User talk:Yan Glendour

The name Penpont in two road atlases some 40 years ago was my first introduction to the Cumbrian language. Periodic delving since then, together with a better grounding in my own language, Welsh, and a growing understanding of Cornish and some Breton, suggest to me that Cumbrian by c.1100 had developed its own particular characterictics. Today, 20/10/12, we may have come accross another Cumbrian arictle in the word Treales, 'Treueles', c.1250, (If I'm correct, I cannot verify the second spelling at the moment, in case I lose this User Talk page again). Could Treales, 'treueles', contain an article 'al' or 'uel' in front of 'l', 'les' (court), as in modern Breton? e.g. 'al liorsh', (the garden), 'al levr', (the book). Alough I may be totally wrong, it appears to me the there are several articles in Cumbrian. These articles appear to exist in what I refere to as Middle Cumbrian, c.1100-c.1350. That is approximately the same perioad as Middle Welsh, Cornish and Breton. i.e: c.1100, the period when 'thanks' to Anglo-Norman invasion of Cumbrian territory, we begin to have regular recordings of place-names. As others surmise, it appears to me, that by c.1350, (when the Black Death reached Cumbrian territorry), that interpretation of Cumbrain place-names becomes vague, possible indicating loss of knowlage of Cumbrian. The same articles appear again, in what I have (errinously or not), termed Late Cumbrian, i.e: post c.1350, when the language was probably moribund if not totaly extinct. From c. the 1750's we get growing numbers of Cumbrian based place-names, some quite mangled, others less so, (WHICH I ALSO REFERE TO AS LATE CUMBRIAN). e.g: attiquin, a (t)ti quin, 'the white house' by Stranrar. As in Welsh, Cornish and Breton, this article 'a' appears possibly as a dialectiacl form of the 'Cumb. 'e', i.e a contraction of 'er'. We see this again near Stranrar in Cnocekoid, 'cnoc e koid', with another Concykoid, (if I'm correct), east of Stranrar. I went to the farm on the Rinns, near Craigoch, 'craig goch',(Red Rock), some ten years or so ago, and low and behold to the east of the very well kept farmhouse was a cnoc with trees on it - Cnoc e koid. Alough no one was at home, I had a warm feeling as if the place was welcoming me. Also in Scotish Cumbria we have Craigenveoch, 'craig en veoch', (Rock [of] the cow) and Craigencoon, 'craig en coon, (Rock [of] the dogs). Until tonight I thought there might be two Cumbrian articles, 'er' and 'en', with a contracted 'e' and a possible dialectical 'a'. I had also woundered whether the modern Breton equivilant of 'al' before 'l' existed in Cumbrian. Whether Treales, 'Trueles', shows this or not we cannot yet tell. Finally, we cannot leave out Duirisdeer 'duiris deer', (difficult, [in this case], land), between farmland and mountains, Talentire, Talghentire, c,1150, 'talghen tire', (forehead [of] Land) and the Cumbrae islands. Between them we get a possible motto for the study of Cumbrian place-names. Duiris deer, tire Cumbrae. (A difficult land, the land of Cumbria).

Yan Glendour.