I was hasty. Transliteration as a technique can be of course how you can compare different languages, I was mostly reacting to basically everything you wrote in this post.
Is the Hebrew-Welsh connection more than a myth?
- Thread starter Roel~
- Start date
I was hasty. Transliteration as a technique can be of course how you can compare different languages, I was mostly reacting to basically everything you wrote in this post.
Presumably when you say "you" you do not mean "me" as I do not think you were responding to anything I said. In fact I was rather agreeing with you. I have made a slight to change to my last post to make that clear.
Yes we are agreed entirely.
I of course meant you as in you, but I meant in reaction to exactly the phenomena you cite, which is what prompted me to state a little too confidently that "transliteration is not such and such." I've also bolded the part above in my post 'unless everyone is using the same well-defined system' for clarity.Moderator note: Above, Arielipi used <kh> to transcribe /ħ/ and <ch> to transcribe /x/~/χ/. This does not correspond to normal usage but since we know it now we can live with it. But please, Arielipi, in the future try to use more conventional transcriptions to avoid such confusions. Here or here, e.g. are very handy tools for IPA symbols.
Here or here, e.g. are very handy tools for IPA symbols.What is Welsh called in Welsh then?
I think this might be something. Obviously from what I 've understood the Welsh-Hebrew connection seems to be an urban-myth. I just wanted it to be confirmed because it's possible that people were faking it, as seems to be with the Hebrew bible phrases according to some users here and you also have the following case:
For example, you have two languages (I make these phrases up)
Awwa draama = He is here (language A)
Owwo droomu = He is here (language B)
It is possible that they match and are likely related:
Awwa (he) draama (here) = He is here (language A)
Owwo (he) droomu (here) = He is here (language B)
But this isn't the only possiblity.
Although they have the same meaning, you could have the following case:
Awwa (he) draama (here) = He is here (language A)
Owwo (here) droomu (he) = He is here (language B)
I wondered if this might be the case here. Is it possible that those Medieval writers confused similar sounding phrases, without looking at and comparing the words, if the words themselves were similar too, while only the phrases may have looked similar?
This seems to be debunked anyway, but what stays is the theory of Venneman.
Now what I wonder about is, how big is the chance that Vennemans theory is right? Because I think that it's very well possible that the Gaelic languages origin from the Middle-East, when you look at the sounds and the way how it is written (with a lot of consonants for instance). I just wonder if there is any scientific proof for this because I don't know this.
Cymraeg. Welsh and Gaelic (Scottish and Irish) are totally different languages, and are mutually incomprehensible.
The way Welsh is written is a bit deceptive because it has a lot of digraphs representing single sounds:
ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th,
The digraphs may appear at the beginning of a word or together giving the impression of consonant clusters more complex than is the case. Further, <w> and <y> are regularly used as vowels.
I have taken a Welsh sentence at random:
Serch hynny, mae llawer o siaradwyr Cymraeg iaith gyntaf yn llawer mwy cyffyrddus yn mynegi eu hunain drwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg na'r Saesneg.
If the second half of each digraph is taken away and <w> and <y> (where vowels) are replaced by <u> and <i> you get:
Serc hinni, mae lawer o siaraduir Cimraeg iait gintaf in lawer mui cifirdus in minegi eu hunain drui gifrun y Gimraeg na'r Saesneg
That gives a far better idea of how many consonant sounds there are and you can see that there are in fact far fewer consonant clusters than appears at first sight from the original.
Last edited by a moderator:
As Pedro y La Torre said, the Welsh name for Welsh is Cymraeg - perhaps you were confused with Gaelic because Cymraeg is sometimes written with an initial G (i.e. as Gymraeg (due to initial consonant mutation - a grammatical feature found in all the modern-day Celtic languages).
Although related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic (and Manx) as part of the overarching Celtic language family, Welsh is part of the Brythonic or P-Celtic branch (along with Cornish and Breton) and the Gaelic langauges are part of the Goidelic or Q-Celtic branch; Welsh is not mutually intelligible with Gaelic languages.
These should help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brythonic_languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goidelic
Exactly. W and Y are vowels in Welsh, so Welsh is only full of consonants if you are not aware of this fundamental feature of the language.
Cymraeg = the Welsh word for "Welsh"
Gaeilge = the Irish word for "Irish"
Gàidhlig = the Scottish Gaelic word for "Scottish Gaelic"
When you talk about Gaelic, you are either refering to the language of Scotland or that of Ireland, but never the language of Wales.
