Talk:Cumbric

Derbyshire?

Anyone seen any evidence for Cumbric further south than the Dales? Cant find any. I'll check in a week then cut it if no-one answers.

Sheepcounts could come from modern welsh, but there's no proof either way.

boynamedsue

Place names section & reconstructed cognates

None of the examples of placenames cite references. Several also include unsubstantiated Cumbric reconstructions with no indication that they are such (ie. using *). The etymologies for this section should surely be given known Welsh cognates (or perhaps Cornish/Breton ones), or formally reconstructed Proto-Celtic/Brythonic ones. As there is no agreed standard for reconstructed Cumbric and as most of it has not been thoroughly researched, should it really have a place in this article? Psammead (talk) 14:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. This sentence in particular -- These come with estimated Cumbric root words that are not yet certain until the attempted revivals are completed -- does suggest ("estimated"? "revivals"?) that this whole section is part of an amateur original research project in progress rather than a report of any citable published findings. -- Picapica (talk) 09:23, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

If there are no objections in the next couple of weeks, I will remove the 'Cumbric roots' and replace them with more reliable forms and try to include only cited examples. I am also dubious about the inclusion of Cheshire placenames in this article, given that the county is still on the border with Wales. Psammead (talk) 14:03, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I added older proto-Celtic or Brythonic (e.g. *penno- not *k^wenno to avoid confusion) to the table. I chose *prenna- rather than *penno- noting Price's observance that the form Prenwensete suggests the word was feminine in Cumbric, unlike in Welsh. Perhaps this is "original research" though. Paul S (talk) 16:12, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Revival attempt

I can see there's been discussion of this already, and obviously the fact a small group of people are attempting it deseves mention given that for any extinct language thats an automatic question.

But what i'm wondering is... Is there any reasonable basis to this revival or not? Because if its 'bad linguistics' should we be wording it any differently than stuff like mystics using 'bad science?' E.g. is there any textual evidence to back up this 'revival'?

If not then we really need to add something at the end of each bit, warning about this, or btter find a qoute from an academic critising it.

Sorry I'm a bit tetchy about this after becoming involved with a celtic devon group and finding they had no interest in evidence and (yes moderatly slowly) finding out about the real remains of celtic culture in britain, but only in skipping straight to calling it a 'revival', creating websites, articles and the like worded as if the research had already been done... telling people to learn a language called 'old devonian' which a) there was no written evidence of, b) there wasn't even any historical references to a language of that name and c) even choosing the closest: southwestern brythonic (still hypothetical) the 'reconstruction' seemed to have been performed in a weekend by someone trying either deluded to howdifficult such a task would be, or trying to make a quick buck.

Whilst cumbric at least satisfies b) I think the other need to be mentioned: What evidence is it based on? And if very little that should be emphasised. What method is it the reconstruction based on? And if a bad one, that should be emphasised. 81.155.67.41 (talk)

I can't help noticing that the Cumbric revival websites cited here have been inactive for nearly a year now. Possibly this tiny movement has disappeared. Paul S (talk) 01:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know that I've ever seen a serious treatment of Cumbric that mentions the "revival". This may be something that ought to be removed, or reduced to a single sentence.--Cúchullain ^t/c 03:25, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the section merits inclusion because 1) a book on the subject has been published, and 2) the attempted revival has been mentioned in the media. As well as this news story, issues 140/141/142/144 of Carn mention both the attempted revival and this Wikipedia article. Issues 142 and 144 can be read here. The "official" websites aren't working (for me, anyway) but I did find this blog.

~Asarlaí 03:53, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's still fairly unimpressive. As far as third party coverage goes, we have a local news story and some mentions in a magazine that appears largely based on this article. I propose we cut it down to a sentence or two that is based entirely on what appears in the third-party sources, and merge it into a different section.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Done. I've added the tabloid news article and the note from Carn. I don't think much more can be said about this group.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:40, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely nothing appears to have happened regarding this "revival" since 2010. All websites are down and have been for some time now. Some members were reported to have followed Carn's advice and started to learn Welsh. Would anyone object if the little paragraph were just trimmed away? Paul S (talk) 19:38, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know that it needs to be removed, it's only two sentences and they don't make the "revival" appear more significant than it was.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:06, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I've just moved the links into "external links" and deleted the section. I'll add a new section to this talkpage in case anyone wants to discuss below.--Northernhenge (talk) 09:45, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Deleted the Modern Revival section

I've just moved the links into "external links" and deleted the section. I couldn't find additional external sources - the existing ones are very close to the project or simply comment on its existence. Giving it a full section seems to be wp:undue prominence but I couldn't think of anywhere else to put it, hence moving the links and deleting the comments. (This has been discussed previously above. I've added a note in the above discussions to point here.) --Northernhenge (talk) 09:45, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. It's misleading to speak about 'revival' for Cumbric. Unlike languages like Cornish and Manx, which were revived based on the actual previous form of the language, there is no known form of Cumbric so no 'revival' is possible. Any 'revival'of Cumbric is merely inventing a new language, not reviving an extinct one. Jeppiz (talk) 12:02, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Cumbric as a dialect?

