# Are the Welsh a conquered people?



## PearlySpencer (Dec 29, 2003)

As someone of Welsh heritage, and with Welsh speaking family still living in parts of Wales I'd be interested in other peoples views on this. For the record, whatever that means, I think not.


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## 888 (Dec 29, 2003)

Yeah, because before the people there were conquered by and became the welsh, they were something else. Whatever that means. Unless they are the original human settlers in wales.


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## white rabbit (Dec 29, 2003)

Worse than that. The Celts who originally occupied the whole country were pushed to the margins. So much so, the very word "Welsh" comes from the Old English Wealh, meaning foreigner.

Perhaps that's why the Welsh have such a highly developed sense of irony.


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## PearlySpencer (Dec 29, 2003)

Wabbit I reckon you've cracked the puzzle, congratulations 

You Welsh or something, cos you should be


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## white rabbit (Dec 29, 2003)

Only by birth and blood.


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## maldwyn (Dec 29, 2003)

Not conquered, perhaps a little depressed and in need of some assertiveness training.


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## BEESWAX27 (Dec 29, 2003)

No! Inch by inch the Welsh are reclaiming the Marches!

 For the last 40 years I've had family in the town of Broughton, basically an overspill of Chester... 

 In the last six months, however, Broughton has become 'Brychdin' (????) - and the sign has moved 25 yards over the border!

 Cunning sods. I wonder how long it will take them to get to Hereford!


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## pilchardman (Dec 29, 2003)

The oldest surviving Welsh poem (Y Gododdin) was written by a Celt of Edinburgh, of the Votadini tribe, who spoke the ancestor of modern Welsh, Brythonnic.

That was the language of large parts of the British Isles even after the Germanic Angles and Saxons arrived, pushing the Celts north and west, including enclaves in Cumbria (compare with the modern Welsh for Wales, Cymru) and Strathclyde (compare Clyde with Clwyd).  One theory suggests William Wallace may have derived his surname from "Welsh" speaking inhabitants of Strath Clwyd.


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## Stavrogin (Dec 29, 2003)

More recent findings (including, I think, genetic data) suppose that in fact the welsh or celts were not simply pushed back by the waves of mighty saxons and norsemen but they intermingled a lot more than is commonly thought.


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## pilchardman (Dec 30, 2003)

Yeah, that's of course right Stav.  I was using shorthand, as I think were others.  It would be more correct to say that as new ruling elites emerged, the previous cultures receded.

What typically happened was: new ruling elite speaks Anglo Saxon, those who want to fit in learn the new language, old language dies out.  Thus the ancestors of those speaking Anglo Saxon may well have been Celts.


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## JTG (Dec 30, 2003)

Yeah, not so much a case of being "pushed back", more like those that were in the new Anglo Saxon lands became assimilated, those that were in the remote areas got away with it 'cos it was too hard for the A-S to get there...

Not so sure on my history of how the Welsh principalities fell under English influence but I'm sure ernie will turn up with a load of rhetoric and completely fail to illuminate anyone.


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## rednblack (Dec 30, 2003)

i think most english people have celtic ancestry according to mitochondrial DNA,


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## chieftain (Dec 30, 2003)

we are all conquered and conquerers at one time or another


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## white rabbit (Dec 30, 2003)

> _Originally posted by rednblack _
> *i think most english people have celtic ancestry according to mitochondrial DNA, *


 I just did a Google on this and it's true. You live and learn, eh? 

I think it's still the case that The Celts were forced West and North and that cultural division is still apparent although there has been a fair abound of mixing since. I very vaguely remember hearing of a big battle in Staffordshire (as it now is) that the Welsh lost and this was a turning point in their fortunes.


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## editor (Dec 30, 2003)

As has been noted, it would be erroneous to say that the Welsh have only ever lived in Wales - the first Welsh poetry was written in Scotland and northern England. Many places in England derive their names from Welsh or Celtic names (e.g. Dover from dwfr = water and Lincoln from llyn = lake)

Before the Angles and Saxons steamed in, Britain was generally inhabited by people who spoke an old form of Welsh, probably evolved from a combination of Brythoneg, Latin and pre-Celtic languages.

Although Wales now forms part of the UK, it has maintained a fairly constant boundary with England for over one and half thousand years.

Are the Welsh a conquered people? I guess that depends on how you define 'conquered'.

Despite the the best efforts of the English, the Welsh language remains and many Welsh people feel a strong sense of national identity.

