Middle Welsh is the label attached to the
Welsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
of the 12th to 14th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed from
Old WelshOld Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh language from about 800 AD until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh. The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from the British language around 550, has been called "Primitive Welsh".Many poems and some prose has...
.
Middle Welsh is the language of nearly all surviving early manuscripts of the
MabinogionThe Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...
, although the tales themselves are certainly much older. It is also the language of most of the manuscripts of
Welsh lawWelsh law, the law of Wales, was traditionally first codified by Hywel Dda during the period between 942 and 950 when he was king of most of Wales. In Welsh it is usually called Cyfraith Hywel, the Law of Hywel...
. Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker.
The
phonologyPhonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system...
of Middle Welsh is quite similar to that of modern Welsh, with only a few differences (Evans 1964).
Middle Welsh is the label attached to the
Welsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
of the 12th to 14th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed from
Old WelshOld Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh language from about 800 AD until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh. The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from the British language around 550, has been called "Primitive Welsh".Many poems and some prose has...
.
Middle Welsh is the language of nearly all surviving early manuscripts of the
MabinogionThe Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...
, although the tales themselves are certainly much older. It is also the language of most of the manuscripts of
Welsh lawWelsh law, the law of Wales, was traditionally first codified by Hywel Dda during the period between 942 and 950 when he was king of most of Wales. In Welsh it is usually called Cyfraith Hywel, the Law of Hywel...
. Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker.
The
phonologyPhonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system...
of Middle Welsh is quite similar to that of modern Welsh, with only a few differences (Evans 1964). The letter
u, which today represents in North Welsh dialects and in South Welsh dialects, represented the
close central rounded vowelThe close central rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is }....
in Middle Welsh. The diphthong
aw is found in unstressed final syllables in Middle Welsh, while in Modern Welsh it has become
o (e.g. Middle Welsh = Modern Welsh "horseman"). Similarly, the Middle Welsh diphthongs
ei and
eu have become
ai and
au in final syllables, e.g. Middle Welsh = modern "seven", Middle Welsh = modern "sun".
The
orthographyThe orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example for Kurdish, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós and γράφειν...
of Middle Welsh was not standardized, and there is great variation between manuscripts in how certain sounds are spelled. Some generalizations of differences between Middle Welsh spelling and Modern Welsh spelling can be made (Evans 1964). For example, the possessive pronouns "his, her", "their" and the preposition "to" are very commonly spelled in Middle Welsh, and are thus spelled the same as the
definite articleDefinite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on video and CD. The video/DVD and CD performances were both recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. Both recordings cover topics such as The Italian Job, Pavlov's dogs and...
and the indirect
relative particleA relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun. For example, the noun phrase the man who wasn't there contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there. In many European languages, relative clauses are introduced by a special class of pronouns called...
. A phrase such as is therefore ambiguous in Middle Welsh between the meaning "the cat" (spelled the same in Modern Welsh), the meaning "his cat" (modern ), and the meaning "to a cat" (modern ). The
voicedVirtual Organization for Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design is a virtual organization that promotes innovation in engineering design. This project is the collaborative work of researchers at five universities across the United States, and is funded by the National Science Foundation...
stops are represented by the letters
t c at the end of a word, e.g. "protection" (modern ), "running" (modern ). The sound is very often spelled
k before the vowels
e i y (in Modern Welsh, it is always spelled
c, e.g. Middle Welsh = modern "third cousin"). The sound is usually spelled
u or
v, except at the end of a word, where it is spelled
f (in Modern Welsh, it is always spelled
f, e.g. Middle Welsh = modern "apple tree"). The sound is usually spelled
d (in Modern Welsh, it is spelled
dd, e.g. Middle Welsh = modern "day"). The sound is spelled
r and is thus not distinguished from (in Modern Welsh, they are distinguished as
rh and
r respectively, e.g. Middle Welsh "running" vs. modern ).
See also
- Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru is the principal historical dictionary of the Welsh language, enjoying a similar status to that of the Oxford English Dictionary in the English language....
, the standard historical Welsh dictionary
- Medieval Welsh literature
Mediaeval Welsh literature is the literature written in the Welsh language during the Middle Ages. This includes material from the time of the tongue's formation between the 5th and 8th centuries to the works of the 16th century....
, Book of LlandaffThe Book of Llandaff is a 12th century chronicle of the history of the diocese of Llandaff in Wales.The work was compiled around 1125 by an unknown official at Llandaff Cathedral...
, MabinogionThe Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...
, Welsh lawWelsh law, the law of Wales, was traditionally first codified by Hywel Dda during the period between 942 and 950 when he was king of most of Wales. In Welsh it is usually called Cyfraith Hywel, the Law of Hywel...
- Welsh alphabet
Welsh orthography uses 28 letters of the Latin alphabet to write native Welsh words as well as older loanwords.The acute accent, the grave accent, the circumflex and the diaeresis mark are also used on vowels, but accented letters are not regarded as part of the alphabet.The letter j is accepted...
External links