[HN Gopher] Patagonian Welsh
___________________________________________________________________
Patagonian Welsh
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 103 points
Date : 2025-09-25 04:30 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| gerdesj wrote:
| Us Britons have managed to cause some remarkably odd outcomes,
| way beyond the usual Empire bollocks and this is an absolute
| belter.
|
| Welsh is a Brythonic language, which is the most common class of
| languages spoken across what is now the UK(ish) that predates the
| Roman invasion in 55/54BC and 43 AD. It's way older than English.
| Other living examples include Scottish, Irish, Cornish (revived)
| and Bretton (off of France). There are, of course, dialects and
| so on.
|
| I think it is absolutely delightful that a small part of
| Patagonia speaks Welsh. In a world hell bent on painting itself
| beige this is a lovely thing. Diversity is important in all walks
| of life.
| iandioch wrote:
| FWIW, Scottish and Irish (and their sister Manx) are not
| Brythonic, they are in the other branch of extant Celtic
| languages, Goidelic/Gaelic.
| elcritch wrote:
| > Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic form the Goidelic
| languages, while Welsh, Cornish and Breton are Brittonic. All
| of these are Insular Celtic languages,
|
| Yeah though Brythonic and Goidelic both are considered to
| inherit from Insular Celtic. So it's not completely off base.
|
| My fiance is Welsh but only speaks a few words. Despite many
| Welsh not speaking it now there's more active Welsh speakers
| than Irish Gaelic speakers!
|
| I spent some time in North Wales last summer where it's still
| commonly spoken. It's fascinating to hear Welsh. It's not
| related to any Germanic or French or others so there's little
| vocabulary shared with English aside from some loan words.
| Even the phonetics are quite strange sounding compared to
| other European languages.
|
| https://www.translationdirectory.com/articles/article2577.ph.
| ..
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's fascinating to hear Welsh. It's not related to any
| Germanic or French or others so there's little vocabulary
| shared with English aside from some loan words.
|
| Celtic is a branch of Indo-European, so the relationship
| exists. Naively, it's about as closely related to English
| (Germanic), and to French (Italic), as English is to
| French.
|
| The closest cognate that comes to mind between English and
| Welsh is "apple", _afal_ in Welsh.
|
| If you believe the Italo-Celtic hypothesis, Welsh would be
| more closely related to French than English is.
|
| Browsing https://www.omniglot.com/language/celtic/connectio
| ns/index.p... shows some other cognates:
|
| Welsh _enaid_ (soul) is cognate with Spanish _alma_ (soul).
|
| Welsh _asyn_ is "cognate" with English _ass_ (the animal),
| in the sense that Celtic and Germanic each separately
| borrowed the word from Latin _asinus_ and the modern words
| are inherited independently. For this reason, the word is
| also "cognate" with French _ane_.
|
| Welsh _benyw_ (woman) is cognate with English _queen_
| (which used to mean "woman").
|
| Welsh _blodyn_ (flower) is cognate with English _blossom_.
| (And maybe also _bloom_.)
|
| Welsh _buwch_ (cow) is cognate with English _cow_.
|
| (Although _buwch_ really _looks_ like it should be related
| to _bovine_ , this does not appear to be the case. But we
| can see that the b- beginning the Welsh word here matches
| the b- beginning benyw, corresponding to kw- in English.
| This is also what happened in _cow_ -- Celtic reduced gw-
| to b-. In this case, Germanic reduced gw- to k-; in _queen_
| , gw- became kw-.)
|
| Welsh _bol_ (stomach) is cognate with English _belly_.
|
| And I haven't even gotten through the Bs. Cognates are
| fairly common. This wasn't even a list of Celtic words that
| are cognate with English words; it was a list of Celtic
| words that are cognate with other Celtic words.
| elcritch wrote:
| > as English is to French.
|
| For basic grammar sure, but English has what 30-40% of
| its vocabulary from French? There's also a lot of
| influence from Latin and Greek in English as well.
|
| Likely it's just less cross-cultural sharing from Welsh
| into English. We get much more exposed to more tidbits
| from romance languages or German in English than we do
| Welsh or Gaelic.
