 Sadly, although I consider myself more Welsh than Irish, Scottish, or Manx, I have a very inadequate grasp of the language. Welsh is the modern form of the British language as spoken before the arrival of the Roman legions. It is not called Gaelic but Brythonic. Gaelic is the language of the Irish people and the Scots, who were an Irish tribe that migrated over the narrow channel that divides the two countries. Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic can be mutually understood, although the spelling is different.
Welsh can't be understood by the other Celts of Great Britain and Ireland. Welsh can be partly understood however by the people of Brittany on the French coast, who were originally Cornish Brythonic speaking Celts who fled back across the English Channel to escape from the westward advance of the Roman army.
Welsh tends like Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian and the Turkic languages (and strangely enough Swedish!) to be an agglutinative language.
There's a tendency to stick words on the end of other words to make long strings.
For example the Swedish word – Arbetsmarknadsstyrelsen is composed of: Arbets=Labour, Marknads=Markets, Styrelsen=Directorate or in English - the Labour Exchange.
'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch,' means: 'Saint Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the church of Sainysilio of the red cave,' and is similar, in that it has the separate nouns and adjectives stuck together (techically called 'agglutination.) I did think of studying Welsh at one time, but decided against it.
Significantly and strangely, all my elder children except Björn have now moved back into Wales. Whether or not this represents a calling in their blood to return to the homeland - or if it is merely an escape from the urban ugliness of Liverpool I don't know - a bit of both I expect! |
