[Spellyans] ha versus hag

Clive Baker clive.baker at gmail.com
Fri Jul 1 10:15:08 BST 2016


The problem seems more that for almost the last 100 years, the rule has
been 'ha' before consonants and 'hag' before vowels' with the one exception
of 'ha+ an' which is 'ha'n'.
to try and change it now, whether right or wrong seems to me very difficult
for such a tiny change....this from a teacher of the lingo
Clive

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 9:36 AM, Daniel Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>
wrote:

> Nothing, Jan!
> D
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 01 Jul 2016, at 10:19, Janice Lobb <janicelobb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What's wrong with using <ha> for everything?
>
> Jan
>
> On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 3:13 AM, Mike R <mremic01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Strachan describes it as '*ac* before vowels and the negative particles
>> *ny*, *na*, and sometimes before other consonants.'
>>
>> Here are a few examples from the Four Branches:
>>
>> 'Ac ual y byd yn ymwarandaw a llef yr erchwys...'
>>
>> Would we treat the u in *ual* as a vowel here? I imagine that it would
>> have been more of a bilabial at the time, unlike the modern f. *Ac ual*
>> seems consistent, but it's often just *a* before other words that begin
>> with u/v.
>>
>> 'Y march a gymerth, ac racdaw yd aeth.'
>>
>> 'Ac rac diruawr wres, y kyrchwys y bleit a'e yscwyd a'y tharaw gantaw
>> allan, ac yn y ol ynteu y wreic.'
>>
>> But then:
>>
>> '...a rac guelet gwr kyuurd a thi yn diuetha pryf mor dielw a hwnnw.'
>>
>> 'A Riannon' is used fairly consistently.
>>
>> 'Ac nachaf y liw a'y wed a'y ansawd yn atueilaw o'y charyat, hyt nat oed
>> hawd y adnabot.'
>>
>> Is *nachaf* being treating like a negative particle here? I thought it
>> meant something like 'behold', but maybe it has some obscure origin in a
>> negative construction.
>>
>> So Strachan gives us more information than Evans, but even he doesn't
>> give us the specifics. It seems that Middle Welsh scribes usually abided by
>> the rule of using *ac* before a vowel, a negative particle (and by
>> extension, sometimes *n*), and even sometimes r. We might find even more
>> examples digging into other texts. Over time, I hope to narrow in on
>> details like this, but it's a daunting task.
>>
>> There is also an instance of the phrase 'a'n kynnadyl yna yn y lle hon'
>> in the White Book version of PPD, where the Red Book has 'ac an kynnadyl
>> yna yn y lle hon.' Thomson's edition seems to take *a'n* as the
>> conjunction *a* with an infixed possessive *'n* (from *an)*, but I
>> suppose it could just as easily be 'an kynnadyl' with no conjunction. If we
>> accept Thomson's interpretation, we see two different ways to deal with
>> *a/ac* in this situation, each taken by a different scribe in order to
>> write the same sentence.
>>
>> Sorry to spend so much time on Welsh matters. I suppose my point is that
>> the rules for *a(c)* aren't as clear cut as we'd like them to be. But
>> that's okay. There's enough inconsistency that it's difficult to say that
>> one way or the other is 'wrong', but we can certainly look to the
>> tendencies of the texts and try to imitate them. I think you've got the
>> right idea, Nicholas. I have much more confidence in the Cornish described
>> in Desky Kernowek than what I see in other books due to the attestations,
>> and my own preference would be to proscribe rules for revived Cornish based
>> on the texts. At the same time, if everyone else finds *hag* acceptable
>> in all environments, I would be willing to go along with that, provided
>> future grammars make note of the fact that this was not the case prior to
>> the revival.
>>
>> Does vowel length have any influence on the frequency of *ha *vs. *hag*?
>> Perhaps a diphthong at the beginning of the following word?
>> ​.
>>
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>>
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