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Seven Words (Linguistics)
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EndlesslyRocking



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I was wondering about the word fish. It apparently comes from the OE fisc. I looked up fish in Welsh and it said it was pysg and pysodyn. How is pysg pronounced - "pissing" or "pissinj" or something like that?

In French, to fish is pêcher. If the p is pronounced like an f, then you get fâcher. Peach is pêche. To sin is pêcher.

Is there a peach/fish/sin connection?

Etymonline:
peach (n.)
1184, from O.Fr. pesche (O.N.Fr. peske, Fr. pêche), from M.L. pesca, from L.L. pessica, variant of persica "peach, peach tree," from L. malum Persicum "Persian apple," from Gk. Persikon malon, from Persis "Persia." The tree is native to China, but reached Europe via Persia.


Wikipedia:

The scientific name persica, along with the word "peach" itself and its cognates in many European languages, derives from an early European belief that peaches were native to Persia (now Iran). The modern botanical consensus is that they originate in China, and were introduced to Persia and the Mediterranean region along the Silk Road before Christian times.
...
Although its botanical name Prunus persica suggests the peach is native to Persia, it actually originated in China where it has been cultivated since the early days of Chinese culture. Peaches were mentioned in Chinese writings as far back as the tenth century B.C and were a favored fruit of emperors.

Its English name derives from the Latin plural of persicum malum, meaning Persian apple. In Middle English, it melded into peche, much closer to what we call it today.


I also wonder if the apple in Eden was a peach. Doesn't malum mean bad? If persicum malum means Persian apple, couldn't this also mean bad peach?
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Pulp History


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Tenby is apparently in Welsh Dinbych y pysgod, with Tenby coming from a corruption of Dinbych (Din - beek).

Pysgod is Welsh for fish and is pronounced 'puss-god' - doesn't sound too enticing when put like that though, does it? However, there is a mutation of the word which makes it Physgod, pronounces 'Fuss-god' or 'Fiss-god' depending on the dialect. Seems closer to the Spanish 'pescar'.
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Hatty
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Is there a peach/fish/sin connection?

If a peach is a 'Persian apple' (Latin: malum Persicum) it would presumably be synonymous with apple, at least in Persia. The Spanish for sin is pecar which is similarly close to fishing.

Pysgod is Welsh for fish and is pronounced 'puss-god' - ....Seems closer to the Spanish 'pescar'.

The Basque word for fish is given as arrain. According to etymonline 'herring' (French: hareng) is "of unknown origin".

I heard it claimed t'other day that penguin is derived from Welsh, 'pen' meaning head and 'gwyn' meaning white, yet all the penguins I've seen have black heads and white chests, the reverse in effect. Bit off-colour.
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Pulp History


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You'd also have to ask why the English word for a southern hemisphere aquatic bird comes from Welsh!! Surely some Maori term would have been the first choice! But you never know....
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Boreades


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Hatty wrote:
Is there a peach/fish/sin connection?

If a peach is a 'Persian apple' (Latin: malum Persicum) it would presumably be synonymous with apple, at least in Persia. The Spanish for sin is pecar which is similarly close to fishing.
.


Apples and knowledge, that reminds me of "peached" - as in "he peached on his mates" - as in, spread knowledge malevolently.
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Hatty
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Apple in Turkish is elma. The earliest known eating apples have been traced to Kazakhstan. The Turks seem to have a more positive attitude to malus than the Latins.
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Mick Harper
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The 'seven words' popped up in an interesting Twitter exchange. It all began with a very old chum of ours floating a typically challenging suggestion

Dr Francis Young
Welsh should be an official language of the United Kingdom and should be taught in all UK schools Why do I say this? Because Welsh is the dominant surviving expression of the indigenous language of the island of Great Britain. The idea that Welsh is merely the language of Wales is an Anglocentric construction that hinders us realising its importance for us all. Welsh is the descendant of the language once spoken throughout the island. That can't be said of any of the others apart from Cornish. The Brythonic languages have a special status in that regard

A much younger chum of ours thought she'd get in the old 'seven words' problem. After all, if a whole country once spoke the language, and some still do, it passes all comprehension that just seven words of it would survive in the language the country now speaks

Harriet Vered
Not many Welsh words are found in English. Seven, I think it was, at the last count. How do you account for this absence of evidence for the extraordinary claim that Welsh is the language spoken throughout Britain?

Francis Young, after so many bruising encounters, knows better than to rise to one of Hatty's flies but another doctor, the Board Vice President of the Western Institute for Endangered Language Documentation and Linguistics Research and Fellow at James Cook University took the bait

Dr Neil Alexander Walker
Wow! It’s not remotely “extraordinary” :( I had no idea folks didn’t realize that Welsh is the remnant of the Native language of the entire island. Look up the locations of ancient Welsh poets and prepare to be surprised :)

You almost feel sorry for him

Harriet Vered
Having cast around for examples of early Welsh literature, I have to conclude that the dates given for various bards, poets and whatnot are extraordinarily vague and clearly bogus. Can you give names and dates of these 'ancient Welsh poets'? Thank you.

