Category: Breton (Brezhoneg)

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon

– la côte = rib = asen = kostenn
– la cage thoracique = rib cage = cawell asennau = kest ar brusk
– le couple = rib (of boat) = asen = koubl
– la coque = hull = corff llong = korf ar vag
– l’armature (f) = frame(work), bone, underwiring = ffrâm, fframwaith = frammadur
– prouver, avérer = prove = profi = prou(v)iñ, donet
– le sous-bock, le rond à bière = beermat = mat cwrw
– le bock = beer glass, glass of beer = gwydr cwrw = bok
– dénonciateur, corbeau = whistle-blower = chwythwr chwiban = disklêrier
– ringard, old school = cheesy, naff = sathredig, ystrydebol, ffuantus = kaoc’h kazh
– le pied = leg (table, chair) = coes
– le dossier = back (chair) = cefn – kein
– le siège = seat (chair) = sêt = sez
– le réduction, la rabais = discount = disgownt = rabat, diskar

De cette semaine le mots de la semaine seront en français, anglais, gallois et breton.

From this week the words of the week will be in French, English, Welsh and Breton.

O’r wythnos ‘ma byddan eiriau yr wythnos yn Ffrangeg, Saesneg, Cymraeg a Llydaweg.

Yezhoù, kanaouennoù ha sonerezh

By Simon

The Breton couchsurfers arrived yesterday, with an Austrian friend, and we’re having a great time. They’ve taught me a bit of Breton, we’ve also talked in French, English, Welsh, Irish and German – I love having opportunities to use my languages like this. I’ve learnt more about Brittany and Breton and have shown them round Bangor – they particularly like the older parts of the university.

Last night we did some silly singing at the crazy choir – a small group of us who get together every other week to improvise songs and harmonies and generally be silly. After that we went to a folk music session at a nearby pub. Tonight we’re going to a cèilidh, which will the first time they’ve been to one, though they do have something similar in Brittany – fest-noz.

Couchsurfing and languages

By Simon

Last week when looking for people in Bangor to practise my languages with I found mention of a polyglot conversation group on couchsurfing.org. I’m not sure if it’s still going, but after looking around the site I thought I’d register. A few days later I got a couch request for this coming weekend from some Breton-speaking students who are currently studying Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. So I decided to learn some more Breton this week. I’m using Colloquial Breton, doing a little every day, and listening to Radio Breizh.

I’ve heard about others using couchsurfing to find people to practise languages with, but haven’t tried it myself yet. It looks like a good way to do so. Have you used it to find in this way?

Menhirs, dolmens and cromlechs

By Simon

A menhir from Brittany and a cromleac from Ireland

The word menhir come up in discussion yesterday and I posted it on Facebook today along with the the Welsh translation maen hir, which is what I found in this dictionary. This provoked further discussion about whether the two terms mean the same thing. So I thought I’d find out.

A menhir is a standing stone of the kind that Obelix delivers in the Asterix books. According to the Dictionary of Word Origins and the OED, menhir comes from Breton mean-hir (long stone), which is what the Welsh term maen hir means, so it seems that they are the same. The usual Breton word for such standing stones is peulvan, however.

The word dolmen (a prehistoric structure of two or more upright stones surmounted by a horizontal one), comes via French from Breton: the men part means stone, and the dol part either comes from the Breton word tōl (table), a borrowing from the Latin tabula (board, plank), or from the Cornish tol (hole). So dolmen either means ‘stone table’ or ‘stone hole’.

The word dolmen also exists in Welsh, and another word for such structures is cromlech, which exists in Welsh and English and comes from the Welsh words crwm (bent, stooped) and llech (stone), and is related to the Irish word cromleac (‘bent stone’).

Cars, carts and chariots

By Simon

Last week I was told that the English word car originally comes from the Irish word carr (donkey cart). Apparently when cars came to Ireland Irish speakers thought it was better to come up with a new word for them than to name them after the humble donkey cart, so the term gluaisteán (‘moving thing’) was coined. I hadn’t heard about this before so thought I’d check it.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the English word car has been used to refer to a wheeled vehicle since 1300 and comes from the Old Northern French word carre, from the Latin carrum/carrus, which originally referred to a two-wheeled Celtic war chariot, from the Gaulish word karros, from the Proto-Indo-European word *krsos, from the root *kers- (to run).

There are related words in Welsh carr (cart, wagon), and in Breton: karr (chariot, cart), in Cornish: karr (car), in Manx: carr (car), in Spanish and Italian: carro (cart, wagon) and probably in other languages.

The word chariot comes from the same root as car, but cart probably comes from the Old Norse word kart-r (cart), according to the OED.

Another vehicle-related word we discussed last week is carbad (chariot), from the Old Irish carpat (war-chariot, waggon). It is related to the Welsh cerbyd (vehicle, car, carriage, coach), the Old Breton cerpit, the Gaulish carpentoracte, from the Latin corbis (basket), from carpentum (two wheeled chariot), which was probably borrowed from Gaulish. The root idea is ‘wicker’, referring to the basket character of the body of these chariots.