PS As far as I know, there is no link between Hebrew and either Irish or Welsh, grammatically or otherwise. There are, however, links between the grammar of Welsh and Irish (and other Celtic languages). This thread is the first I've heard that there's even a myth that Welsh is related to Hebrew!!
I was rather surprised too that there were theories about it.
I've been studying the Carthaginian Phoenicians lately. There is not a whole lot of info on them as they were sacked by the Romans about 148 BC, and since history is written by the winners there is mostly only circumstantial evidence through Greek and Roman translators and stories. BUT it seems that the Irish and Welsh Celtic dialects were likely heavily influenced by Punic speaking (an Afro-Semitic language similar to Hebrew) Carthaginian traders who traded for tin and copper with them anywhere between 900 BC and 200BC. My conjecture is that once Carthage was finally wiped out by the Romans in 148 BC, the Punic speaking refugees fled to as far away from the Romans as they could get in the known world which would be the British Isles and intermingled with the population who had been trading partners for quite a long time by then.
Since when do Eluveitie sing in Gaelic? They sing in Gaulish, the language of the ancient Gauls, not Gaelic, the language of the modern Gaels.
Concerning Venneman's theory (which is both very interesting and very controversial). One of his arguments is the use of Internal Possessor Construction vs the use of External Possessor Construction (let's call them IPC and EPC).
Most Indo-European languages spoken in Europe use EPC:
French fermer les yeux
Italian chiudere gli occhi
Spanish cerrar los ojos.
The only exceptions are Celtic languages and English, which use IPC: I close my eyes.
IPC is found in non-Indo-European languages (Turkish etc.) and also in Semitic languages spoken in North Africa and Middle East.
According to Venneman, this feature passed to Celtic languages and then to Old English. I like this theory but I remember one of my teachers who told me bluntly: that's rubbish!
Maybe there's still no evidence and never wil be.
By the way, here's the link to his paper:http://www.rotary-muenchen.de/2005-2006/theo-vennemann.pdf
Most Indo-European languages spoken in Europe use EPC:
French fermer les yeux
Italian chiudere gli occhi
Spanish cerrar los ojos.
The only exceptions are Celtic languages and English, which use IPC: I close my eyes.
IPC is found in non-Indo-European languages (Turkish etc.) and also in Semitic languages spoken in North Africa and Middle East.
According to Venneman, this feature passed to Celtic languages and then to Old English. I like this theory but I remember one of my teachers who told me bluntly: that's rubbish!
Maybe there's still no evidence and never wil be
.By the way, here's the link to his paper:http://www.rotary-muenchen.de/2005-2006/theo-vennemann.pdf
Not to Old English but to Middle English.
Venneman's theory (as well as other attempts to re-write the history of English like this one for example) essentially stands and falls with the completely speculative diglossia hypothesis, i.e. that attested Old English was the petrified, artificial literary language of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors and that the people actually spoke a completely different language, a kind of a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Brittonic and Old Norse (with different weights depending what people are trying to prove) and that this "true" English only started to be recorded after the Norman conquest when Old English had lost its prestige status. This would mean that Middle English did not develop out of late Old English but split from early Old English, practically immediately after the Anglo-Saxon conquest, and that all the features where Middle English differs from Old English developed many centuries before the Norman conquest.
To say that Scots\ Irish Gaelic is completely unintelligible to Brythonic speakers is slightly overstating the case. We have a massive amount in common but research is slightly skewed because both language groups have different alphabets( though both use Latin characters) and much of the research I have read has been done by English speakers who struggle to pronounce basic modern welsh(cymraeg). For example many struggle to pronounce the ll sound. When I got my head around the Irish alphabet I found that the differences were far smaller than I'd first believed. Add to that the academic distinction between "P" and "C" godeilic and the consistency implied there in and a theoretical monoglot welsh speaker with knowledge of this distinction would be able to understand 50 to 70 percent of Irish.
An example of this would be Mac and mab. Mac will be familiar to many as "son of". Mab or map in cymraeg is the same and is shortened to ab or ap. Hence many familiar welsh surnames like price (ap Rhys spelled badly by an English speaking clerk), probert, Pritchard, Bowen, Beynon, were misunderstandings.
I can't speak to the accuracy of the ops source material but there is a certain familiarity in the Semitic languages and the way they sound. There is also the ibn and Ben which correlate with Mac and map. There is also a theory that cymraeg is Celtic vocabulary superimposed on a speech pattern seen in Basque. The genetics lend some credence to this theory.
