Talk:Cumbric

Does anyone have any further information on the "revived" forms of Cumbric? Dewrad 13:52, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

Cumbric language

I removed the reference to 'Cwmbraic'. I doubt that this form exists and it appears to be an attempt at recreating a possible form of the name in the so called reconstructed Cumbrian (see comments below). It is based on the Welsh form Cwmbreg which is a legitimate form.

Sheep Counts

In Glanville Price's book The Languages of Britain he dismisses the sheep counts being remnants of Cumbric. He says that they were likely brought from Wales with immigrant workers. The children's rhymes are also dimissed as they stem from the sheep counts.

If Price's view is yet current (his book is a few years old) then reference to these counts ought to be removed.

Price's view may be current but it is not exclusively held to be true. There are many different theories concerning the origin of the sheep counting numbers, all with their own sources to back up their ideas, and a new book on the subject does not negate other theories, unless it can prove unequivocally that the other theories are wrong. Because no one has a time machine, no one can prove without a doubt that these numbers came from welsh immigrants, therefore his book states only one view and others are equally historically valid. That's how history (as a subject) works. Ammi 10:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Comments on the above.

The sheep counts are well know, and folklore attributes them variously to the Ancient Britons and the Anglo-Saxons. It is worth keeping the reference, if only to counter this common but most probably mistaken belief.

In parts of Welsh speaking Wales they had similar sheep counts based on Irish. They were sometimes used as evidence for the survival of pockets of Irish speakers descended from the Dark Age immigrants to Llyn (cognate with Laighinn) and Dyfed. However the scholarly view now is that the Hen Wyddelod referred to by the country folk were not the Old Irish of historians and linguists, but simply immigrant agricultural workers of rather more recent times, equivalent to the Welsh shepherds who took their numbers to the North of England.

Mongvras

I remember reading (though sadly I can't remember where) that all recorded sheep counts use forms like "3 on 15" for the number eighteen. Modern Welsh uses 'deunaw' ("two 9's"), and it is incorrect to say *'tri ar bymtheg' ("3 on 15"). This apparently shows that the sheep counts cannot have been imported from Wales since the form 'deunaw' replaced "3 on 15" in Welsh, and 'deunaw' has been in use for several centuries at least.

Now if only I could dig up the reference -- 62.245.36.95, 2005-10-22

derbyshire?

Anyone seen any evidence for Cumbric further south than the Dales? Cant find any. I'll check in a week then cut it if no-one answers.

Sheepcounts could come from modern welsh, but there's no proof either way.

boynamedsue

Date of demise

What evidence is there for persistence of the language into the 11th century? (Not a challenge, just a question.) Where would it have been last spoken (Cumbria?)? Does anybody know how long it might have lasted in the Scottish Lowlands? QuartierLatin 1968 20:49, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

There are references to "Brets" in the 1200s in SW Scotland, but this may be ethnicity, or a reference to Breton settlers. --MacRusgail 15:39, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it might just be one of those things that's hanging around as a rumour. I've heard it said a lot of times that it survived this late in the Eden valley, but have never seen any proof. It may be connected with the fact that there is a high proportion of Cumbric-derived place names in that area (Penrith, Carlisle, Cumrew etc). It might also be because a number of places like Lyvennet, Ewe Close, Arthur's Round Table and Pendragon Castle around the valley are connected with the Arthur/Urien legends. (Pendragon isn't a Cumbric placename, btw, it's just medieval romanticism)... It all seems unlikely to be true, given the fact that the Angles penetrated Cumbria through the Eden valley and that the land in that area is far richer than elsewhere in the county. I would imagine that it would be the first place they chose to stop.

The only tenuous evidence I can think of is the place name Caernarvon. The name was applied to a late 12th/early 13th century castle near Beckermet on the west coast of Cumbria. As far as I know there are no pre-norman fortifications here, so it must have been coined around that time, for which I can think of only three explanations: 1) Cumbric was still spoken enough to invent the word; 2) it's named after the place in Wales; 3) the owner or someone knew Medieval Welsh and named it to sound cool. To be honest, I can't see why the last two would apply as Wales was still quite independent at this time, and the owner was descended from a Flemish family of Cumbrian nobles. But there are problems: 1) it's in an exposed area of high Norse and English influence; 2) the name's supposed to mean 'fort opposite Man' (caer ar Van) but there's an intrusive 'n' which can't be explained unless it was built at a place called 'Arvon' (caer yn Arvon), for which there is no evidence. The only other possibility is that it was named after a more ancient feature: carn ar Van 'cairn opposite Man'. --Psammead 14:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Connection with Taliesin?

I reverted this anonymous contribution but place it here in case there is the germ of a sliver of useful content. Gdr 17:40, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Some believe that traces of the language remain in the epics (or whatever they were) of Taliesin and that other Cumric guy well known in Wales whose name starts with an A. If you Google for "cumbric", a page with information about those speculations is the first result, and it is reflected on UseNet, and in several books.