|
| > Italo-Celtoc hypothesis
|
| Fascinating! Something to read up on.
| michaelscott wrote:
| Yeah correct, the French relationship with modern English
| is much closer because of (among other reasons) the
| Norman conquest that happened long after the Indo-
| European split and much closer to our time
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > but English has what 30-40% of its vocabulary from
| French?
|
| You have to be careful what you're counting when you
| quote figures like that. Here is your comment, but
| including only the words derived from French:
|
| -----
|
| ... basic grammar sure, ............. influence ... Latin
| ...... just .... cultural .......... exposed+ .....
| Romance languages .................
|
| + _exposed_ is unlike "normal" French-derived words in
| English in that it is not derived from Old French; the
| equivalent from Old French is _expound(ed)_ , and even
| there I'm not sure why we have _ex-_ instead of _es-_. I
| might credit _exposed_ more to Latin than French.
|
| -----
|
| Here's English:
|
| -----
|
| for xxxx xxxx xxxx, but English has what 30 to 40 xxxx of
| its xxxx from French? There's also a lot of xxxx from
| xxxx and xxxx in English as well.
|
| Likely it's xxxx less xxxx-xxxx sharing from Welsh into
| English. We xxxx much more xxxx to more tidbits from xxxx
| xxxx or xxxx in English than we do Welsh or xxxx.
|
| xxxx! Something to read up on.
|
| -----
|
| 53 / 71 words (including _Welsh_ , but not _Gaelic_ ) are
| native English.
|
| ( _Welsh_ ultimately derives from the name of a Celtic
| tribe known to us from Roman writers. In Germanic, the
| name became a generic word for foreigners. I think it 's
| fair to call it English; it was already like that in
| proto-Germanic. _Gaelic_ is more recent.)
|
| 10 / 71 words, including the somewhat questionable
| _exposed_ , are from French.
|
| 5 are Latin, two are Norse, and then there's _Gaelic_.
| Greek is not represented except in the _-ic_ ending on
| _Gaelic_ (or _basic_ ).
|
| If you're listening to someone speak English, knowing
| French is unlikely to be worth much.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Nice observation but it just illustrates what the GP is
| saying: the basic grammar is English while a huge
| proportion of the vocabulary comes from French. If you
| remove the grammatical words from the English selection
| you made, there's hardly anything left.
|
| > If you're listening to someone speak English, knowing
| French is unlikely to be worth much.
|
| It can help a lot when learning because of the huge
| vocabulary overlap, e.g. more or less every word ending
| with -tion, you just learn to pronounce it differently
| elcritch wrote:
| P.S. Next time I'll have to listen for b- words in Welsh
| to see if I can pick them out.
| elric wrote:
| > Welsh benyw (woman) is cognate with English queen
| (which used to mean "woman").
|
| The relationships between languages are fun and
| fascinating. "kvinna" still means woman in Swedish.
| arethuza wrote:
| I wonder if that's where the use of "quine" for "girl"
| comes from in North East Scotland?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Yes.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quine#Scots
|
| (That is to say, the Scots word descends from English,
| not from Norse.)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > "kvinna" still means woman in Swedish.
|
| We started updating that more than a thousand years ago.
| Get with the times already. ;D
| elric wrote:
| > Despite many Welsh not speaking it now there's more
| active Welsh speakers than Irish Gaelic speakers!
|
| I wanted to learn Welsh when I was living in Wales back in
| the 00s, but I couldn't find anywhere to take lessons that
| wasn't ridiculously expensive. I picked up bits and bobs
| over the years, but hardly anyone speaks it on a regular
| basis in the south, so I never got that much exposure.
| defrost wrote:
| If you like a challenge or know any half decent private
| torrent trackers, there are a number of dual welsh |
| english audio and subtitled tv series about:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Welsh_television_pr
| ogr...
| nacnud wrote:
| "Death Valley" is a recent gentle comedic crime detective
| series on the BBC (iPlayer), set in Wales and the
| characters frequently break into Welsh (with English
| subtitles). It's lovely to hear!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Scottish
|
| ...is not a term for any language. In Scotland, you might
| want to talk about Scots (a Germanic language) or Scots
| Gaelic (a Gaelic one).
