Cumro, A
Youth; Gael, A Hero; (24) Roman, One Who Is Comely, A Husband; (25)
Frank Or Frenchman, A Free, Brave Fellow; Dane, An Honest Man;
Turk, A Handsome Lad; Arab, A Sprightly Fellow.
Lastly, Romany
Chal, the name by which the Gypsy styles himself, signifying not an
Egyptian, but a lad of Rome.
(26)
The language of the Cumro is called after him Cumraeg. Of Cumric
there are three dialects, the speech of Cumru or Wales; that of
Armorica or, as the Welsh call it, Llydaw, and the Cornish, which
is no longer spoken, and only exists in books and in the names of
places. The Cumric bears considerable affinity to the Gaelic, or
the language of the Gael, of which there are also three dialects,
the Irish, the speech of the Scottish Highlanders, and the Manx,
which last is rapidly becoming extinct. The Cumric and Gaelic have
not only a great many thousand words in common, but also a
remarkable grammatical feature, the mutation and dropping of
certain initial consonants under certain circumstances, which
feature is peculiar to the Celtic languages. The number of
Sanscritic words which the Cumric and Gaelic possess is
considerable. Of the two the Gaelic possesses the most, and those
have generally more of the Sanscritic character, than the words of
the same class which are to be found in the Welsh. The Welsh,
however, frequently possesses the primary word when the Irish does
not. Of this the following is an instance. One of the numerous
Irish words for a mountain is codadh. This word is almost
identical with the Sanscrit kuta, which also signifies a mountain;
but kuta and codadh are only secondary words. The Sanscrit
possesses the radical of kuta, and that is kuda, to heap up, but
the Irish does not possess the radical of codadh. The Welsh,
without possessing any word for a hill at all like codadh, has the
primary or radical word; that word is codi, to rise or raise,
almost identical in sound and sense with the Sanscrit kuda. Till a
house is raised there is no house, and there is no hill till the
Nara or Omnipotent says ARISE.
The Welsh is one of the most copious languages of the world, as it
contains at least eighty thousand words. It has seven vowels; w in
Welsh being pronounced like oo, and y like u and i. Its most
remarkable feature is the mutation of initial consonants, to
explain which properly would require more space than I can afford.
(27) The nouns are of two numbers, the singular and plural, and a
few have a dual number. The genders are three, the Masculine, the
Feminine and the Neuter. There are twelve plural terminations of
nouns, of which the most common is au. Some substantives are what
the grammarians call aggregate plurals, (28) "which are not used
in the plural without the addition of diminutive terminations, for
example adar, birds, aderyn, a bird; gwenyn, bees, gwenynen, a
single bee." There are different kinds of adjectives; some have a
plural, some have none; some have a feminine form, others have not;
the most common plural termination is ion.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 444 of 450
Words from 232171 to 232699
of 235675