An example of this would be Mac and mab. Mac will be familiar to many as "son of". Mab or map in cymraeg is the same and is shortened to ab or ap. Hence many familiar welsh surnames like price (ap Rhys spelled badly by an English speaking clerk), probert, Pritchard, Bowen, Beynon, were misunderstandings.
I can't speak to the accuracy of the ops source material but there is a certain familiarity in the Semitic languages and the way they sound. There is also the ibn and Ben which correlate with Mac and map. There is also a theory that cymraeg is Celtic vocabulary superimposed on a speech pattern seen in Basque. The genetics lend some credence to this theory.
What should be a coincident? Where do you see a similarity between llaeth and חלב. I am lost.
To my ear they sound very similar, and to the best of my knowledge no other language, other than Arabic, comes even close.
This: llaeth pronunciation: How to pronounce llaeth in Welsh
and this: חלב pronunciation: How to pronounce חלב in Hebrew
sound similar to you?
Llaeth is obviously a proto or early French loan (compare French lait), which is in turn from Latin lactem.
and this: חלב pronunciation: How to pronounce חלב in Hebrew
sound similar to you?
Llaeth is obviously a proto or early French loan (compare French lait), which is in turn from Latin lactem.
The sound represented by ll in Welsh has nothing in it that is even close to ח, which is a guttural sound; in both, modern and ancient Hebrew. The sound Welch ll has absolutely no guttural component. Apart from that, ll is one single sound and חל in חלב are two separate sounds belonging to separate syllables.
Last edited:
Thanks, Are there no guttural sounds in Welsh? I wrongly remembered ll as guttural
@ llaeth : it doesn't have to be a proto- or early French loan, it can simply be a Latin loan. The development of [kt] is very similar in both French and Welsh: in the relevant position [k] ends up as [i̯] in both languages, the difference is that in French [t] stays the same while in Welsh it is lenited to [θ]. This happens in inherited words as well, for example in this one.
Native speaker of Cymraeg here.
My summary:
1) Cymraeg/Welsh is a P Celtic Brittonic/Brythonic language and a 'sister' to Kerenewek/Cornish and Brezhoneg/Breton. We may be able to know common, basic words between us (and share the same national anthem), but would have difficulties going beyond such basics.
2) Cymraeg is therefore a cousin language to the three Goidelic/Gaelic languages (Q Celtic) of Gaeligue/Irish, Gàidhlig/Scottish Gaelic and Gaelg/Manx. Whilst philologists can draw attention to the P/Q 'similarities' (e.g. 'pedwar'/'cethair' '4', 'pump'/'coic' '5' in Cymraeg/Gaeligue) between us, I would have extreme difficulty in conversing with an inhabitant of Gallimh (and she with me).
3) Any connection between Cymraeg and Hebrew linguistically and historically must be spurious. Yes, we both prefer verb initial sentences and also inflect some prepositions (Celtic languages are unique in this in I-E; Semitic languages are also somewhat of a rarity in doing so), but this must surely be a coincidence. Those who postulate a common Central Europe/Middle Eastern link to Cymraeg and Hebrew will have to reconcile that fact with latest thinking on Celtic origins on the Western Atlantic seaboard of Europe (see, e.g. Koch)
4) It was fashionable at one stage (mid-19th century to allege the 'Cymro's' true origin was 'Cape Comorin' at the extremity of India. This theory has subsequently been successfully debunked.
5) We do look enviously at the growth of the Ulpan movement in Israel post-independence and the revitalisation of Hebrew in that country. Efforts to replicate that in Cymru (via the Wlpan system - name which reflected more than a passing nod to the Ulpanim) have met with some degree of success.
6) Many Cymry have long held the view we are one of the lost tribes of Israel and the ancestor was Gomer. For what is Gomer but a variant of 'Cymro'? Fortunately, again, we can dismiss this as pure myth.
7) Traditionally very religious (less so today), the Welsh incorporated many 'Israeli' names to their non-comformist places of worship (e.g. many chapels were called Seion, Bosrah, Ebenezer and so forth.) Similarly, place names were adopted wholesale or 'Cymricised' - Nebo, Bethesda (< Beth-saida), Nasareth, Caesarea Philpi. To this day, even secularists like to receive or send Christmas cards franked by the post office in the little Welsh village of Bethlehem. None of this indicates any language connection with those of 'the Promised Land'.