|
| Annoyingly, "Irish Gaelic" (the English phrase) uses the
| pronunciation /geIlIk/ (first syllable rhymes with "pale"),
| while "Scots Gaelic" uses /gaelIk/ (first syllable rhymes
| with "pal").
| Theodores wrote:
| Scots is fascinating and the overlap with English is
| something those that live down south (England) don't really
| understand as it is more than an accent that is going on.
| Coupled with Scots there are accents, such as Glaswegian,
| which is very difficult for outsiders to understand. This
| is why Scottish people have their 'telephone voice' for
| when they need to communicate with English speakers that
| are not Scottish. 'Telephone voice' means speaking s-l-o-w-
| l-y and using words that are more widely understood, so
| 'wee' becomes 'little' or 'small'.
|
| In the parts of Wales where Welsh is spoken, an English
| person isn't going to understand a word of it unless
| hearing a word is for something new, so 'helicopter' is
| still 'helicopter'. Everyone that speaks Welsh can speak
| English just fine, with a Welsh accent, but there won't be
| substitute words, so 'yes' is 'yes', whereas in Scots, that
| will be 'aye'.
|
| As for Scots Gaelic, good point on the pronunciation. That
| language is on artificial life support, much like Welsh,
| where there has to be considerable government initiatives
| to keep it alive.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I have found some regional Scots to sound eerily like
| some variant of Danish.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Danish to me sounds like northern English, especially
| Yorkshire, which historically makes a lot of sense.
| Yorkshire people pronounce the O in phone as O.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > That language is on artificial life support, much like
| Welsh, where there has to be considerable government
| initiatives to keep it alive.
|
| I am endlessly amused by the introductions in this video,
| describing the significance of English in each guest's
| home country:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dQiA8lz45c#t=378
|
| _[Scotland] Scotland - it 's quite a small country,
| there's not a large population, but we obviously we used
| to have Scots Gaelic, which was our national language but
| then, eh... something eh... _[England pointedly looks in
| the other direction] _another country came over and uh,
| kind of, uh...
|
| I think, honestly, the percentage of people who speak
| Scots Gaelic is one percent. But now everyone speaks
| English...
|
| [...]
|
| [Wales] We... are probably one of the most patriotic bred
| people here. That's a bold claim. _[video cuts] _that we
| have to be very proud of our culture and our language
| because, uh, similar history with Scotland... so our
| language was on the edge of dying out, but, it sounds
| really different to English. Most people don 't know that
|
| [...]
|
| [Ireland] Oh, yeah, so... Ireland is similar with Wales
| and Scotland with the... _[gestures to England] _our
| friend..._
|
| The Scotsman and the Irish girl speak only English, but
| the Welsh girl was raised speaking Welsh, so there does
| appear to be some comparative health.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > It's way older than English
|
| What does it mean for one language to be older than another?
| They are both Indo-European languages, so they are descended
| from a common ancestor and have each been continually evolving
| since then.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| What does it mean for me to be older than my sister, when we
| have exactly the same ancestry?
| umanwizard wrote:
| It means you were born before her, but that analogy doesn't
| work, as there is no event in the known history of English
| or Welsh that corresponds in an obvious way to "being
| born". It's more like saying that humans are (as a species)
| older than bonobos -- it's not even clear what that means
| let alone whether or not it's true.
|
| There is no identifiable specific date at which people were
| speaking something recognizably "Welsh" or recognizably
| "English" (as opposed to proto-Indo-European). Both those
| languages have been evolving continuously, changing
| slightly every generation, from the point at which they
| were the same language thousands of years ago until today.
| Just like there is no specific identifiable date at which a
| generation of organisms was born that was bonobos or humans
| rather than proto-Great Apes.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > Just like there is no specific identifiable date at
| which a generation of organisms was born that was bonobos
| or humans rather than proto-Great Apes.
|
| And yet you can talk about certain species being older
| than another can you not?
