Celtic Team - Study Group

[Josquin]

Croeso, Montmorency! Welcome on the team and good to have you! I'll add you to the roster at once.

Also, I'm looking forward to your suggestions for the team name. IMHO Clan Lugus 2016 might be quite good, as it would signal continuity with the first Celtic TAC team on HTLAL ever.

[Montmorency]

Diolch yn fawr Josquin!

As you know, I haven't done a TAC before, and have not in the past felt inclined to join one. But then I thought I didn't want to leave all the hard work (translation: leave all the fun!) to the Goidelic Celticists.

However, it does slightly complicate the team name, if people want the name to reflect the languages active here.

Well, one thought I had was to call it something like Team Goidelic-Brythonic.

However, maybe those names should be expressed in the actual languages. I'll leave the Goidelic side to the others, but I can supply the Welsh version:

It's either: Brythonaidd (the general adjective) or Brythoneg (for the language).

I didn't know about Cornish or Breton, but a kind soul on the Say Something in Welsh forum supplied those:

Brythonek (Cornish)
Predenek (Breton)

(I hope I have those the right way round! - Maybe Tarvos can comment if he happens to pass this way).

I assume this refers to the language, rather than the adjective, by analogy with Brythoneg in Welsh.

(However, Wikipedia gives slightly different alternatives...).

Well, I had been thinking of a compound name, along the lines of:

Team [Goidelic]-Brythoneg-Brythonek-Predenek

where [Goidelic] would be replaced by the Irish-Scottish Gaelic-Manx words for "Goidelic".

However, that's looking a little clumsy, and as well there seems to be a little bit of doubt or more than one possible answer on the Brythonic side of things ...perhaps I should not be surprised, as my experience with Welsh is that there is almost always more than one way of saying something, and often many more than one ways. (It seems that the Brythons were tricky little beggars and never wanted to be too tied down to anything .... ).

So, maybe something shorter and more elegant would be better really. Sorry, that wasn't much help was it...?

...

By the way, didn't we used to have a Cornish speaker/learner (possibly expert) on HTLAL? (or possibly more than one).
(If anyone is interested, there is a short Cornish course available on the Say Something In website.
https://www.saysomethingin.com/cornish/course1
)

...

Edit: BTW, that's a really cool composite flag in the first post Josquin! I didn't give it due attention before.

...
(Intro and log link to come)

[Montmorency]

[I should say that I have not learned/studied formal written Welsh, but only colloquial spoken Welsh. I am therefore writing below in essentially a written form of spoken colloquial Welsh, only very slightly formalised. As I understand it, many modern novels and some blogs, etc, tend to do something similar. Anway, no one should take the following as an example of "proper" written Welsh.]

Cyflwyniad

S'mae Bawb,

Montmorency, neu Monty, neu Mike ydw i. Dw i'n byw yn Swydd Rhydychen, Lloegr. Does gan fy nheuli dim cysylltiad efo Cymru. Ond roedd y teulu fy ngwraig yn byw yn Gogledd Cymru pan oedd hi'n ifanc. Cafodd y holl teulu cariad mawr o Gymru ac o'r "Hen Iaith". Mae'r teulu fy ngwraig efallai wedi dylanwadi fi.

Dw i wedi bod yn dysgu Cymraeg efo "Say something In Welsh" am tua dwy flynedd a hanner.
Dw i ddim yn dysgu Cymraeg ffurfiol neu Cymraeg llenyddol ond dim ond dysgu Cymraeg tafodiethol llafar ydw i.

Felly, galla'i ddim ysgrifennu Cymraeg ffurfiol neu llenyddol, sef fedra'i ddim ysgrifennu "proper Welsh" .

fy log (tudalen cartref.):
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1429


fy post TAC 2016 cyntaf:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1429&p=20592#p20592

[Montmorency]

It's great to see we have a Celtic team in the TAC for the fourth year running (here are our past innings on HTLAL: 2013, 2014, and 2015). I sadly won't be able to join you guys officially this time around, as my focus will be on French this year, but I'll certainly drop by from time to time to keep up-to-date with your ongoing progress; in this respect, think of me as an embarrassing motley-coloured uncle rooting for you enthusiastically from the sidelines. Pob lwc (good luck) to everyone in the 2016 TAC challenge!

That's a very impressive-looking list of Irish resources you've put up over on your blog Teango. I don't think I've seen anything quite as wide-ranging as that for Welsh, (certainly not an up to date one).

Although I have no plans to learn Irish in the immediate future, one thing I would quite like to do is to get a handle on basic pronunciation of the written language (same for Scottish Gaelic actually), if only to be able to read out book titles or place-names and the like. (Perhaps the TTS speech simulator that you linked to might be a place to start).

[Teango]

That's a very impressive-looking list of Irish resources you've put up over on your blog Teango. I don't think I've seen anything quite as wide-ranging as that for Welsh, (certainly not an up to date one).