@Chessrat and someone else, I think we need to decide on whenever treat Cumbric as a language, as a dialect or leave it in the questionable position as it is. For me, personally, it is obvious that a language that existed separately from Old Welsh and other Brythonic languages (let's forget about Pictish by now) must develop into a distinct language in that very 500 years. Even from what we know about the language, we see that it has features distinct from Old Welsh, and if we try to add Pictish here, we could've tried to unite Pictish and Cumbric into a "North Brythonic" branch, since it seems Pictish and Cumbric share more in common than Old Welsh and Cumbric.

But that's all just my impression, and I do not know if you agree with me here. So far, modern articles like this disscus existance of dialects inside Cumbric, and heavily imply that Cumbric was indeed a spearate language. Koch as we know later stated that Cumbric was actually separate, and among modern articles I mostly see Cumbric being more treated as a separate language, not a dialect.

What do you tihnk? From Alba, Celtoi, (talk) 09:01, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

I haven't read the scholarly literature enough to develop a firm opinion myself— adding it to the lede was simply to summarize what was already said in the body of the article. If the body of the article says that it has been openly debated how it should be classified, the lede should reflect that.

Of course it does not help that we have few surviving records of it. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 11:42, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

This being said, my impression is that the existence of dialects within Cumbric isn't really related to the question of whether it should be classified as a language. It seems some scholars treat "Cumbric" as a geographic descriptor (an umbrella term for those Brythonic dialects which were spoken in Hen Ogledd) without necessarily saying that those dialects formed a separate language distinct to Cymraeg. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 11:48, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Given that the question of what differentiates a dialect from a language is often determined by political factors as much as linguistic ones, I am personally more inclined to think of it as a dialect continuum — as it appears that they considered themselves part of the same people (Cymry). But the article should reflect that debate and range of different views on the matter. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 12:04, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

It’s clearly just Old Welsh. They do this with literally every language that has ever been spoken in Scotland. Gaelic, English, Norse. They all get this “They were separate languages, not dialects” nonsense from people pushing modern politics and political identities onto the past.

It is literally just Old Welsh. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 10:16, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

In most cases there isn’t even a distinct dialect constituting the geographic area of Scotland that can even be pretended to be a separate language.

As in the case with Gaelic. Where there literally is no such thing as “Scottish” Gaelic. It’s just the only surviving dialect of Gaelic in Scotland which happens to be the same dialect of Gaelic spoken in northeastern Ireland. And yet funnily enough nobody is claiming “Scottish” Gaelic is spoken in northeastern Ireland or that Donegal Irish (or whatever the specific term for it is) is spoken in Scotland.

Why? Because these languages and dialects are being hijacked by English-speakers desperately trying to project modern political and cryptoethnic identities onto the past, where they did not exist.

In this case, “Cumbric” is clearly a dialect of Old Welsh spoken in northern England and southern Scotland. Itself with variation within it as with many dialect zones.

That’s how dialect continuums work. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 10:34, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Minor variations, even significant variations, DO NOT CONSTITUTE SEPARATE LANGUAGES. They were not seen as this historically, and in practice they are not seen as this today (see English, Arabic, German etc.). ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 10:38, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Your, khm, 'innovative', ideas are not really welcome here on Wikipedia, I would say. I strongly suggest you to recheck them and be sure your ideas are aligned with any modern scholarly work before throwing them here. From Alba, Celtoi, (talk) 06:30, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Basic comparative linguistic standards are innovative now, are they? On an article about historical language you’re trying to pretend was a language?

Btw, what do you think Cumbric itself means, bud? The word.

Perhaps do yourself a favor and look up the etymology before trying to claim it’s a distinct, unrelated thing from the other Welsh spoken at the time. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 09:26, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't think this is a knockdown argument. The Pennsylvania Dutch language is closely related to the Dutch language but it's notably distinct and was notably distinct before it crossed the Atlantic. Sesquilinear (talk) 06:44, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Every linguistic analysis has ascertained “Cumbric” would have been mutually intelligible with other varieties of Welsh spoken at the time (also frequently referred to as Cumbric/Cumbrian/Cambrian etc. in addition to Welsh and British, FUNNILY ENOUGH…). Fancy that.

