5 ms·

Yan tan tethera is usually postulated to be of Celtic origin (it usually uses "dick" for ten, which is presumably a cognate of the Welsh "deg") IIRC the celts

by pacaro 9y ago

Yan tan tethera is usually postulated to be of Celtic origin (it usually uses "dick" for ten, which is presumably a cognate of the Welsh "deg") IIRC the celts moved all across Europe, but that pushes the timeframe back by two millennia or so

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Deg seems probable to be a mutation of "dec" from the Roman occupation, ie adopted from Latin? Transliterated Cymraeg numbers (in South Wales) go "een, die, tree". Old Welsh appeared just before the mediaeval period, coming from the common Brythonic tongue(s) AFAIK. There's a lot of Latin, not all recognisable: fenestr, is easy to see; ysbyty (iz-bit-ee, "hospital") less clear due to modification to a supposed origin of "ty" (meaning house). Interestingly you can find some English words, often again heavily mutated, that no longer exist in English (see eg https://archive.org/stream/englishelementin00parruoft/#page/13/mode/1up; https://archive.org/stream/englishelementin00parruoft/#page/... don't have my other references handy). Edit: one other reference that's to hand, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nWpbDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA335&ots=CKH7D1HisI&dq=barclod&pg=PA336#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nWpbDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA335&o....
- davidw 9y ago
  > adopted from Latin Maybe just indo-european in origins? Yes, it looks like 'dec'. See singularity2001's answer.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Don't think that covers it so well. The area we now call Wales was occupied by the Romans at which time the official language of the region was Latin. The Brythonic that was present across [at least Southern, ie below Scotland,] Britain clearly then adopted loanwords. However, it's hard sometimes to see if they were adopted in to the Briton's language, adopted in to English and then in to Cymraeg, or adopted in to English from Norman-French and then in to Cymraeg. The earliest non-fragmentary Cymraeg documents are from a couple of hundred years after the Norman conquest AFAIK. Clearly it seems naively to be Indo-European, but specifying Latin origin gives a bit more nuance: it could be wrong nuance! I'm afraid I'm not learned enough to know if it's Cymraeg loaned from English via Norman-French from Latin, or if it's direct, or indeed some other more or less tortuous route.
    - int_19h 9y ago
      Thing is, it's "dekm" in proto-Indo-European - and for a word that simple and basic, it's likely that it was already well-established as a direct derivative in Celtic before Latin had a chance to influence it. Most other IE languages also inherited it directly - e.g "deka" in Greek, "deset" in Slavic, "dasa" in Sanskrit etc (the s/k difference is satem/centum). It would be weird if Celtic was special.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        I'm well out of my depth as I'm sure you can tell, but I think the phrase is porque no los dos? Sources suggest dekam is Common Brythonic, but that doesn't mean the Old Welsh dec (now deg in Cymraeg) didn't come from Latin? Wouldn't it be weird if mutation of words in Celtic/Brythonic and Latin happened identically over time. Of course the similarity through earlier common ancestry of counting words would facilitate such a move. Thanks for your input though, my suggestion was supposed to be tentative as I know there are Latin loan words in Cymraeg from Old Welsh. Do you know whence comes the support for "dekam" being well-established in Celtic via IE, is it largely based on phonemic evidence?
        int_19h 9y ago
        I don't know the exact etymology of this word in Celtic - just mentioning some other languages with a similar relationship to PIE, but not necessarily with the same degree of influence by Latin, for comparison. I'm not sure what you mean by "mutation of the words happened identically over time"? The Latin for "ten" is "decem" - it didn't drop the "m" (hence also "decimus", "decimatio" etc). Most Romance languages did drop it eventually - but that came later, and in any case those languages wouldn't be in a position to influence Welsh. FWIW, I don't think it would be all that surprising for related but diverged languages to evolve in a similar way. Sure, they may have developed some different laws governing those changes since the divergence - but they will also have some common laws from their shared ancestry. And there's "convergent evolution" of languages, as well. Although it would be interesting to find out if this particular change is really governed by some common rule, or some rule that independently arose in two different branches, or it's just a curious coincidence.
singularity2001 9y ago
dick/deg for 10 is also cognate with french dix, digits(10 fingers), greek Δεκά (decimal...), persian 𐏓 dah 𐎭𐎠 ده, sanskrit dasa १०...

