Cornish curiosity
Comments
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Sorry, I can’t really help, WTG. Local dialect often drops the letters T or D as in "didn ee me ansum" *. Maybe that has some bearing on it🤷🏻♂️
* Didn’t you, my 'affectionate term of your choice'.
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I sometimes take a little book to Cornwall that translates the meanings of words, some words merge in strange ways. Tintagel = Din - Tagell. The word Din can mean fort or rocks or even hill and it's the same elsewhere thanks to our old languages. Just to throw a spanner in the works not far from us we have Tintinhull and Tintinhull Forts.
In Cornish Tintagel is sometimes called Trevena, Tintagel came a lot later.
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The people who built the Tower of Babel have much to answer for.
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Nothing to do with Cornish I know but in Lincolnshire the old Shepherds counted their flock using this language/number system. We were taught it in junior school.
1 Yan
2 Tan
3 Tethera
4 Pethera
5 Pimp
6 Sethera
7 Lethera
8 Hovera
9 Covera
10 Dik
11 Yan-a-dik
12 Tan-a-dik
13 Tethera-dik
14 Pethera-dik
15 Bumfitand so it goes on.
Wonder how the Cornish counted their sheep?
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micky et al, it isn't just in your counties that those number names are used it also applies across Cumbria, with variations depending on the local area.
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My granddaughter is into the Cornish language, me I don't have a clue although being Cornish myself. She replies but I'm not certain I explained clearly to her:
Quote "Mutations are really common in all Celtic languages, but from my understanding in Kernewek ‘T’ is regularly mutated to D. This is usually determined by the noun (in this case ‘Tintagel’)’s indefinite article (‘a’, ‘an’) etc. so it’s really determined by what comes before it.
Some words have more than one mutation which gets confusing 🤣
For example: ‘cat’ is ‘kath’ in Kernewek.
But two cats is ‘gath’
Three cats is ‘hath’
Four cats is ‘kath’ again 🤣
Also for interest. It’s a mutation of the English ‘Tintagel’. The Kernewek for Tintagel is ‘Tre war Venydh’ which means ‘village on a mountain’"
She followed up with:
Quote " I thought it was a mutation because in the Cornish language, T is regularly mutated to D, but that's usually caused by an indefinite article. But I believe the Cornish 'Tintagel' is 'Dintagel' deriving from 'din' (fort) and 'tagel' (neck, throat, narrow)"
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Wow! 😃👍🏻
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Good for her! There are attempts afoot to revive Kernewek, as I’m sure you know.
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