Cumbric

Cumbric is an extinct Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North", in Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands.

[7]The Latinate term Cambria is often used for Wales; nevertheless, the Life of St Kentigern (c. 1200) by Jocelyn of Furness has the following passage: When King Rederech (Rhydderch Hael) and his people had heard that Kentigern had arrived from Wallia [i.e. Wales] into Cambria [i.e. Cumbria], from exile into his own country, with great joy and peace both king and people went out to meet him.

[2] Kenneth H. Jackson described Cumbric as "the Brittonic dialect of Cumberland, Westmorland, northern Lancashire, and south-west Scotland" and went on to define the region further as being bound in the north by the Firth of Clyde, in the south by the River Ribble and in the east by the Southern Scottish Uplands and the Pennine Ridge.

[9] The study Brittonic Language in the Old North by Alan G. James, concerned with documenting place- and river-names as evidence for Cumbric and the pre-Cumbric Brittonic dialects of the region Yr Hen Ogledd, considered Loch Lomond the northernmost limit of the study with the southernmost limits being Liverpool Bay and the Humber, although a few more southerly place-names in Cheshire and, to a lesser extent, Derbyshire and Staffordshire were also included.

Although the language is long extinct, traces of its vocabulary arguably have persisted into the modern era in the form of "counting scores" and in a handful of dialectal words.

However, linguists generally agree that Cumbric was a Western Brittonic language closely related to Welsh and, more distantly, to Cornish and Breton.

[14] Kenneth Jackson concludes that the majority of changes that transformed British into Primitive Welsh belong to the period from the middle of the fifth to the end of the sixth century.

Derivatives of Common Brittonic *magno, such as Welsh maen and Cornish men, mean "stone", particularly one with a special purpose or significance.

[25] Among the evidence that Cumbric might have influenced local English dialects are a group of counting systems, or scores, recorded in various parts of northern England.

[26] However, later scholars came to reject this idea, suggesting instead that the scores were later imports from either Wales or Scotland, but in light of the dearth of evidence one way or another, Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto posit that it remains plausible that the counting systems are indeed of Cumbric origin.

(see chart) A number of words occurring in the Scots language and Northern English dialects have been proposed as being of possible Brittonic origin.

Koch calls it a dialect but goes on to say that some of the place names in the Cumbric region "clearly reflect a developed medieval language, much like Welsh, Cornish or Breton".

[33] In all probability, the "Cumbric" of Lothian more nearly resembled the "Pictish" of adjacent Fife than the Welsh dialects spoken over 300 miles away in Dyfed and accordingly, Alan G. James has argued that all 3 languages may have formed a continuum.

[9] There is evidence to suggest that the consonant cluster mb remained distinct in Cumbric later than the time it was assimilated to mm in Welsh, Cornish, and Breton.

Jackson notes the legal term galnys, equivalent to Welsh galanas, may show syncope of internal syllables to be a feature of Cumbric.

[35] Watson[19] notes initial devoicing in Tinnis Castle (in Drumelzier) (compare Welsh dinas 'fortress, city') as an example of this, which can also be seen in the Cornish Tintagel, din 'fort'.

*Caletodubro-) in fact appears to show a voiced Cumbric consonant where Welsh has Calettwr by provection, which Jackson believes reflects an earlier stage of pronunciation.

The Cumbric personal names Gospatrick, Gososwald and Gosmungo meaning 'servant of St...' (Welsh, Cornish, Breton gwas 'servant, boy') and the Galloway dialect word gossock 'short, dark haired inhabitant of Wigtownshire' (W. gwasog 'a servant'[19]) apparently show that the Cumbric equivalent of Welsh and Cornish gwas & B gwaz 'servant' was *gos.

Koch notes that the alternation between gwa- and go- is common among the Brittonic languages and does not amount to a systematic sound change in any of them.

Thomas Clancy opined that the royal feminine personal name in Life of Kentigern, Languoreth, demonstrates the presence of /gw/ Cumbric.

[38] It is noteworthy that the toponym Brenkibeth in Cumberland (now Burntippet; possibly bryn, "hill" + gwyped, "gnats") may display this syllable anglicized as -k-.

[39] In the Book of Aneirin, a poem entitled "Peis Dinogat" (possibly set in the Lake District of Cumbria), contains a usage of the word penn "head" (attached to the names of several animals hunted by the protagonist), that is unique in medieval Welsh literature and may, according to Koch, reflect Cumbric influence ("[r]eferring to a single animal in this way is otherwise found only in Breton, and we have no evidence that the construction ever had any currency in the present-day Wales").

[40] The modern Brittonic languages have different forms of the definite article: Welsh yr, -'r, y, Cornish an, and Breton an, ar, al.

[24] It might also be noted that Medieval Welsh forms of Caerliwelydd[43] and Derwennydd[44] both occur in poems of supposed Cumbrian origin whose rhyme and metre would be disrupted if the ending were absent.

Of additional relevance is that Guto Rhys demonstrated "some robust proof" of the presence of the -ydd ending in the closely aligned Pictish language.

Other examples, standardised from original sources, include Gosmungo (Saint Mungo), Gososwald (Oswald of Northumbria) and Goscuthbert (Cuthbert).

Though these people represent the upper classes, it seems significant that by the late 12th century in the Lanercost area, Cumbric is not obvious in these personal names.