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From: meus0001@maroon.tc.umn.edu (William E Meuse)
Subject: Re: List of Mandan & Welsh Points of Resemblance
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Date: Sat, 4 Feb 1995 23:54:05 GMT
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Andrew Charles Anthony Woode (acaw1@phx.cam.ac.uk) wrote:

: > Here is I list of words in Mandan an Welsh that lead I fe propose that 
: > both be included ina the Celtic family of languages. Note: For 
: > comparative purposes, Iman have employed the same phonetic system to 
 render both an show the -pronunciations-. Iman know that Welsh -orthography- 
: > is different from what you sight up here.

:  This looks like too many other proposals of linguistic connections; a
: selective
: list of words with varying degrees of resemblance, proving nothing without
: further backup...
: (A) Where is Mandan spoken? What connections does it plausibly have with
: Welsh?

   Mandan, as if one couldn't determine from one's own research, is an 
extinct tongue which was once widely spoken in the Northern Plains 
states of the United States, by a mysterious tribe described by the few 
Americans who saw them before they died of smallpox
as being of greater technology and lighter 
complexion than the surrounding tribes, with blonde or red hair and blue 
eyes being not uncommon. There is a cansiderable body of literature 
written from the 12th C to the present discussing their Welsh cannections 
and origins in the colonists led by one Prince Madoc of Wales. There are 
also a few books written by the NEBC ("No Europeans Before Columbus") 
establishment who systematically pooh-pooh even the most glaring evidence 
of pre-Columbian contacts (such as Welsh armour turning up in burial 
mounds!). 
  
: (B) Are you proposing genetic connection (as implied by the reference to
: the 'Celtic family of languages' or making the weaker claim of some degree
: of borrowing?
: (C) Do you postulate regular phonological correspondences between the two
: languages? If not, why not? 
 
  I'm not ready to propose any phonological rules yet; we've only begun 
to examine these things. But I think you'll admit the correspondences are 
closer than say, those noticed between English and Sanskrit. The 
relationship would seem to be comparable to that between Old Saxon and 
English, or Welsh and Breton, i.e. a group of colonists separating from 
the home group and diverging into their own speech; except that in this 
case the junior shoot became extinct beforehand. 

: And as for your Welsh citations: they are completely inconsistent. Notably,
: you use the letter <u> for Welsh <w> (high back rounded vowel), <u>/ clear
: <y> (high central unrounded), and obscure <y> (schwa), (except when you
: also represent the second of these sounds by 'ee'). As well as different
: pronunciations in Welsh, these have very different origins historically in
: most cases. Note also the following glaring errors (I use standard welsh
: orthography, with diacritics following the vowel). 

 I am very glad that you have responded and hope you cantinue to do so; 
as it seems that you are fluent in Welsh, which I am not at all. My 
method was as follows: Having obtained an English - Mandan glossary here 
in the Univ Minnesota library, I also took a English - Welsh dictionary 
and looked up all of the words. Whenever there seemed to be -any- degree 
of correspondence (even one similar syllable) I made a note, using Gi'iz 
characters as a form of phonetic shorthand. My spellings here are 
simply my transliteration from the Gi'iz, some of which I admit did get 
a bit distorted in the process.     

 House 			TEEW			OTEE
         Welsh ty^ 
 I probably got these crossed-up, with TEEW representing the Welsh word.

: > Grandmother		NANSHEEKE		NADIEN	
	Welsh nain (North), mam-gu (South)
 The Gi'iz characters for 'Y' and 'DIE' look very similar, and I misread 
my notation. I should have had NAYN for nain, which is even -closer- to 
the Mandan. 

: > Very			KUSHOSH			KUWEER	
					Welsh cywir= correct.
 I'll have to go back and look this up again, but I think the English - 
Welsh dictionary had this entry under 'very'. Though of course this might 
represent an archaic English sense, as in 'very God of very God'. Does 
Welsh have a different word for 'very' as an intensifier? 

: > Village			MEEHTEE			MAYSDREF	
			Welsh =suburb.
 Again, I'm fairly sure the dictionary I used gave maysdref under the 
English heading 'village' - but I'll take your word for it if this is an 
obscure equivalent. What would the normal word for 'village' be?

 : > Shot			AKEET			ASGWURTH
 This was misread in my Gi'iz notes for USGWURTH.

: > Shade			AHKUNSH			USGOD	
		Welsh cysgod
 Another misreading, I should have KUSGOD here beside AHKUNSH. (Gi'iz 
KU can be mistaken for U, as can U for A in carelessly written script.)
 
: I have given you massive benefit of the doubt where your bizarre
: orthography makes it impossible to work out which word you meant. I
: sincerely hope your Man-
: dan is of a better standard. Please post follow-ups, if any, with a Welsh
: trans-
: lation, so that we can evaluate whether you have any clue what you are
: talking about. 

: 				Yr eiddoch chi yn bur, 		
	(Mandan translation please!)

 Okay, give me some time to work on it!

Cool runnins, Ras William I
