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> It’s fascinating to hear Welsh. It’s not related to any Germanic or French or others so there’s little vocabulary shared with English aside from some loan wor

> It’s fascinating to hear Welsh. It’s not related to any Germanic or French or others so there’s little vocabulary shared with English aside from some loan words. Celtic is a branch of Indo-European, so the relationship exists. Naively, it's about as closely related to English (Germanic), and to French (Italic), as English is to French. The closest cognate that comes to mind between English and Welsh is "apple", afal in Welsh. If you believe the Italo-Celtic hypothesis, Welsh would be more closely related to French than English is. Browsing https://www.omniglot.com/language/celtic/connections/index.php https://www.omniglot.com/language/celtic/connections/index.p... shows some other cognates: Welsh enaid (soul) is cognate with Spanish alma (soul). Welsh asyn is "cognate" with English ass (the animal), in the sense that Celtic and Germanic each separately borrowed the word from Latin asinus and the modern words are inherited independently. For this reason, the word is also "cognate" with French âne. Welsh benyw (woman) is cognate with English queen (which used to mean "woman"). Welsh blodyn (flower) is cognate with English blossom. (And maybe also bloom.) Welsh buwch (cow) is cognate with English cow. (Although buwch really looks like it should be related to bovine, this does not appear to be the case. But we can see that the b- beginning the Welsh word here matches the b- beginning benyw, corresponding to kw- in English. This is also what happened in cow -- Celtic reduced gw- to b-. In this case, Germanic reduced gw- to k-; in queen, gw- became kw-.) Welsh bol (stomach) is cognate with English belly. And I haven't even gotten through the Bs. Cognates are fairly common. This wasn't even a list of Celtic words that are cognate with English words; it was a list of Celtic words that are cognate with other Celtic words.

elcritch 1y ago
> as English is to French. For basic grammar sure, but English has what 30-40% of its vocabulary from French? There's also a lot of influence from Latin and Greek in English as well. Likely it's just less cross-cultural sharing from Welsh into English. We get much more exposed to more tidbits from romance languages or German in English than we do Welsh or Gaelic. > Italo-Celtoc hypothesis Fascinating! Something to read up on.
- michaelscott 1y ago
  Yeah correct, the French relationship with modern English is much closer because of (among other reasons) the Norman conquest that happened long after the Indo-European split and much closer to our time
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > but English has what 30-40% of its vocabulary from French? You have to be careful what you're counting when you quote figures like that. Here is your comment, but including only the words derived from French: ----- ... basic grammar sure, ............. influence ... Latin ...... just .... cultural .......... exposed† ..... Romance languages ................. † exposed is unlike "normal" French-derived words in English in that it is not derived from Old French; the equivalent from Old French is expound(ed), and even there I'm not sure why we have ex- instead of es-. I might credit exposed more to Latin than French. ----- Here's English: ----- for xxxx xxxx xxxx, but English has what 30 to 40 xxxx of its xxxx from French? There's also a lot of xxxx from xxxx and xxxx in English as well. Likely it's xxxx less xxxx-xxxx sharing from Welsh into English. We xxxx much more xxxx to more tidbits from xxxx xxxx or xxxx in English than we do Welsh or xxxx. xxxx! Something to read up on. ----- 53 / 71 words (including Welsh, but not Gaelic) are native English. (Welsh ultimately derives from the name of a Celtic tribe known to us from Roman writers. In Germanic, the name became a generic word for foreigners. I think it's fair to call it English; it was already like that in proto-Germanic. Gaelic is more recent.) 10 / 71 words, including the somewhat questionable exposed, are from French. 5 are Latin, two are Norse, and then there's Gaelic. Greek is not represented except in the -ic ending on Gaelic (or basic). If you're listening to someone speak English, knowing French is unlikely to be worth much.
  - griffzhowl 1y ago
    Nice observation but it just illustrates what the GP is saying: the basic grammar is English while a huge proportion of the vocabulary comes from French. If you remove the grammatical words from the English selection you made, there's hardly anything left. > If you're listening to someone speak English, knowing French is unlikely to be worth much. It can help a lot when learning because of the huge vocabulary overlap, e.g. more or less every word ending with -tion, you just learn to pronounce it differently
elcritch 1y ago
P.S. Next time I'll have to listen for b- words in Welsh to see if I can pick them out.
elric 1y ago
> Welsh benyw (woman) is cognate with English queen (which used to mean "woman"). The relationships between languages are fun and fascinating. "kvinna" still means woman in Swedish.
- arethuza 1y ago
  I wonder if that’s where the use of “quine” for “girl” comes from in North East Scotland?
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    Yes. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quine#Scots https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quine#Scots (That is to say, the Scots word descends from English, not from Norse.)
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > "kvinna" still means woman in Swedish. We started updating that more than a thousand years ago. Get with the times already. ;D