8) Leading on from this religiosity is the maintained myth of Cymraeg being the 'language of heaven'. Praise the Lord we did - and that in vast numbers and in our mother tongue. English may have been the language of trade, commerce, justice and education for centuries, but the Almighty still understood the common (often monolingual) Cymro/Cymraes when they invoked their prayers in Cymraeg - and that so fervently and dramatically as any latter-day evangelist, whilst condemning those not adhering to the true Calvinistic Methodist faith that they would surely go to Hell. Again, this does not prove any sort of linguistic connection between the Cymry and speakers of Hebrew.
That's my understanding, anyway. I'm only a native speaker professional linguist of Cymraeg. I await any feedback on the above with interest.
My summary:
1) Cymraeg/Welsh is a P Celtic Brittonic/Brythonic language and a 'sister' to Kerenewek/Cornish and Brezhoneg/Breton. We may be able to know common, basic words between us (and share the same national anthem), but would have difficulties going beyond such basics.
2) Cymraeg is therefore a cousin language to the three Goidelic/Gaelic languages (Q Celtic) of Gaeligue/Irish, Gàidhlig/Scottish Gaelic and Gaelg/Manx. Whilst philologists can draw attention to the P/Q 'similarities' (e.g. 'pedwar'/'cethair' '4', 'pump'/'coic' '5' in Cymraeg/Gaeligue) between us, I would have extreme difficulty in conversing with an inhabitant of Gallimh (and she with me).
3) Any connection between Cymraeg and Hebrew linguistically and historically must be spurious. Yes, we both prefer verb initial sentences and also inflect some prepositions (Celtic languages are unique in this in I-E; Semitic languages are also somewhat of a rarity in doing so), but this must surely be a coincidence. Those who postulate a common Central Europe/Middle Eastern link to Cymraeg and Hebrew will have to reconcile that fact with latest thinking on Celtic origins on the Western Atlantic seaboard of Europe (see, e.g. Koch)
4) It was fashionable at one stage (mid-19th century to allege the 'Cymro's' true origin was 'Cape Comorin' at the extremity of India. This theory has subsequently been successfully debunked.
5) We do look enviously at the growth of the Ulpan movement in Israel post-independence and the revitalisation of Hebrew in that country. Efforts to replicate that in Cymru (via the Wlpan system - name which reflected more than a passing nod to the Ulpanim) have met with some degree of success.
6) Many Cymry have long held the view we are one of the lost tribes of Israel and the ancestor was Gomer. For what is Gomer but a variant of 'Cymro'? Fortunately, again, we can dismiss this as pure myth.
7) Traditionally very religious (less so today), the Welsh incorporated many 'Israeli' names to their non-comformist places of worship (e.g. many chapels were called Seion, Bosrah, Ebenezer and so forth.) Similarly, place names were adopted wholesale or 'Cymricised' - Nebo, Bethesda (< Beth-saida), Nasareth, Caesarea Philpi. To this day, even secularists like to receive or send Christmas cards franked by the post office in the little Welsh village of Bethlehem. None of this indicates any language connection with those of 'the Promised Land'.
8) Leading on from this religiosity is the maintained myth of Cymraeg being the 'language of heaven'. Praise the Lord we did - and that in vast numbers and in our mother tongue. English may have been the language of trade, commerce, justice and education for centuries, but the Almighty still understood the common (often monolingual) Cymro/Cymraes when they invoked their prayers in Cymraeg - and that so fervently and dramatically as any latter-day evangelist, whilst condemning those not adhering to the true Calvinistic Methodist faith that they would surely go to Hell. Again, this does not prove any sort of linguistic connection between the Cymry and speakers of Hebrew.
That's my understanding, anyway. I'm only a native speaker professional linguist of Cymraeg. I await any feedback on the above with interest.
Last edited:
PS Welsh: gwlân 'wool' > English: flannel
Don't drop the initial <g> - unless you're obeying a mutation rule.
Don't drop the initial <g> - unless you're obeying a mutation rule.
Only reason why I’m here it’s because Ive seen welsh pantagonia documentary , I heard them speak their language , and I thought they speak Hebrew ,lol
Well .. (Biblical) Hebrew and (standard) Cymraeg are both VSO languages ... as is Maori.
No need to waste alot of server space on this.
Is the Hebrew-Welsh connection more than a myth?
No.