Aneirin? Theelf29 16:00, 9 August 2006 (BST)

Scottish Words

Is Peat not perhaps Pit as in Pittenweem?

Cumbri-mania

Hi, have been watching this page a while. Seems that someone who also has an interest in sub-roman Britain has been doing the same. Cumbric, as the term is used by linguists, meabs the language spoken in Cumbria and Southern Scotland from the time of Bede till it became extinct in the 11th or 12th century. An argument could be made that it extended into the Yorkshire dales, based on the place name Pen-Y-Gent. However, someone has been linking Bryneich, Ebrauc and Elmet as Cumbric speaking. Evidently these kingdoms were Brythonic speaking, but they werent seperated long from other Brythonic kingdoms before thyey fell, and would likely have bordered areas in which there was a British population governed by Anglo-Saxons. Therefore it seems unlikely that their language would have diverged massively from common British. In the seventh and eigth centuries, it is fair to assume that British language and culture disappeared or was isolated into pockets in these areas, thus isolating the North Britons and allowing their language to diverge from Welsh.

Please come back with arguments this week, and we can discuss the best changes- or no changes; if no response I will change the Cumbric refs to Brythonic in kingdom pages, and ammend this page to reflect doubts on the Greater Manchester claim.

Also, the list of Cumbric words has no source, and it is not clear whether they are reconstructions or loan words in Cumbrian dialect. Should go.

boynamedue.

Cumbria is part of an area North of the River Humber. Northumbria means Angles living North of the River Humber. So I don't know what tupe of language you are trying to talk about here becasue for over a thousand years tyey have spoken English. Before that the only real language would have been Latin.

have a read of this m8; Sub-Roman Britain. Cumbrian dialect is what you are on about. Cumbric is a type of Welsh, which was replaced by Cumbrian, Scots and Gaelic.Boynamedsue 14:48, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Anyone interested in the history of the English Celts i.e. Britons, should maybe also read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Roman_Britain#The_Anglo-Saxon_migration (some more info proving that the popular expression for the English as 'Anglo-Saxon' is a big error). (This terminology was made popular by an American journalist).

"English Celts" is a contradiction in terms. It is usual to refer to the people living in what was to become England as Britons or Ancient Britons. As for theories about the Anglo-Saxon migration: they are ALL theories, none of them are facts. Hence there can be no "proving" one way or another. Finally, the modern use of the phrase "Anglo-Saxon" is analogous to the modern use of the word "Celt". --Swahilli 15:56, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Latin? Where did that come from? Even when the Romans were here very few people in Cumbria would have spoken Latin as a mother tongue. Brythonic was spoken for 1,500 years (or so) in Cumbria, and Cumbric was just the latest version of it. I imagine a number of dialects would have existed in Britain before the arrival of the Germanic peoples, so Cumbric was probably already on it's way to being established. It was replaced by an Anglo-Norse hybrid which developed into the Cumbrian dialect of English. The only Latin derived word I know in Cumbrian is eglus 'church' < Cumbric *ecles (Eccles, Ecclefechan) cf. Cymraeg eglwys < L ecclesia --Psammead 11:23, 07 July 2007 (UTC)

Whitby example of yan, tan, tethera

Have removed a sentence regarding this example proving a widespread penetration of cumbric in northern england. It is not certain that sheepcount has a cumbric origin, and even if it did, it could be an example of diffusion after the system had been borrowed into english.

I think the info doesn't seem that controversial that it should be deleted out-right. I've put it back in, but placed a Citation needed notice on it. Can somebody try to reference it? --Hibernian 03:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

There is NO evidence of any of this as 'Cumbric'. Start to try and reference what you ae talking about.

About the mention of 'widespread 'Cumbric' in northen England'...lets not fall into the trap of automatically calling any traces of 'Briton' language in the north 'Cumbric'. It's quite easy to find traces of brythonic language all over the north of England.

Surival in Whitby

Is this a true representation? The forms "yan" and "twea" appear more akin to local dialect forms of Germanic origin to me.Theelf29 13:25, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Reconstructions

I have removed the reconstructions paragraph for, as with most of this article - it just talks about the 'possible' with no references and many of the word that are annotatated as sme sort of 'Cumbric' in this article are in fact of English origin.

Someone put it back (or at least I could see it when I went to the page). I've taken it back out as there is no academic proof or real basis to this 'reconstruction'. Much of this article seems to be based on conjecture and not on real research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.104.173.66 (talk) 18:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Similarly, I have changed one of the external pages' blurbs from 'known Cumbric place names' to 'possible'. Not only are the 'known' place names very few, the linked article seems to include a great number of unlikely derivations. 81.153.185.192 (talk) 21:06, 27 March 2008 (UTC)