Diolch, Montmorency! Sadly most of my lovely Irish resources are packed safely away in boxes on the other side of the world, over 7K miles away. I look forward to reuniting with them one day, but it could be a while...

Although I'm focusing on French (along with an entourage of other minor languages), my main wanderlust vice will probably be Welsh this year. I'm not strictly studying the language (although that SSiW app does look very tempting!), but simply listening to snippets of podcasts and shows from time to time for easy background listening (easy in the sense that I just like to hear the spoken language; not that I understand anything much, mind you). There's absolutely no personal pressure here, so I just put something Welsh on in the background when the moment grabs me, but I hope it will turn into a fun little listening experiment over time (which if revealing, I'll try to explain more about in future blog posts).

[jeff_lindqvist]

By the way, didn't we used to have a Cornish speaker/learner (possibly expert) on HTLAL? (or possibly more than one).

Yeah, TheElvenLord was the main contributor of posts about Cornish, and even offered Skype lessons (for free, if memory serves). I had a look at the language many years ago. I met a couple of speakers at the latest Polyglot Gathering.

[Josquin]

Well, one thought I had was to call it something like Team Goidelic-Brythonic.

Good idea, but technically speaking the Goidelic and the Brythonic branches of the Celtic languages are identical with the living Celtic languages, so the name might be a bit redundant. In this case, Team Celtic would be a more elegant name, which also sounds better than Team Goidelic-Brythonic, but maybe that's just me.

Well, I had been thinking of a compound name, along the lines of:

Team [Goidelic]-Brythoneg-Brythonek-Predenek

where [Goidelic] would be replaced by the Irish-Scottish Gaelic-Manx words for "Goidelic".

Okay, sorry, but to my mind that's far too long and clumsy... As far as the Gaelic word for "Goidelic" is concerned, it would either be "Goídelc", which is the Old Irish name for the Gaelic language in its entirety (i.e. Irish, Scottish, and Manx), or "Gaeilge" (Irish)/"Gàidhlig" (Scottish Gaelic)/"Gaelg" (Manx). Technically, the Goidelic languages are all descendants of Old Irish, so "Goídelc" would probably be the most elegant solution. However, as I said, the full name is a bit clumsy.

So, we have Team Celtic, Team Celts, and Clan Lugus as suggestions for the team name. Team Cú Chulainn isn't acceptable for an all-Celtic team, so we'll have to give up this idea. I think we should agree on a name till the end of January.

BTW, that's a really cool composite flag in the first post Josquin! I didn't give it due attention before.

Thank you! It took me two minutes of googling it... But I also thought it was pretty cool, so I pasted it.

My self-introduction as Gaeilge is also coming very soon, but at the moment my new job takes up all my energy. I hope I can write it on the weekend.

[galaxyrocker]

I'm fine with just Clan Lugus.

[Montmorency]

That's a very impressive-looking list of Irish resources you've put up over on your blog Teango. I don't think I've seen anything quite as wide-ranging as that for Welsh, (certainly not an up to date one).

Diolch, Montmorency! Sadly most of my lovely Irish resources are packed safely away in boxes on the other side of the world, over 7K miles away. I look forward to reuniting with them one day, but it could be a while...

Although I'm focusing on French (along with an entourage of other minor languages), my main wanderlust vice will probably be Welsh this year. I'm not strictly studying the language (although that SSiW app does look very tempting!), but simply listening to snippets of podcasts and shows from time to time for easy background listening (easy in the sense that I just like to hear the spoken language; not that I understand anything much, mind you). There's absolutely no personal pressure here, so I just put something Welsh on in the background when the moment grabs me, but I hope it will turn into a fun little listening experiment over time (which if revealing, I'll try to explain more about in future blog posts).

Hi Teango,

You might check out the Taro'r Post from Tuesday this week - I've linked to it in my log, but I'll repeat it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06v324x

The whole programme (60m) is about learning Welsh, and there are interviews with a lot of learners. Some of them seem rather hesitant, but chwarae teg (fair play) to them: they were being interviewed live on national radio; I think I'd go to pieces completely in their shoes.

[Montmorency]

@Josquin,

I fully agree; that composite name suggestion of mine is far too clumsy, and it wasn't a totally serious suggestion really. But it did allow us to explore some Celtic words.

BTW, I was surprised...well, shocked if I'm honest, to realise that Google Translate does not seem to support Irish very well (if at all). At least, I couldn't get it to translate people's Irish entries. Unless I was somehow using it incorrectly, and there is a way, would it be too much to ask for people to give English versions of their Irish entries here? Well, maybe not every time, but maybe just now and again? Thanks in advance!

(GT makes a reasonable job of Welsh->English most of the time, so you all rather have the advantage over me in that sense).

(p.s. as well as the flag, the map is also nice).