Sources for Celtic language elements?

Submitted by Van on Sat, 11/28/2009 - 01:00.

Anyone know any good sources for elements of old languages? The only extensive stuff I can find is Latin

I'm not looking for a list of words, I'm looking for something that contains just root words, prefixes, and suffixes. If anyone knows any sources--I will be especially grateful if anyone happens to know where I can find something like this for the Cornish language--I will be eternally in your debt. I need to make up nouns for a novel, and this time, I want to actually use some languages for bases instead of just throwing a bunch of letters together at random.

And just to make this topic somewhat relevant to Lothere, I may need a list of Gaelic language elements too Pretty much any "dead" language (God, I have issues with that term) would be great

General Discussion

If you're just looking to

Submitted by Lothere on Sat, 11/28/2009 - 06:57.

If you're just looking to make names, you're probably less interested in roots, prefixes, and suffixes than you are in phonemes: what are the sounds and combinations of sounds that are valid for the language. These are the building blocks of words. So you might try searching for "Cornish phonemes" for example. (here is a page for you.)

The study of the rules by which phonemes may and may not be combined is called "phonotactics". I do highly doubt you will find anything about "Cornish phonotactics" other than a PhD dissertation or two on some obscure feature. But Wikipedia has a section on Irish Gaelic phonotactics that may be enlightening, if only to reveal just how non-arbitrary languages are.

If you're only after names, I would recommend using a random name generator that is trained for the language you want to use. Let the machine figure out which sounds are likely to follow another. Unfortunately my favorite name-generator site had its scripts taken down due to abuse.

I did find this random "Welsh" name generator which comes up with nice results. Cornish diverged from Welsh, so they're probably similar. Perhaps you can take random "Welsh" names, and swap out any letters/phonemes that aren't in Cornish using the Omniglot Cornish page I linked above, or otherwise massage them to look a little more Cornish.

You're not going for authentic Cornish anyway, otherwise I would assume you would want to use real Cornish names.

Thank you These will be

Submitted by Van on Sat, 11/28/2009 - 12:51.

Thank you These will be useful.

I think I would still need to see a page with roots and prefixes and suffixes, however, just because I would like to see the actual meanings of various combinations of the phonemes (I don't want to make up some word with an unintentional, totally ridiculous real meaning). But if I can't find that, I can probably look up the name meanings and pick those apart to discern some language elements.

Hm, I actually had a

Submitted by Alix on Sun, 12/20/2009 - 23:03.

Hm, I actually had a question about the language. The Lotherian Celts tend to use 'Ach' like in German, and my Welsh dictionary uses the word 'Och' for alas or deep despair. I was wondering how much Gaelic/German/Welsh were related as far as languages go.

"Ach!" being merely an

Submitted by Lothere on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 07:49.

"Ach!" being merely an interjection, we shouldn't read too much into its appearance in several "languages".

Gaelic and Welsh are fairly closely related since they are both Celtic languages. There are two families of Celtic languages in northwest Europe: the Brythonic (Welsh, Cumbrian, Cornish, Breton) and the Goidelic (Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic). So Gaelic and Welsh aren't sister languages... they're more like "first cousin languages". I don't know much Welsh, but based on what I know about Breton I would say Welsh and Gaelic are probably about as similar as French and Spanish.

FWIW Cumbrian is the language that was spoken in Lothere a few hundred years before my story (in Arthurian times *cough cough*) and that's why a lot of the locals -- such as Ffraid, Affrais, or Angharat -- have "Welsh" names -- they're actually Cumbrian names that have survived into the 11th century in spite of English taking over as the language of discourse.

As for German, that's a whole different branch of the Indo-European Language family tree. Any similarities between German and Welsh are either accidental or date all the way back to the dawn of the first Indo-European language. (For example "night" in English, "nuit" in French, "Nacht" in German, "nos" in Welsh, "nott" in Norse, etc.)

But the Germanic languages include Old Norse, Old English, Old Saxon, Old Franconian, and Old Dutch, which is how Eirik, Sigefrith, Sophie, Hetty, and Ogive can all understand each other without much special language training. Those languages were much more closely related then than they are now, and even now you can sort of puzzle things out.

That explanation is why I

Submitted by Tiffany on Mon, 12/28/2009 - 12:40.

That explanation is why I should take up Linguistics.

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