And - if this is anything to go by - we've maintained something of a separate genetic identity too!
English and Welsh are races apart


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## rednblack (Dec 30, 2003)

i'm sure i read somewhere that the name london comes from welsh


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## editor (Dec 30, 2003)

> _Originally posted by rednblack _
> *i'm sure i read somewhere that the name london comes from welsh *


 There's some dispute about that:

 The disputes upon the derivation of the word London have been numerous. In the present day the question seems to be, whether it originated in Celtic British, that is, in Welsh, and signified “a city on a lake,” or in Belgic British (old German), and meant “a city in a grove.”


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## jcsd (Dec 30, 2003)

I wouldn't call proto-Brythonic 'Welsh' as it gave rise to at least 3 distinct languages, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Breton (possibly) has slightly more speakers than Welsh these days and Cornish is a dead language (i.e. nobody speaks it as a first language).

I'd check that refernce too as though the term Belgae was used to refer to Germanic tribes as well as Celtic tibes (living roughly in the region of modern Belgium), the Belgae in Britain I think were of Celtic tribes and in any case London was one of their cities.


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## Dr. Christmas (Jan 7, 2004)

> _Originally posted by jcsd _
> *Breton (possibly) has slightly more speakers than Welsh these days and Cornish is a dead language (i.e. nobody speaks it as a first language).
> *



Don't know how many breton speakers there are. There are between 400-500k. speakers of Welsh as a first language- about 20% of the population of Wales and rising for the first time since the late nineteenth century.

It's untrue to say that Cornish is dead- there are around 50 first language speakers and around 3000 Cornish speakers at varying levels overall.


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## ernestolynch (Jan 7, 2004)

I think there's a real tendency for some posters to 'make it up as they go along' (viz jdsc's post)

 

Malu cachu as we would say in Cymru.

Doc - I got that Yma o Hyd mp3 off Soulseek - where's that Cymuned Cymraeg thread?


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## Dr. Christmas (Jan 8, 2004)

Probably on about p.2 of 'community' by now- no sign of mwgdrwg since Xmas and he was the driving force....


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## fanta (Jan 8, 2004)

> _Originally posted by PearlySpencer _
> *As someone of Welsh heritage, and with Welsh speaking family still living in parts of Wales I'd be interested in other peoples views on this. For the record, whatever that means, I think not. *



Do the Welsh feel themselves to be conquered?

I suspect not.


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## rednblack (Jan 8, 2004)

> _Originally posted by Dr. Christmas _
> *
> 
> It's untrue to say that Cornish is dead- there are around 50 first language speakers . *



so one carefully timed bus crash is all it would take then?


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## jcsd (Jan 8, 2004)

> _Originally posted by Dr. Christmas _
> *Don't know how many breton speakers there are. There are between 400-500k. speakers of Welsh as a first language- about 20% of the population of Wales and rising for the first time since the late nineteenth century.
> 
> It's untrue to say that Cornish is dead- there are around 50 first language speakers and around 3000 Cornish speakers at varying levels overall. *



according to ethblogue there are 500K people who use Breton as their daily language plus a further 1.2M speakers compared to 500k speakers of Welsh plus another 500K who can understand it.

Cornish did die in 1771, but it has been subject to a very recent revialist movement. Whethre  the fact that there are indeed some children and teenagers who now speak as their first language menas it is no longer dead is debatable.


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## Dr. Christmas (Jan 8, 2004)

> _Originally posted by jcsd _
> *according to ethblogue there are 500K people who use Breton as their daily language plus a further 1.2M speakers compared to 500k speakers of Welsh plus another 500K who can understand it.
> 
> Cornish did die in 1771, but it has been subject to a very recent revialist movement. Whethre  the fact that there are indeed some children and teenagers who now speak as their first language menas it is no longer dead is debatable. *



Cornish's 'death' is myhtologised as happening in 1777 with the death of Dolly Penteath in Mousehole.

In fact that's rubbish- the language never fully died out, it just that there were very few speakers of it in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

The 'very recent' revivalist movement actually began in 1901 with Henry Jenner and Robert Morton Nance.

