'S mise/ it's me

[IainDonnchaidh]

Uill, tha mise leabhar mu dheidhinn na Cruithneachan a' sgriobhadh !

Chan eil fhios aig fear sam bith an cànan thuirt[?] iad

P-Ceilteach no Q-Ceilteach no .....

(I just presumed some sort of mix of the two, as opposed to Brythonic/Welsh in neighboring Gododdin/Lothian)

[akerbeltz]

Never come across a guide for Middle Irish that was readable. For Old Irish, I recommend the new Sengoidelc.

As far as cha(n) goes... it was there in the spoken language alright, just never written. What happened was that the old Irish word was nicon. When the 2 languages split, Gráinne Mhaol told them to be nice and share, so Irish settled for ní, Gaelic for chan. But chan did not get written until the emergence of the (Scottish) Gaelic writing tradition centuries later. So if you're aiming to depict spoken "Old Scottish Gaelic", use chan by all means.

'S e cànan Breatannach a bh' ann an Cruithnis, cha mhór gun teagamh ach tha e glé glé dhoirbh a ràdh có ris a bha e coltach. B' fheairrde dhut sùil a thoirt air an t-seann Bhreatannais (Old Welsh) agus sin a chleachdadh.

[Níall Beag]

On the subject of languages in books....
Please don't!!!!

In general, it's just a silly idea that makes a book harder to read.

When I'm watching a spy film, and the Russians or East Germans or Chinese or whoevere speak their own language, I may not understand it, but at least I can hear it. But when I'm reading a book and I come across a sentence in a language I don't know, I can't even read it. Consider the following random sentences from random Wikipedia articles in 4 languages:

La Défense, Europako negozio-barrutirik handiena, Frantziako enpresen erdiaren egoitza nagusia da, eta munduko 100 enpresarik handietik 20rena ere.

Kara Şövalye filmi onun ölümünden altı ay sonra vizyona girdi. Ledger'ın filmdeki Joker portresi çok beğenildi ve olumlu eleştiriler aldı.

Az Európai Uniós csatlakozás az autópálya-építés újabb hullámát hozta. Az 1990-es évek közepéig Magyarország autópályái ingyenesek voltak.

He ʻōnaehana pūnaewele Hawaiʻi ʻo ia no ka hoʻohana ʻana a me ka hoʻoulu ʻana i ka ʻike Hawaiʻi.

Can you read them at all? Can you hear anything? Do you know how long it would take to say them?

When I come across this sort of thing in a book, it ruins it for me. Why include something in a book that can't be read? If I'm supposed to understand it, tell me it in a language I understand. If the main character doesn't understand it, describe his experience! Tell me what he thinks, how he feels.

[clarsach]

Niall, mostly, I agree with you. One writer in my group who includes entire sentences in French without ever explaining them and is convinced the language is so obvious that any reader can figure it out, no matter how often we say we can't.

What I find acceptable as a reader is a very short phrase now and again, that's immediately explained, to give flavor. I am actually just this minute hitting my proof reading on this part, and there will be very little in Gaelic-- her first unintelligible words (I left him here last night), when he is not expecting to hear it, followed by the tr*nsl*t**n as he sorts it out, and as I go through the proof reading, probably just the "'S mise, Allene" which will be immediately followed by the tr*nsl*t**n in his head. From there on, as the reader is now clear they are speaking a foreign language, it will all be in English.

[IainDonnchaidh]

Good point, Niall. I went through this evolution on several rewrites.

My main character would have grown up speaking a Brythonic tongue. Obviously I'm going to write the book in English, but I made all the personal and place names Welsh-like in her homeland. (not unlike some fantasy books)

Then the plot carries her unwillingly north to the land of the "barbarians" (in her culture). As I said, no one really knows exactly what language the Picts (as the Romans called them) P-, Q-, or something else. So I just settled on something of a mix, but more Q- for "foreign-ness".

A few words I introduced for flavor, but mostly I just changed the grammar so it sounds different. "It's a fine sword that it is" type things, plus "many thanks," "it's your life," "as that with you," "take not worry," "it's good that," etc etc etc. The point is that the main character (and the reader!) feel like they are in a foreign land. Plus my heroine cannot be faced with the immense task of learning a completely different language in a few days or weeks. It's just a different dialect, and of course she starts picking it up and "goes native." She learns that the people are not "barbarians" after all.

The people of "Tyr Caled" (as called by the folks to the south) call themselve the "Cruwanachann". I got some of my character names from the old pictish king lists: Drust, Nechtann, Ungus, etc

I dunno, as a native speaker you may not like this sort of thing, and think I should stick to writing cowboy stories.

But it's a historical fantasy taking place 1500 years ago.

[akerbeltz]

no one really knows exactly what language the Picts (as the Romans called them) P-, Q-

No, we know it was P. Just not what it was like in detail. Remember the P/Q thing is based on the loss of P in Goidelic (cf cóig, ceann) whereas P retained P (cf pemp, pen). So, since we have scores of Pit- place names, unless belong to the slightly odd camp of people doubting it was Celtic, then it can't be anything but P Celtic because Irish did not acquire the /p/ sound again until Latin came round with the monks.

