Lengthening

[HerMajesty]

Languages and regional accents are so interesting. I find it interesting in parts of Mexico and SA they do say it a bit more like Joe than Yo. In Welsh I think it's interesting that the word for thieves is the same as the Spanish word for one thief - ladron. The word for one thief is something totally different that I don't remember. So I'm guessing in early Wales, they had a word for one thief, and maybe put a number in front if it or something to pluralize it. Then, when the Romans came, they used the Latin word for thieves, and it stuck. Too much coincidence to be random, anyway.

[cambrensis]

The word for one thief is something totally different that I don't remember. So I'm guessing in early Wales, they had a word for one thief, and maybe put a number in front if it or something to pluralize it. Then, when the Romans came, they used the Latin word for thieves, and it stuck. Too much coincidence to be random, anyway.

In Welsh, "thief" is "lleidr" and pronunciation depends on being able to roll your "rs". (Please do not say.that aloud or one of us will get arrested!!) "To steal" is "lladrata" or "dwyn" but the latter alsol means "bring/bear" which confuses the issue.

What we now call Welsh is the remnant of the old British language...as a result I find that I can read Cornish easily enough, with the odd hiccough, obviously, though how one arrives at the pronunciation from Anglo-Cornish pronunciation of common words defeats me. I'd hate to have to guess at Welsh from the very strange Anglo-Welsh one hears. For example, in South Wales there is a place the Anglo-Welsh call "Lantwit Major". Now the "major" part is no problem as it is a simple translation of the Welsh for "large", but "Lantwit" is a total nonsense! The Welsh is Llanilltyd, the spirant sound of the "ll" shown in bold. You could derive the Llan from Lan, but not St Illtyd from twit!

The Romans were not here for long as they invaded in 43 A.D. and withdrew the legions in 383 A.D. thus leaving the island open to Germanic invasions from the East and Gaelic invasions from the West when the Scots invaded Man and Northern Britain. I have in my possession a fascinating, to me, edition of the N.T. printed in the 18th Century and in Manx Gaelic which is a mixture of "Welsh" and "Gaelic", blending in the same way as do Low German and French in English.

Many Latin words in Welsh appear to stem from their legal system. Of course, most of the legionaries did not come from Italy, so there were many dialects of spoken Latin among them which gave rise to the modern Romance languages.

One of the Latin words for "robber" is "latro". There are several others!