So what is your basis for retroactively classifying it as a distinct language when the people of the time clearly never viewed it as such and it was mutually intelligible with any other dialects of Welsh spoken at the time? Hmm?

Seriously, I’d love to know. Where are the comparitive linguistic academics stating that these were distinct languages, as opposed to just stating there were variations and differences in the varieties of Welsh spoken in Britain at the time?

Oh right, there are none, it’s you applying OR and twisting what they’re saying. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 09:32, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Yeah your infoboxes totally check out and validate exactly what I’ve just been saying. “I am a Pict”. “I am a Celt”. Another cryptoethnic enthusiast identitarian desperately trying to fashion somekind of exoticism and sense of identity because you have been socially conditioned from birth to believe you are “not English”, despite English being your mothertongue.

I’m sorry to break this to you, but you are simply a human being who speaks English. You are as English as every other human being who speaks English. If Pictish people were still around today, they’d merely see perceive you as English, because you speak English. They’d group you with other people that speak English.

EthnoLARP all you want, most people do nowadays in the English World (that’s the literal translation of obfuscating terms like Anglosphere, btw, just in case you weren’t aware. Anglo = English/Sphere = World) but stop trying to pervert history to fit some politicized identitarian bent. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 17:35, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Tha na faclan agad amharasach co dhiu; cumaidh Wikipedia suil ort. From Alba, Celtoi, (talk) 14:27, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, great. Now try it without Google Translate. Better still, let’s have a 5 minute conversation purely in a Celtic language online. Are you capable of that? ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 19:05, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm just passing by here, but @~2026-28786-09, I don't think you're capable of it here. But think about it. Think about it! Theeverywhereperson talk here ^{In solidarity!} 18:04, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Purely Celtic? Chan eil annam ach Albidosorum; gloir do Alba, gloir do na Cruithnich! From Alba, Celtoi, (talk) 03:51, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

And yet you’re speaking the language that extinguished Pictish, before itself being extinguished by English, oddly enough.

Never really stopped to think about that one, did you. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 17:11, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

If you actually cared about resurrecting the Pictish ethnolinguistic identity, you’d start speaking a Brittonic language, such as Welsh, seeing as Pictish was Brittonic.

The Picts, I should add, were not Scottish whatsoever. Scottish was an ethnic term for Gaels, who Picts spent centuries at war with and enslaving. Along with the synonym Irish.

If your stance is that Picts “became Scottish” upon their language being replaced by Gaelic, then ultimately you come to the logical conclusion that Scottish people

themselves later “became English” when English replaced Gaelic. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 17:16, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Ni ette yn cuhett, Albidosig. From Alba, Celtoi, (talk) 17:39, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Well look at that, you’re English again. Curious as to why you used the earliest forms of English, while for Gaelic you used the modern descendant instead of Old Gaelic.

Just trying to understand the enigma that is the mind of an ethnoLARPer. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 19:03, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Oh no wait, I get it. You’re pretending the Middle English spoken in Scotland at that time (which coincidentally is identical to the Middle English varieties of northern England at the same time) is a different language called ‘Scots’ now, right? Is that it? ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 19:07, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Seems like history just repeats ad nauseam with Scotland and languages, huh? Case in point… ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 19:13, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Can we maybe do something about this user? Although their other actions do not seem clearly destructive, here they demonstrate that they are either a bot or an explicit rage baiter, or both. No one has anything to add? From Alba, Celtoi, (talk) 06:17, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I’ve literally spent this entire thread explaining to you how Cumbric is not a separate language from Old Welsh. That was the initial point you raised. You have gone on repeatedly to display yourself to be an ideologically motivated, emotionally clouded editor regarding this topic with several statements.

I suggest in future you avoid subjects and articles that you cannot form neutral, objective approaches to. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 14:02, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

That's a good idea. I think it might need to be sent to AN or ANI, whichever you think is more appropriate. Theeverywhereperson talk here ^{In solidarity!} 07:31, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Every source clearly states it isn’t a separate language to Old Welsh. Every comparative linguistic analysis has come to the conclusion that Cumbric is just the name for the Old Welsh spoken in a vaguely defined geographic region of Great Britain. Cumbric is cognate with Cumbrian, Cambric, Cambrian and various other terms used for the Welsh and the Welsh language at the time.

This is literally the exact same situation with “Scots”. Modern day political activists trying to retroactively classify a language spoken in a specific region as a distinct and separate thing.

They simply weren’t. ~2026-28786-09 (talk) 17:10, 19 July 2026 (UTC)