Yn Chruinnaght

By Simon

Tomorrow I’m off to the Isle of Man for Yn Chruinnaght (‘the gathering’) – a celebration of Manx and Celtic music and culture featuring performers and participants from the Isle of Man, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. I’m really looking forward to it as it’s a great opportunity to see old friends and make new ones, and to hear, speak and/or sing in quite a few different languages – last year at Yn Chruinnaght I heard all six modern Celtic languages being spoken and sung, and spoke in four of them, and also in French and English.

I’ll be in the Isle of Man for a week, then I’m off to Gleann Cholm Cille in Donegal in Ireland for a summer school in Irish language and culture.

Baragouiner

By Simon

Bara ha gwin / Pain et vin / Bread and Wine

The French words baragouin and baragouiner came up in conversation yesterday and I thought I’d write about them today as they have an interesting etymology.

According to Reverso baragouin means ‘gibberish, gabble or double Dutch’ and baragouiner ‘means ‘to gibber, jabber, gabble’. The Larousse Dictionary defines baragouin as language that is incomprehensible due to poor pronunciation, vocabulary or syntax, or an incomprehensible foreign language; and baragouiner as to talk a foreign language, incorrect pronounciation, or to express something in an incomprehensible way.

According to Wikitionaire and Le Dictionnaire d’étymologie française, these words come from two Breton words – bara (bread) and gwin (wine) – things that Breton-speaking travellers often asked for from French-speaking inn keepers during the Middle Ages and which the French speakers particularly noticed. As the French speakers didn’t understand what the Bretons were saying, they associated these words with gibberish or an incomprehensible language.

Possession

By Simon

In the Celtic languages when you want to say that you have/own/possess something, you say that the thing is at/by/with you, often with the prepositions merging with the pronouns.

For example, this is how to say ‘I have a book’ in those languages:

– Irish: Tá leabhar agam [lit. “is book at-me]
– Scottish Gaelic: Tha leabhar agam [lit. “is book at-me]
– Manx: Ta lioar aym [lit. “is book at-me]
– Breton: Ur Ul levr a zo ganin [lit. “a book is with-me”]
– Cornish: Yma lyver dhymm [lit. “here is book to-me”]
– Welsh (North): Mae gen i lyfr (North Wales) [lit. “is with me book”]
– Welsh (South): Mae llyfr (gy)da fi [lit. “is book with me”]
– Welsh (literary): Mae gynnaf llyfr [lit. “is with-me book”]

This kind of structure occurs in a number of other languages that don’t have the equivalent of the verb ‘to have’. Russian, for example, uses a similar construction to show possession:

– У меня есть книга (U menja est’ kniga) = I have a book [lit. “by/at me there is book”].

Do you know of any other languages that use this type of stucture?

Cvičení dělá mistra / Practice makes perfect

By Simon

When learning a language I usually spend a lot of time listening to and reading it, and as a result become at least reasonably proficient at understanding it in speech and writing. In most cases though, I don’t spend as much time speaking and writing it, so my speaking and writing abilities tend to lag behind my reading and listening skills.

For example, I can remember quite a few of the phrases and even whole chunks of dialogue from my language courses, and can recognise and understand them when I hear them or read them, and perhaps also use them in speech and writing, if the context permits. When I try to talk about things not covered by the courses though, I quickly find that my vocabulary runs out and I struggle to construct my own sentences.

Of course I can look up any words I don’t know in a dictionary, or ask a native speaker, if one is available, and this is fine for isolating languages like Mandarin as you can just stick the words in the appropriate place in your sentence, as long as you know that place. In synthetic languages like Czech and Russian though, you have to apply the appropriate inflections to the words, at least you do if you want to speak and write them correctly and to be understood, as I do.

So I think I need to do a lot more practise making my own sentences in the languages I’m working on – currently Czech and Breton. I could start with simple sentences from my language courses and other sources and change and/or add bits. For example, a simple sentence from my Czech course (Colloquial Czech) is Jsem student (I’m a student). I could change the person of the verb: Jsi student (You are a student), the number: Jsme studenti (We are students), or the tense: Byli jsme studenti (We were students). I could change the noun: Jsem lingvista (I’m a linguist), and add over words to the sentence: Jsem líný lingvista (I’m a lazy linguist), Jsem líný lingvista z Anglie (I’m a lazy linguist from England).

I can check these sentences by searching for them in Google to see if anyone else has used them, or something similar. That’s also a good way to find texts related to what you’re writing / talking about.

It’s probably best to start with simple sentences, and once I can construct them fairly well, I could try linking them together. Another exercise that might be useful is to take a paragraph in one of the languages I’m learning and to focus on one particularly type of word – nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. I could just try to identify each type, or change things – for example, the tense of the verbs.

Do you do anything similar when learning languages?

This post was inspired by a video on the FluentCzech channel on YouTube which discusses a similar way to learn languages – constructing simple sentences in your L2, translating them to your L1, then back to your L2.