LL-L "History" 2006.05.23 (05) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 23 May 2006 * Volume 05
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From: "Heather Rendall" <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Appellations" 2006.05.22 (02) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
Karl-Heinz writes  >Na ja, the Celts are sort of the Aborigines in Britain,
am I wrong?<

'Fraid so! The Celts are immigrants from Europe  but who they took over and
conquered is not known.

John Rhys & Brynmore Jones in 'The Welsh people' put forward the theory
that the anomalies of early Welsh grammar are remains of the previous
indigenous language, because the Celts married the women they found and the
women developed a pidgin based on their own language's grammar and the
vocabulary of their 'new men'.

 And they further maintain that that language was non-Indo-European , as
all the anomalies can be compared with standard grammar of Coptic & the
Berber languages of North Africa. When I wrote about this on another forum
someone replied that they were also characteristics of Arabic i.a.
 - verb first   ( unless being used in the sense 'It was that man who did
that'  )
- singular verb for 3rd person plural subject ( unless a 3rd pers plu
pronoun is used)
- inflected prepositions
- use of a preposition to form the past tense  ( Welsh wedi/back   Irish
??/after )

The theory is scoffed at nowadays as it does not accord with the new Welsh
identity - but recent discoveries from Malta might indicate that megalith
builders may well have moved out of the Mediterranean, sailed up the
Spanish Coast, across the Bay of Biscay to Northern France & Brittany and
then across to Cornwall and up St George's Channel to the far islands of
scotland - taking in Ireland as well for good measure. If there is
continuity in the megalith culture, surely there must have been a common
language?

Heather

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