elcritch 1y ago

> as English is to French. For basic grammar sure, but English has what 30-40% of its vocabulary from French? There's also a lot of influence from Latin and Greek in English as well. Likely it's just less cross-cultural sharing from Welsh into English. We get much more exposed to more tidbits from romance languages or German in English than we do Welsh or Gaelic. > Italo-Celtoc hypothesis Fascinating! Something to read up on.

michaelscott 1y ago
Yeah correct, the French relationship with modern English is much closer because of (among other reasons) the Norman conquest that happened long after the Indo-European split and much closer to our time
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> but English has what 30-40% of its vocabulary from French? You have to be careful what you're counting when you quote figures like that. Here is your comment, but including only the words derived from French: ----- ... basic grammar sure, ............. influence ... Latin ...... just .... cultural .......... exposed† ..... Romance languages ................. † exposed is unlike "normal" French-derived words in English in that it is not derived from Old French; the equivalent from Old French is expound(ed), and even there I'm not sure why we have ex- instead of es-. I might credit exposed more to Latin than French. ----- Here's English: ----- for xxxx xxxx xxxx, but English has what 30 to 40 xxxx of its xxxx from French? There's also a lot of xxxx from xxxx and xxxx in English as well. Likely it's xxxx less xxxx-xxxx sharing from Welsh into English. We xxxx much more xxxx to more tidbits from xxxx xxxx or xxxx in English than we do Welsh or xxxx. xxxx! Something to read up on. ----- 53 / 71 words (including Welsh, but not Gaelic) are native English. (Welsh ultimately derives from the name of a Celtic tribe known to us from Roman writers. In Germanic, the name became a generic word for foreigners. I think it's fair to call it English; it was already like that in proto-Germanic. Gaelic is more recent.) 10 / 71 words, including the somewhat questionable exposed, are from French. 5 are Latin, two are Norse, and then there's Gaelic. Greek is not represented except in the -ic ending on Gaelic (or basic). If you're listening to someone speak English, knowing French is unlikely to be worth much.
- griffzhowl 1y ago
  Nice observation but it just illustrates what the GP is saying: the basic grammar is English while a huge proportion of the vocabulary comes from French. If you remove the grammatical words from the English selection you made, there's hardly anything left. > If you're listening to someone speak English, knowing French is unlikely to be worth much. It can help a lot when learning because of the huge vocabulary overlap, e.g. more or less every word ending with -tion, you just learn to pronounce it differently

elcritch 1y ago

P.S. Next time I'll have to listen for b- words in Welsh to see if I can pick them out.

elric 1y ago

> Welsh benyw (woman) is cognate with English queen (which used to mean "woman"). The relationships between languages are fun and fascinating. "kvinna" still means woman in Swedish.

arethuza 1y ago
I wonder if that’s where the use of “quine” for “girl” comes from in North East Scotland?
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Yes. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quine#Scots https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quine#Scots (That is to say, the Scots word descends from English, not from Norse.)
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> "kvinna" still means woman in Swedish. We started updating that more than a thousand years ago. Get with the times already. ;D