Dr Walker is incandescent

Dr Neil Alexander Walker
I’m sure you’re just trolling—there’s no controversy at all! Here’s a Welsh poet who survived the Anglo-Saxon slaughter of his people in what is now NE England & SE Scotland only to be killed by a Welsh ruler of what is now Cumbria (BTW, CUMBER- = ‘Welsh’) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneirin

The Berkshire trollblatter is icily calm

Harriet Vered
I am not interested in discussing anything with someone who thinks people who happen to disagree with him are trolls.

Neil folds at the first hurdle

Dr Neil Alexander Walker
Sorry :( I didn’t mean to call you a troll. I assumed you were not being genuine. Please accept my apology. If you truly doubt that Welsh (and it’s sister Cornish) is the original language of Britain, I think the link I provided earlier should help you remove such doubt.

Hatty decides not to point out that he did call her a troll but goes all technical on the poor sap

Harriet Vered
I can only accept historical evidence. Your link is just citing people in the past saying stuff in furtherance of various agendas. Remember, historical evidence. Historical evidence.

Realising for the first time he is in severe difficulties there is no alternative but to muddy the waters. And to throw in a fresh insult as well.

Dr Neil Alexander Walker
We know through HISTORICAL records, linguistic evidence, DNA, archaeology, & common sense who lived where first. Not sure why anyone should feel threatened by the truth on this. Welsh (as it existed in 400 AD) was originally spoken from Southern Scotland to Portsmouth. That’s it.

Hatty uses the old technique of taking people at their word when they really, really don't want you to

Harriet Vered
Excellent! Just the historical records will do. At last, after so many years I am to be rewarded. After so many false dawns...

Not surprisingly after a day of rapid, quick-fire exchanges

We are waiting
We are waiting
Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
Through the dark night, far away.
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Hatty
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This notion of Welsh being the aboriginal language of Britain seems to have taken hold thanks to a Welsh antiquarian, Humphrey Llwyd, paraphrasing Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Humphrey Llwyd (1527-1568), geographer, astrologer, antiquary and M.P. for Denbigh, was the private physician to Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl Arundel, a book-collector whose library, much of which is now in the British Library, contained not only many of Cranmer’s library-books but also arguably the finest geography collection of Elizabethan times, to whose assembly Llwyd lent his expertise, along with his friend John Leland. Llwyd also numbered amongst his friends Elisabeth I’s astrologer Dr. John Dee.

Humphrey is credited with three important maps, one of Wales, one of Wales and England (with a bit of Scotland and Ireland) and a third, apparently of England but "no longer extant", though where/how he learned the art of cartography isn't known. Possibly from Abraham Ortelius

Llwyd wrote the Commentarioli Britannicae descriptionis fragmentum, a short historical and geographical description of Britain which he dispatched to Ortelius on 3 August 1568; it was published in Cologne in 1572 and is dedicated to Ortelius (1527-1598).

though according to Llwy's map Wales was considerably larger than it is today

Llwyd extends the Welsh border into Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire and Gloucestershire by up to 60km and by a total area of approximately 5471 square km, adding almost one quarter of the land mass to ‘modern’ Wales

Llwyd's book was translated from Latin into English by Thomas Twyne (there's a tautology!), 1543-1613, the master of Canterbury free school who was also a physician and a friend of John Dee

It was translated by Thomas Twyne under the title The Breviary of Britayne and published in 1573. “It was the first attempt to compile a chorographia of Britain as a whole. Central themes of Llwyd’s work are his defence of Geoffrey of Monmouth (particularly countering the attacks of Polydore Vergil), and his belief in the integrity of the early British church.” DNB.

For Humphrey Llwyd, writing in or before 1568, the Welsh are ‘the very true Britaynes by birth’, a nation which, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, could trace its descent back through Arthur to Britain’s founding father Brutus, grandson of the Trojan warrior, Aeneas. Llwyd writes that his Welsh contemporaries had inherited the warlike spirit of their Trojan ancestors and were themselves ‘most valiant in warlike affayres’, a Welsh myth of origin that persisted into the seventeenth century and found echo even among writers, like Camden, otherwise sceptical Galfridian lore.”


Thomas Twyne's Breviary is said to be the first time 'the British Empire' was used in writing.
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Mick Harper
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Yes, but unless I'm reading it wrong, none of these people are saying that (the) Welsh is (are) aboriginal. They may be very valiant, they may have come over with Brutus at the time of Troy, they may have given their name to 'Britain' but nobody says the island was empty when they got here. Or that they killed off whoever was. In fact it sounds as if they pushed off into Wales early doors. The search for who first said Welsh (or Brythonic') was being generally spoken when the Romans arrived goes on. It must have been someone!

PS All this was being said when it just so happens a Welsh dynasty was athwart the throne.
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