[elcritch]

> 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 fiancé 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]

> 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/connections/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 âne.

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.

[elric]

> 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.

[thaumasiotes]

> "kvinna" still means woman in Swedish.

We started updating that more than a thousand years ago. Get with the times already. ;D

[arethuza]

I wonder if that’s where the use of “quine” for “girl” comes from in North East Scotland?

[thaumasiotes]

Yes.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quine#Scots

(That is to say, the Scots word descends from English, not from Norse.)

[elcritch]

> 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]

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]

> 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]

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

[thaumasiotes]

I thought this was an interesting idea.

I rated each word in the comment for how much I felt it represented grammar vs semantics (total adding to 1 for each word; ratings in increments of 0.1).

The ratings divided into 31.5 words worth of syntax and 37.5 words worth of semantics, adding up to 69 instead of 71 because I combined "a lot" and "as well" into one word each for this purpose.

French accounted for 6% of the grammar (reflecting my rating of sure and just as 90% "grammatical" each), and 22% of the semantics.

English got 91% of the grammar and 59% of the semantics. The point you might be most likely to disagree with is that I rated many prepositions as 50% semantic. (For example, to in the phrase thirty to forty got that rating, although to in get exposed to and something to read up on were rated 0% semantic.) The second point, cutting in the other direction, is that I rated all pronouns as 0% semantic; realistically they should rate a bit higher. In a better model, I'd probably like to rate them 100% grammatical and also ~30% semantic.

(The residual ~3% of grammar is the passive marker get, from Norse.)

If this is the kind of thing you enjoy, I'd be interested in your evaluation.

[griffzhowl]

I'd say I'm quite sceptical about that kind of evaluative scheme because it seems to add a degree of subjectivity and arbitrariness about how things are rated.

At a first pass I'd just say that adjectives, nouns, and adverbs are "vocabulary", and everything else is grammar.

[elcritch]

P.S. Next time I'll have to listen for b- words in Welsh to see if I can pick them out.

[elric]

> 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]

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_progr...

[nacnud]

"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!