by pacaro 9y ago

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

Deg seems probable to be a mutation of "dec" from the Roman occupation, ie adopted from Latin? Transliterated Cymraeg numbers (in South Wales) go "een, die, tree". Old Welsh appeared just before the mediaeval period, coming from the common Brythonic tongue(s) AFAIK. There's a lot of Latin, not all recognisable: fenestr, is easy to see; ysbyty (iz-bit-ee, "hospital") less clear due to modification to a supposed origin of "ty" (meaning house). Interestingly you can find some English words, often again heavily mutated, that no longer exist in English (see eg https://archive.org/stream/englishelementin00parruoft/#page/13/mode/1up; https://archive.org/stream/englishelementin00parruoft/#page/... don't have my other references handy). Edit: one other reference that's to hand, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nWpbDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA335&ots=CKH7D1HisI&dq=barclod&pg=PA336#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nWpbDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA335&o....

davidw 9y ago
> adopted from Latin Maybe just indo-european in origins? Yes, it looks like 'dec'. See singularity2001's answer.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Don't think that covers it so well. The area we now call Wales was occupied by the Romans at which time the official language of the region was Latin. The Brythonic that was present across [at least Southern, ie below Scotland,] Britain clearly then adopted loanwords. However, it's hard sometimes to see if they were adopted in to the Briton's language, adopted in to English and then in to Cymraeg, or adopted in to English from Norman-French and then in to Cymraeg. The earliest non-fragmentary Cymraeg documents are from a couple of hundred years after the Norman conquest AFAIK. Clearly it seems naively to be Indo-European, but specifying Latin origin gives a bit more nuance: it could be wrong nuance! I'm afraid I'm not learned enough to know if it's Cymraeg loaned from English via Norman-French from Latin, or if it's direct, or indeed some other more or less tortuous route.
  - int_19h 9y ago
    Thing is, it's "dekm" in proto-Indo-European - and for a word that simple and basic, it's likely that it was already well-established as a direct derivative in Celtic before Latin had a chance to influence it. Most other IE languages also inherited it directly - e.g "deka" in Greek, "deset" in Slavic, "dasa" in Sanskrit etc (the s/k difference is satem/centum). It would be weird if Celtic was special.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      I'm well out of my depth as I'm sure you can tell, but I think the phrase is porque no los dos? Sources suggest dekam is Common Brythonic, but that doesn't mean the Old Welsh dec (now deg in Cymraeg) didn't come from Latin? Wouldn't it be weird if mutation of words in Celtic/Brythonic and Latin happened identically over time. Of course the similarity through earlier common ancestry of counting words would facilitate such a move. Thanks for your input though, my suggestion was supposed to be tentative as I know there are Latin loan words in Cymraeg from Old Welsh. Do you know whence comes the support for "dekam" being well-established in Celtic via IE, is it largely based on phonemic evidence?
      - int_19h 9y ago
        I don't know the exact etymology of this word in Celtic - just mentioning some other languages with a similar relationship to PIE, but not necessarily with the same degree of influence by Latin, for comparison. I'm not sure what you mean by "mutation of the words happened identically over time"? The Latin for "ten" is "decem" - it didn't drop the "m" (hence also "decimus", "decimatio" etc). Most Romance languages did drop it eventually - but that came later, and in any case those languages wouldn't be in a position to influence Welsh. FWIW, I don't think it would be all that surprising for related but diverged languages to evolve in a similar way. Sure, they may have developed some different laws governing those changes since the divergence - but they will also have some common laws from their shared ancestry. And there's "convergent evolution" of languages, as well. Although it would be interesting to find out if this particular change is really governed by some common rule, or some rule that independently arose in two different branches, or it's just a curious coincidence.

singularity2001 9y ago

dick/deg for 10 is also cognate with french dix, digits(10 fingers), greek Δεκά (decimal...), persian 𐏓 dah 𐎭𐎠 ده, sanskrit dasa १०...