[Seonaidh]

'S ann ceàrr a tha thu, AB. Cha "loss of P in Goidelic (cf cóig, ceann) whereas P retained P (cf pemp, pen)" idir. Bha call P sa h-uile cànan Ceilteach. Na P-an a chithear an-diugh sa Chuimris is eile, sa Ghallais (seann chànan na Ffrainge) is mathaid sa "Chruithnis", 's ann bho na Q-an a thàinig iad. Cuideachd - agus tha seo fìor sa Ghàidhlig amsaa - thàinig mòran B bho GW [m.e. *gwene => kvinne, queen is eile sna cànain Gearmailteach, ach => bean, benyw is eile sna cànain Ceilteach]. Cha do "retained" Cuimris am P ach leasaich i i bhon Q.

San fharsaingeachd, chan eil fios agam air na chleachdadh na Cruithnich. Aon chànan P-Cheilteach gun teagamh - tha fuasgladh againn mar "Peanfahel" (Kinneil, ceann a' bhalla) a mholadh seo. Ach cuideachd bha ainmean glè dhoirbh nam measg, ainmean nach seall mar ainmean Ceilteach idir, no fiù 's ainmean Indo-Eòrpach. Smathaid gun robh iomadh cànan nam measg - P-Cheilteach, Q-Cheilteach, I-E neo-Cheilteach is neo-Indo-Eòrpach.

"Pit": 's dòcha gur e an aon fhacal a tha seo ri "peth" sa Chuimris. Ach dè mu dheidhinn ainmean-àite mar "Stonehaven"? Nochdadh nach ann Beurla a tha an t-ainm seo idir! Cò às a thàinig e?

[Níall Beag]

What I find acceptable as a reader is a very short phrase now and again, that's immediately explained, to give flavor.

The problem is that you can only get a "feel" of an unfamiliar language from sounds. The written word has to evoke the sound, and Gaelic's own orthographic system doesn't make any sense to the non-speaker -- you can't hear it because you don't know what sounds the letters make, nor where the stress falls in a word.

The alternative is to transcribe it in some sort of crude English-based phonetics, but this well then only express sounds possible in English, so lose the "alien" character of the speech.

I dunno, as a native speaker you may not like this sort of thing, and think I should stick to writing cowboy stories.

I'm only a native speaker of English, and as a native speaker of English, I find it very difficult to read books in English that include speech in unfamiliar languages, whether they be real languages or random strings of letters pretending to be an alien language. (According to Wikipedia, the home planet of Star Wars' wookies is called Kashyyyk and their language is called Shyriiwook. Even having grown up as a massive fan of the films and Chewbacca's seriously cool growls and warbles, I have no idea what those words sound like and I really can't read them.)

No, we know it was P. Just not what it was like in detail. Remember the P/Q thing is based on the loss of P in Goidelic (cf cóig, ceann) whereas P retained P (cf pemp, pen). So, since we have scores of Pit- place names, unless belong to the slightly odd camp of people doubting it was Celtic, then it can't be anything but P Celtic because Irish did not acquire the /p/ sound again until Latin came round with the monks.

I thought that theory had become deprecated through DNA evidence.

I know Insular Celtic theory was a fringe thing for a long time, but Y-chromosome evidence places all the Celtic peoples of the British Isles as belonging to a single migration from Northern Iberia.

The remaining linguistic evidence leaves little doubt (so I'm told) that Celtiberian was anything other than Q Celtic. This means that the Celtic peoples of the British Isles would have originally been a Q-Celtic language, and that the P/Q split in the modern Celtic languages is either an independent sound change from the continental P/Q split or a contact phenomenon resulting from cross channel trade with the Gauls.
(And leads to the interesting idea that the phonetically P languages Welsh, Cornish and Breton are genetically Q under traditional taxonomies!)

[Thrissel]

I'm only a native speaker of English, and as a native speaker of English, I find it very difficult to read books in English that include speech in unfamiliar languages, whether they be real languages or random strings of letters pretending to be an alien language. (According to Wikipedia, the home planet of Star Wars' wookies is called Kashyyyk and their language is called Shyriiwook. Even having grown up as a massive fan of the films and Chewbacca's seriously cool growls and warbles, I have no idea what those words sound like and I really can't read them.)

You know, I'm just reading this Richard Morgan fantasy where the main character's name is Ringil. I've no idea whether the author had in mind the "soft" or the "hard" g, but somehow it doesn't spoil the book for me any more than not knowing what precisely were, say, the Beatles alluding to in every single line of their "psychedelic" lyrics.

On the other hand I would be very grateful to writers if they took the pains of adding translations and pronunciations of real foreign-language words/sentences used in their books, especially when it comes to placenames...

And of course, there's this:

One writer in my group who includes entire sentences in French without ever explaining them and is convinced the language is so obvious that any reader can figure it out, no matter how often we say we can't.

Trouble is, he'll never have the book(s) adequately translated into French then.

[akerbeltz]

Cha "loss of P in Goidelic (cf cóig, ceann) whereas P retained P (cf pemp, pen)" idir. Bha call P sa h-uile cànan Ceilteach.

