots and Irish dialect. Don't forget that parts of Scotland were Norse/Danish until the era of Robert the Bruce (early 1300's). Ireland was invaded by the vikings and Norse and Dublin and parts of the East still retain Norse influences. Look at the names of counties Wexford and Waterford!!!
Parts of Northumberland and Cumbria in England still use a lot of Norse dialect and Danes and Norwegians find their English easier to understand than those further South.
There was an excellent Norwegian film out a few years ago called Insomnia which I saw with a friend of mine from Dublin who speaks no foreign languages. Despite the subtitles he commented to me afterwards that he was able to understand almost every spoken word. A different language but, phonetically, almost identical. Danish, on the other hand, is completely unique and impossible to speak let alone understand.
Welsh and Norwegian do have different sources but their influences have been shared to a large degree. Modern pronunciation and accents do differ somewhat, however. The most significant auditory difference between the two is the phlegmatic rounding of the letters 'c' and 'cl' in Welsh. The Norwegian language is more melodic and not quite as gutteral.
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#53338
01/26/2002 8:17 PM
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Joined: Sep 2000
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not quite as gutteral
"You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses" ~
And the pig got up and slowly walked away!
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#53339
01/26/2002 8:36 PM
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Dear Rubrick: "Danish, on the other hand, is completely unique and impossible to speak let alone understand.
I had a Danish boss, a very gifted mathematician and statistician, who said: "Danish is not a language, it is a throat disease."
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#53340
01/26/2002 10:14 PM
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"You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses" ~
And the pig got up and slowly walked away!
This is the second cryptic reply I've received this evening. Care to explain it to me??
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#53341
01/26/2002 11:35 PM
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not quite as gutteral
"You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses" ~
And the pig got up and slowly walked away!
Oh, I see. Pardon me, Maverick. I really didn't mean any disrespect to the Welsh language or the Welsh. All I meant to imply is that the pronunciation of some words in Welsh are harsher in some instances than other languages and I was stuck for a way in which to describe these differences. Perhaps gutteral is not the correct term. Could you suggest a more correct description??
Peace,
Rubrick
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#53342
01/27/2002 5:04 PM
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Perhaps gutteral is not the correct term. Could you suggest a more correct description??Hey, absolutely no offence taken! [/keiva] I was just pulling your leg with one of my favourite old music-hall tags, brought to mind by your previous post – may I suggest, in honest reply, the alternative “gutt ural”?  But you should immediately © gutteral – “He swore at me in gutteral® tones!”
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#53343
01/27/2002 8:16 PM
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Posts: 13,858
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"Perhaps gutteral is not the correct term"
Interesting how many words used to describe accent are meaningless xenophobic putdowns
In particular the use of "gutteral" to describe a distaste for German. When I was studying German I remember a leading authority pointing out that English has sounds more gutteral than any in German.
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#53344
01/28/2002 3:29 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
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a leading authority pointing out that English has sounds more gutteral than any in German.
Not true, by my understanding of it. Guttural is no longer used as a technical term in linguistics, but if it refers to any sound made in the throat or back of the mouth, German has a lot more than English.
Both languages have [ h ].
German has [ x ] as in nach, doch.
German also has the glottal stop [ ? ] before any word beginning with a vowel, as in eins = [ ?ains ].
Added. Also German has a guttural R, a uvular approximant to be exact.
Further, German speakers typically have greater throat constriction; I think their vowels are pharyngalized (the root of the tongue presses closer into the pharynx as a secondary articulation), though I won't swear as to the exact nature of this articulation.
I agree that 'guttural' is usually bandied about as a meaningless derogatory term, but I think in this case it's accurate in its literal meaning.
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#53345
01/28/2002 3:41 PM
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"You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses" ~
And the pig got up and slowly walked away!
This is the second cryptic reply I've received this evening. Care to explain it to me??
Even I got it and I'm usually the last one.
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#53346
01/28/2002 3:54 PM
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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 679
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"You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses" ~
And the pig got up and slowly walked away!
This is the second cryptic reply I've received this evening. Care to explain it to me??
Even I got it and I'm usually the last one.No, no. I got it (eventually and thanks to many references from other board members, admittedly). Just a bit slow on the uptake these days. Put it down to my inherited Irish thicko genes! 
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#53347
01/28/2002 4:03 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
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So have you copyrighted gutteral yet?
If you don't have one handy, you can borrow this one:
©
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#53348
01/28/2002 4:09 PM
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So have you copyrighted gutteral yet?
If you don't have one handy, you can borrow this one: ©
Thanks for that, Faldage. I was wondering how to get it up in markup!
Funny how a Freudian typo © (patent pending) can become a newly coined word!
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#53349
01/30/2002 2:46 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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To preplete the poem referenced by mav:
JUDGED BY THE COMPANY ONE KEEPS
One night in late October,
When I was far from sober,
Returning with my load with manly pride,
My feet began to stutter,
So I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came near and lay down by my side;
A lady passing by was heard to say:
"You can tell a man who boozes,
By the company he chooses,"
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
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