Cumbrae and Cumbric

[OC Richard]

Now this is going to be about as 'miscellaneous' as one could imagine.

I was playing at a wedding yesterday and a woman told me that, growing up, she spent the summer at her grandparents' house on a small island "off the coast by Glasgow" with a population of only around 1000.

I couldn't remember the name, but looking at maps and Wiki tells me that it must be Great Cumbrae.

The name obviously is the common name these Brythonic people called themselves ("fellow countrymen") which shows up in many forms including the name of Wales.

Which got me thinking that, being an island, it might have been one of the longest-lasting pockets of Cumbric speech (which was once a continuum from Wales up to the Clyde).

Which got me looking at survivals of Cumbric speech, one being old counting systems which survive (or survived long enough to get recorded) in various parts of northwestern England and southwestern Scotland.

Here they are (scroll down the page a bit)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbric_language

What jumps out are a couple of obvious sound-shifts as compared to modern Welsh.

Looking at the consonants only (with "-" taking the place of vowels) we have

English/Welsh/old counting systems, presumably Cumbric

one / -n / y-n

two / d- / t-n

three / tr- / t-th-r, t-d-r (compare Cornish teyr)

four / p-dw-r / m-th-r, m-d-r

five / p-mp / p-mp

six / chw-ch / t-z, l-z, l-t, h-t, h-th

seven / s-th / l-th, m-th, s-t

eight / w-th / c-tr, -w-r, -v-r

nine / n-w / d-nv-r, d-v-r, l-w-r, d-w, h-rn

ten / d-g / d-k (compare Breton dek)

fifteen / p-mth-g / b-mf-t, m-mf-t

twenty / -g-n / j-g-t (compare Breton ugent)

Odd that for 'four' there's a shift from initial p to m, which also shows up in "fifteen", but initial p in 'five' stays p.

The greatest variety/instability is with the initial chw of "six" and the initial n of "nine".