Yes, true, I was abbreviating the story I guess, sorry. What happened was, you had this in Late Common Celtic:
p t k kʷ
Which Insular Celtic reduced to
t k kʷ
Brythonic then turns kʷ into p, resulting in:
p t k
Whereas Goidelic sticks with
t k
for a long time until p is re-introduced via Latin and to a certain extent via fortition of /f/ > /p/.

Smathaid gun robh iomadh cànan nam measg - P-Cheilteach, Q-Cheilteach, I-E neo-Cheilteach is neo-Indo-Eòrpach.

'S mathaid gun robh.

I thought that theory had become deprecated through DNA evidence.

Not really. DNA and linguistic evidence can inform each other but they usually cannot exclude one another. Languages can move independently of genes. And genes independently of language.

Y-chromosome evidence places all the Celtic peoples of the British Isles as belonging to a single migration from Northern Iberia.

If I remember that rightly, it puts them in the same *range*, not necessarily as descendents though. These markers really are to be taken with great care. Again, even if, this only tells us of genetic influences. If genes were taken from Iberia (for the sake of argument) to stock the Isles, that does not mean that automatically introduces an Iberian form of Celtic. Or, even if, then language shift to the influx of Insular Celts could still have ocurred. Genes tells us of the movement of people but not all the other stuff. At least not on their own.

Kashyyyk

That's /kʰaˈʃiːk/; if you watch SW II you'll hear Mace Windu pronounce it.

[IainDonnchaidh]

Tha sin uile glè inntinneach, co-dhiu!

The problem is that you can only get a "feel" of an unfamiliar language from sounds. The written word has to evoke the sound, and Gaelic's own orthographic system doesn't make any sense to the non-speaker -- you can't hear it because you don't know what sounds the letters make, nor where the stress falls in a word.

The alternative is to transcribe it in some sort of crude English-based phonetics, but this well then only express sounds possible in English, so lose the "alien" character of the speech.

I've struggled greatly with this. I pretty much went with an english phonetic spelling for most names (except the "Welsh"). But of course readers don't know which syllable is accented, and the the "ch" is hopeless. All this I've learned from hearing writer's group members read selections of my stuff aloud.

If this work ever gets to the publishing point, I'm planning to include an "Author's Note" explaining a bit of the known history(legend) and provide a short guide to the pronounciation and names.

[Seonaidh]

Nowthen, if it's "all in the genes", why is it that (a) these would-be Celtiberian genes are so widespread in Britain and (b) so few folk in Britain actually speak Celtic languages?

Besides, didn't the Celtiberians actually speak some strange mixture of I-E and non-I-E languages? No doubt, A-B is eile can point to such ancient place-names as "Illiberris" (faisg air Granada) to demonstrate quite a widespread "proto-Basque" influence, and it is notable that the Cantabres or Cantabrians, neighbours of the Vascones (modern Basques) and thought to have originally spoken a very similar language, took to speaking Latin "with a Basque accent", a language that has developed into modern Castilian Spanish.

For, just as the Celtic languages had no P, so the Basque ones had no F. All these Latin words with F at the start came to be pronounced more like a Gaelic FH - i.e. as nothing or as an H. Compare formosa (Portuguese) and hermosa (Spanidh), ferrum (Latin) and hierro (Spanish), fils (French) and hijo (Spanish), fabulare (Latin) and hablar (Spanish) (I think this is "fablar" in Aragonese)

A Nèill, tha mi a' creidsinn gu bheil "insular Celtic theory" air tighinn dhachaigh airson roost - agus gun chuideachadh sam bith bho "Y chromosome theory":-

Ch. 2, “The Emergence of the Celtic Languages”, Joseph P. Eska; d. 25:- “There are two remarkable innovations that Goidelic and Brittonic share to the exclusion of Transalpine Celtic which necessitates this view. The first is the development of the dual flexional paradigm of the verbs in the Insular Celtic languages, whereby one form of the verb is used when the verb is in absolute initial position in the clause and another when it is preceded by any of a class of so-called “conjunct particles”, among which are included negators, complementizers, connectives and pre-verbs.”

[akerbeltz]

For, just as the Celtic languages had no P, so the Basque ones had no F.

Let's leave the Basque out of it until we can read Iberian...

Celtic DID have P, Lusitanian for example has the form porcom attested. Aye, pork.

Haaaanyway... how did we get here??

[IainDonnchaidh]

Haaaanyway... how did we get here??

Tha mi duilich ...

I hijacked this thread aig clarsach.

[clarsach]

LOL, no worries, Iain. I'm enjoying the conversation.

There was actually a thread not too long ago among the members of the Historical Novel Society about whether to use authentic or anglicized names. I like to be as historically accurate as possible in my writing, but I did go with anglicized names so people could pronounce them in their heads. A few, like the soft g/ hard g mentioned above, doesn't ruin anything for me, either, but you can at least get pretty close on that. Some of the long strings of syllables or consonants, with no clue what they mean would be distracting for me throughout a book.

Even so, I've been amazed at how many of my readers have asked me how to pronounce Niall!