Old Welsh Totally Explained

Everything about Old Welsh totally explained

Old Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh language from the time it developed from the Brythonic language, generally thought to be in the period between the middle of the 6th century and the middle of the 7th century, until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh.
Many poems and some prose has been preserved from this period, although some are in later manuscripts, for example the text of Y Gododdin. The oldest surviving text entirely in Old Welsh is probably that on a gravestone now in Tywyn church, thought to date from the early 8th century. A text in the Book of St. Chad called the Surexit Memorandum is thought to have been written in the late 8th or the 9th century but may be a copy of a text from the 6th or 7th centuries.
Old Welsh is only intelligible to a modern-day Welsh speaker with the aid of extensive notes.

Old Welsh texts

Surexit Memorandum

Text:

tutbulc filius liuit hagener tutri dierchi tir telih haioid ilau elcu filius gelhig haluidt iuguret amgucant pel amtanndi ho diued diprotant gener tutri o guir imguodant ir degion guragon tagc rodesit elcu guetig equs tres uache, tres uache nouidligi namin ir ni be cas igridu dimedichat guetig hit did braut grefiat guetig nis minn tutbulc hai cenetl in ois oisau

Translation:

Tudfwlch son of Llywyd and son-in-law of Tudri arose to claim the land of Telych, which was in the hand of Elgu son of Gelli and the tribe of Idwared. They disputed long about it; in the end they disjudge Tudri's son-in-law by law. The goodmen said to each other 'Let us make peace'. Elgu gave afterwards a horse, three cows, three cows newly calved, in order that there might not be hatred between them from the ruling afterwards till the Day of Judgement. Tudfwlch and his kin won't want it for ever and ever.

Features:

The text shows many of the early spelling conventions of Welsh, when the basic Latin alphabet was used to represent the phonology of Old Welsh. At this stage, the use of ll to represent the lateral fricative /ɬ/ (liuit > ) and dd to represent /ð/ (did > ) hadn't been developed. The Latin letter u was used to represent the diverse sounds /ʉ/, /ʊ/ and /v/, which became u, w and f, v respectively, by the medieval period.
initial mutations, a major feature of all Insular Celtic languages, don't appear to have been represented orthographically at this point
In some cases, the language used in the Memorandum has become obsolete, but other words are relatively unchanged in modern Welsh:

Old Welsh	Modern Welsh	English
tir		land
lau		hand
diued		end
ir		the
nouid		new
guetig		after
cas		hatred
hit		until
did		day
braut		brother
in ois oisou		for ever and ever

Further Information

Get more info on 'Old Welsh'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://old_welsh.totallyexplained.com">Old Welsh Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.