| umanwizard wrote:
| No, I don't think you can. What would it mean?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I'm not sure how to answer this because people do it all
| the time. Dogs as a species are around 15-20,000 years
| old for example, while cows only branched off from
| aurochs around 10,000 years ago. Both species have common
| ancestory but they are distinct and we can trace their
| paths back and give approximate dates to the individual
| branches, exactly as we do for languages.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Yeah, unless a modern Welsh speaker could go back in time to
| 1 AD and talk to native Britons, it doesn't make any sense.
| You may as well say that Italian is older than English
| because the Romans spoke Latin.
| kitd wrote:
| My father grew up speaking Welsh at home. Years later, on a
| family holiday to Brittany, we heard some local old men
| speaking Breton. My dad was able to understand much of what
| they were saying. I had never realised the languages were that
| close.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Cymraeg dates to many years after the Roman occupation.
|
| English was only established as the British language by Henry
| VII, so preceding it isn't hard.
| foxglacier wrote:
| How is diversity of languages important or even good? Language
| only works when it's _not_ diverse so people can understand
| each other.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Language extends and limits thought. Languages can have
| remarkable differences in their expressiveness and that
| enriches the minds of those who speak them. It's not wonder
| that being a polyglot has supposed cognitive benefits.
| slater wrote:
| Why does this entry not show up on
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wikipedia.org ?
|
| Edit: I guess it's because of the mobile URL...?
| detaro wrote:
| it does, but on the second page, because it was originally
| posted 3 days ago.
| slater wrote:
| oh derp, so it does. thanks!
| wslh wrote:
| Not mentioned in the article but you can drink good beer there.
| Probably this one: https://www.instagram.com/draigcerveza
| thelibrarian wrote:
| I see someone else here also listens to Ken and Robin Talk About
| Stuff...
| rossriley wrote:
| If anyone is interested Gruf Rhys (from Super Furry Animals) made
| a film, Separado!, where he tried to track down his Welsh family
| that migrated to Patagonia.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1505405/
| gartdavis wrote:
| I've always loved being confounded by unexpected stories like
| this. 20 years ago, I was working to build a self-publishing
| company - lulu.com - that would open up the world of book
| publishing. It was not an easy journey. In 2005 a book was
| published on the site that told the story of this welsh-
| patagonian exclave. It sold hundreds of copies in Wales and
| Argentina. In its narrow space, it was as much a 'bestseller' as
| anything in the NYTimes, and it was clear that it would never
| have been published or reached this audience any other way. It
| was a benediction on our labors.
|
| "William Casnodyn Rhys, a young theology student, dreamed of
| establishing a Welsh colony where the Welsh language and culture
| could be preserved...."
|
| https://www.lulu.com/shop/william-casnodyn-rhys/a-welsh-song...
| andycowley wrote:
| There's a lovely episode of _Welcome to Wrexham_ where they fly
| some fans over from Patagonia to see their football team play.
| mark_undoio wrote:
| I love the Patagonian Welsh. BBC Wales, which often has great
| comedy, has a sitcom based around the original emigration to
| Patagonia: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060cd20
|
| The whole thing feels very much like a Star Trek plot to me with
| a culture leaving on a ship to an unknown world to preserve their
| way of life - which later the crew would happen upon in some
| episode.
| eeue56 wrote:
| Native Welsh speaker here! It has always been a dream of mine to
| go to Y Wladfa, and share a bond through language with people
| there.
|
| One fun fact - my dad took some higher-learning Welsh exam as an
| adult. They had to time the exam to match Patagonia, as they were
| given the exact same exam to avoid any cheating.
| yazantapuz wrote:
| What a nice surprise to find this on HN! I live in Puerto Madryn,
| the city celebrates its anniversary in honor of the arrival of
| the first Welsh settlers. Around Chubut, it's pretty common to
| see road and tourist signage in Spanish, Welsh, Aoniken and
| English -- especially along Provincial Route 25, which connects
| the coast to the mountains in the west. It more or less follows
| the path the welsh took from the Chubut river valley to Esquel
| and Trevelin.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-09-29 23:02 UTC)