I am interested in language and I notice that some Welsh words have only w's and y's, in other words, few vowels or no common vowels. Hebrew doesn't use vowels except nikkud. The more I learn about language the more similarities I see and sometimes hear between languages. Whether all the continents came together once or four or five times in the Earth's history people would have crossed those boundaries or borders. People have been exploring for all of Earth's history.
W and Y are vowels in Welsh. In any case Hebrew does have vowels, it is a question of whether they are included in the written form. Welsh does not have its own script.
Honestly, this theory is crazy. It's surprising that it keeps cropping up.
I am interested in language and I notice that some Welsh words have only w's and y's, in other words, few vowels or no common vowels.
________
As Glasguensis says: 'w' and 'y' are vowels for us, and they can also carry diacritics. So, in fact, there are more vowels than English, as a, e, i, o, u are also vowels.
________
As Glasguensis says: 'w' and 'y' are vowels for us, and they can also carry diacritics. So, in fact, there are more vowels than English, as a, e, i, o, u are also vowels.
Stating that "w's and y's are vowels for us" is, I'm afraid, pretty meaningless unless one specifies *what* those y's and w's actually *are*. The Wikipedia article on Welsh orthography (!) say that "w" letter can correspond to three different phonemes (/w/, /ʊ/ and /u:/), among which, obviously, only two are vowels (that being said, positional alterations between vowels and semivowel consonants aren't uncommon cross-linguistically, and in the case of Welsh their nature may be additionally obscured by the traditional orthography). "Y", indeed, seems to be a pure vowel letter in Welsh (as /j/ can be represented only by "i" and not by "y" - essentially it works in the way opposite to how it works in English).
Probably, it's just the way it has been put doesn't personally look sufficiently clear to me.
I'd just say that "y" is a vowel letter in Welsh and "w" often represents a vowel as well.
I can recommend you to listen to a vlog in Langfocus series (accessoble on Youtube), about Semitic an Celtic connection. Nothing is proven in this lecture, but many interesting clues are given. So I would not ridicule the question so easy.
Both @berndf and @Awwal12 are correct - in particular, I was answering the comment quickly as I have insufficient time to go into the detail. Thankfully, you have, although, more details on the actual phonemes would be necessary if we were going into such detail.
It's a frequent jibe - mostly by native English speakers - that Welsh has no vowels, when they reveal their ignorance in not knowing/accepting that 'w' and 'y' are (in the appropriate contexts). That was my 'simple' response, anything else is extra (in particular, when our audience are trained linguists. Incidentally, <i> is also on occasion the semi-vowel/semi-consonant /j/ as well as /I/ and /i:/ when applicable.
It's a frequent jibe - mostly by native English speakers - that Welsh has no vowels, when they reveal their ignorance in not knowing/accepting that 'w' and 'y' are (in the appropriate contexts). That was my 'simple' response, anything else is extra (in particular, when our audience are trained linguists. Incidentally, <i> is also on occasion the semi-vowel/semi-consonant /j/ as well as /I/ and /i:/ when applicable.
I can think of many jibes about Celtic languages from English-speakers (it's a fact of life in Northern Irish politics for one) but it has no vowels?
How is that even an insult?Ulpan is actually an Aramaic word we've borrowed
You're warmly welcome back home, o lost brethren.
Clint Eastwood was the mayor of Carmel, Israilov is a good Chechen name.
So is Hebrew, of course.
Now seriously: when is the possible time for Welsh-Hebrew relations?
- If before 1000 BC, there was hardly Hebrew language distinct of other Canaanite dialects.
- If between 1000 BC and 100 AD, Hebrews were not seafarers or travelers like our Phoenician neighbours, so couldn't easily reach whatever far land the Welsh dwelled at. Our king Solomon had reached remote lands in the 10 century BC, but to the south via the Red Sea, not to the west. Or are the Welsh supposed to have dwelt in the middle east at this time? Then where are the traces?
- If later, after the Jews were exiled by the Romans from their homeland, then this is the nearly the same time that Romans conquered Wales. A significant Hebrew migration or cultural influence would not be left undocumented. And anyway, at this time we spoke mainly Aramaic, not Hebrew.
Last edited:
Just a Muslim surname anywhere inside the Russian sphere of surname models, though, of course, its popularity may vary. From Israil (إِسْرَآئِیل), the Arabic version of the name Israel. The Wikipedia articles are mostly about Chechens and Kyrgyz.