[Spellyans] Wardbridge

Harry Hawkey bendyfrog at live.com
Fri Feb 10 14:29:52 GMT 2017


How long do you think it will take them to replace the official form of 
'Ponswad' with this new word? A couple of days at the most, right?

:-\


On 10/02/17 10:34, Nicholas Williams wrote:
> Wardbridge and Ponzwarda are clearly not mistakes.
> Presumably the local people didn’t understand the element Wade and 
> replaced
> it with the more familiar shape Ward.
> It is likely also that the substitution of Ward for Wade
> occurred early, i.e. before the Great Vowel Shift of the late medieval 
> period.
> Wa:d to Ward was hardly likely after Wa:d had become Weid,
> assuming that the change occurred in English rather than Cornish.
>
> Lhuyd’s other place-names in the MS seem accurate, e.g.
>
> Byzvena ~ Bodmin
> Lys Stephan ~ Lanston
> Marha Dzhow ~ Market Jew
> Por îa ~ St Ives
> Por Enis ~ Mowsol.
>
> When citing contemporary Cornish words in the MS Lhuyd glosses them in
> Welsh, but his Welsh is in his own idiosyncratic orthography which makes
> looking them up in Welsh dictionaries rather difficult sometimes.
>
> Nicholas




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