You stated that Cornish was dead because there were no first langauge speakers- that's simply wrong. The last census revealed that around 100 housholds conducted their everyday life through the medium of Cornish. Thiose households contain the first language Cornish speakers, I'd imagine (many of whom are now significantly older than school age children, BTW!)

http://www.cornish-language.org
http://www.clas.demon.co.uk


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## editor (Jan 8, 2004)

> _Originally posted by Dr. Christmas _
> *You stated that Cornish was dead because there were no first language speakers- that's simply wrong.  *


Last time I was in Cornwall, I recall being told that the language had been slightly artificially revived, using Welsh-based words to replace forgotten original Cornish words.

But I could have been told a load of bollocks!

.. hold on... there's some stuff on the BBC site about it:


> Yet when the first Cornish revival picked up steam in the 20th Century, it drew instead on an older version of the language.
> 
> By the 1920s this revised form became known as Unified Cornish. And 1988 saw a breakaway faction known as Common Cornish.
> 
> ...


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## pilchardman (Jan 8, 2004)

English is _full_ of Make Uppy words and foreign borrowings.  But is living probably _because_ of that.


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## jcsd (Jan 8, 2004)

A language is 'dead' when there are no first language speakers, Cornish died in 1777 as it's last first language speaker died. beforer 1930 there are only half-a-dozen people who could speak Cornish, before 1980 there were only a couple of dozen of people who could speak Cornish.

Those who speak it as a first language today are under the age of 20.


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## Dr. Christmas (Jan 8, 2004)

> _Originally posted by jcsd _
> *A language is 'dead' when there are no first language speakers, Cornish died in 1777 as it's last first language speaker died. beforer 1930 there are only half-a-dozen people who could speak Cornish, before 1980 there were only a couple of dozen of people who could speak Cornish.
> 
> Those who speak it as a first language today are under the age of 20. *



Source?

This is false- if you bother to read the links I posted, you'd know that.



> _From http://www.cornish-language.org_
> *Where is the Cornish Language spoken?
> 
> In the year 1200, Cornish was spoken my most people over most of Cornwall. By 1600, it had been pushed west to Bodmin by Anglicisation. A hundred years later in was not found very much east of Truro and by 1777, when the last monoglot speaker (Dolly Pentreath) died, it was confined to West Penwith and areas of the Lizard peninsula. Speakers of Cornish with native knowledge of the tongue could still be found up until the late nineteenth century.
> ...


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## Dr. Christmas (Jan 8, 2004)

> _Originally posted by editor _
> *Last time I was in Cornwall, I recall being told that the language had been slightly artificially revived, using Welsh-based words to replace forgotten original Cornish words.
> 
> *



That's partly true editor.

Because there were so few who had knowledge of the language, the revival was conducted by the aformentioned jenner and Morton nance. Nance was an academic at cardiff uni and he and Jenner began by corresponding in Cornish. Nance put together the first 'Gerlyver Kernewek-Sawsnek/Cornish-English Dictionary' in the 1930s. As there were many modern concepts which original Cornish had never touched, many made up and/or Welsh words were substitiuted. Cornish and Welsh were similar languages previously anyway.

Hence (made up words): aeroplane is _jynn-ebrenn_ or 'sky machine' literally: computer is _jynn-amontya_ (adding machine i think).

The numbers 1-10 in Cornish and Welsh are identical, other than in spelling.

Even 'Merry Xmas & a Happy New Year' is similar: _Nadelek Lowen ha Blydhen Nowydh Da'._

Minority language communities are almost always paralysed by in fighting over the 'true' grammar and spelling of the language. hence today there are three versions: Unified Cornish Revived (Nance and jenner's 'Original' 1900s version), Kernewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish devised by academic & MK activist ken george and adopted as 'official' Cornish by the language board in the 80s), and Gendall (mentioned in your quote) system 'Curnouack Nowedja' which is widely regarded as utterly eccentric and is spoken by no-one. That's maybe why he sounded so bitter about the language in your quote.

Most Cornish speakers now use Kemmyn- UCR is spoken by older folks but the numbers are dwindling.

The Bible has also been translated into Cornish now and is used for Cornish language church services. One of the principle reasons that Cornish declined so precipitately was that the bible was never translated- it was into Welsh and that helped Cymraeg survive as a truly living community language today.

Cornish is used more and more 'officially' by the county council, on signage, and many Cornish sports clubs and schools now have Cornish mottos. The UK governemnt recognises the language, after many years of casmpaigning, and it has been added to the EU'sd list of recognised minority languages.But you still have to travel to hear a conversation in Cornish- there's no Cornish-speaking 'heartland' left. You;re pretty lucky if you hear it spoken in the street.


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## jcsd (Jan 8, 2004)

Sources:

Ethnologue 

Cornwall County Council 

Cambridge Enyclopedia of Language 

You have to recognize that Cornish-language.org is more than a little partizan on this issue.

I'll also add that the link doesn't conflict with anything I've said.


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## Dr. Christmas (Jan 8, 2004)

As are anglophone 'authorities'...after all the myth that a miserable old fishwife died as the last Cornish speaker is much easier to sell to tourists than the complex reality of a language for the Council.

The quote does contradict your implication that Cornish died out totally.


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## jcsd (Jan 8, 2004)

I said it was a 'dead language', as I said before a language is a dead language when it has no speakers as a first language, for example Latin is a dead language, but that is has hardly disappeared off the face of the planet. Another example is (Old) Hebrew which is only used as a litugical language and is considered dead as despite being subject to a revivlaist movement the new language produced was an artifical amalgamtaion of different periods of Hebrew.


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## Iainmc (Jan 13, 2004)

Oh dear celtic willy waving.... Fact of the matter is that ALL the celtic languages are marginalised and  the English crown did its best to eradicate other languages different for its inbred upper jaw overbite nobles. 
Probably too complex for them to take in...seriously though it often easy to romantise the whole celt thing ignoring one very important thing. Yes they were very culturally distinct and populated most of the known world and BRED/ INTERMINGLED and SETTLED with most of the inhabitants of the lands they went to. http://www.geocities.com/branwaedd/leborgabala.html

Anyway, as a person from the other "island" on the west of Europe I have the benefit of having the one of the oldest venacular languages to be written down for me and other future generations.
In the Lebor Gabála or Book of Invasions it traces the travels of the Celts, which came in three distinct waves across Europe and their settlement in Eireann.
One definite thing I do know is that about 6000 years ago on the mountains of the Cork and Kerry border a huge battle took place for supermacy. The queen was a daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh called Scotia whom died in battle. Her troops retreated to the Isle of Scotia. Which later become Scotland.
http://traleeir.ags.myareaguide.com/detail.html?cityguide=history
http://traleeir.ags.myareaguide.com/detail.html?detailID=188068
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~malachi/skellig.html

This little outcrop kept unfortunately Roman literature alive giving the world today Homers Troy which was translated back for Gaeilge to Latin. I kid you not.
And lest any welsh people I doing them a disservice the Irish and the world have a lot to thank one particular welshman for simply being who he was and his affect. Read this link please and feel proud of your welsh heritage for this 
http://www.victorshepherd.on.ca/Sermons/in_honour_of_the_irish.htm

I know one thing. If civility and tolerance and compassion for the individual is a weakness, if caring for the sick and the infirm and disabled is a weakness then yes the sasaneachs are indeed  a much stronger bunch of people. 
History and people never change. Its those which are ignorant or violence or have the biggest weapons call the shots. They are the true barbarians.....isn't that right Kilroy


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## farmerbarleymow (Jan 13, 2004)

> _Originally posted by chieftain _
> *we are all conquered and conquerers at one time or another *



Very true.  Everyone in Europe is bastardised through breeding so it doesn't matter


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## rednblack (Jan 13, 2004)

> _Originally posted by jcsd _
> *I said it was a 'dead language', as I said before a language is a dead language when it has no speakers as a first language, for example Latin is a dead language, *



but hasnt cornish always had some people who speak it as a first language? just very few and widely scattered.


another question while we're on the subject, is gallicia really a celtic nation, i know its part of the celtic games but whats its connection?


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## ernestolynch (Jan 13, 2004)

Yes Galicia is Celtic.


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## jcsd (Jan 14, 2004)

rednblack said:
			
		

> but hasnt cornish always had some people who speak it as a first language? just very few and widely scattered.
> 
> 
> another question while we're on the subject, is gallicia really a celtic nation, i know its part of the celtic games but whats its connection?



No, it died as a first language for a century or two though, it was not completely forgotten.

There's two Galicia(s) one in Poland and one in Spain, both taking there names from the Celts. The one in Spain does celbrate it's Celtic history, but the language (Celto-Iberian) died out there along time ago without a trace (except in place names). Some have theorized it may of been closely related to Goidelic (Gaelic) branch of Celtic, partly due to the legend that the Goidelic Celts arrived in Ireland by crossing the Bay of Biscay from Spain.


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## nwnm (Jul 26, 2006)

Tnn


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