Cumbraek: Difference between revisions

Cumbraek started life in 2007 as an attempt to validly reconstruct the lost language of Cumbric as it was spoken before its demise in about the 12th century. Cumbric was the descendant of Common Brittonic spoken in the region known in Welsh as ''Yr Hen Ogledd'' "The Old North", which covers much of modern day Scotland south of the Firth-Clyde isthmus and parts of England north of the Humber-Mersey line. That language, believed to have been closely related to Welsh, has been completely lost and comes down to us only through secondary sources, the most significant of which is the place names of the region. However, it was at one time a thriving language which produced some of Britain's earliest literature including the works attributed to the 6th/7th century bards Taliesin and Aneirin, whose words come down to us through Medieval Welsh manuscripts, and it was presumably a language of power and the law at least until the demise of Strathclyde in the 11th century.  

At the start of the reconstruction project it was hoped that the information available to us about historical Cumbric would be enough to create a valid picture of the language, which would illuminate the world of the Old North and stand alone as an academic work of value. Though there are no direct sources of Cumbric, there is a significant amount of secondary evidence from place names, personal names, dialect words and the Medieval Welsh poetry that is capable of yielding clues about Cumbric's phonology, grammar and lexis. By comparing this to the related Medieval languages of Welsh, Breton and Cornish (and to a lesser extent Old Irish) a picture of Cumbric did begin to develop, though it was closer to early Medieval Welsh than originally anticipated. This early incarnation, a Medieval language, was called ''Cymbraġec''.

As work on ''Cymbraġec'' continued, however, it soon became clear that the actual evidence of Cumbric was too limited and often too opaque to permit a validly reconstructed language. As the project progressed, more and more relatively arbitrary (though informed) decisions had to be taken about vocabulary and syntax, and as the language became more detailed it also moved further away from the original aim of the project. Eventually, it had to be admitted that ''Cymbraġec'' could not be considered an accurate estimation of the historical language of Cumbric. The evidence we have is simply not sufficient to create anything more than a very broad picture of Cumbric.

At this point, with a considerable amount of research undertaken, it was decided that the Medieval, reconstructed language of ''Cymbraġec'' should be abandoned in favour of a more creative Modern language, which was eventually named ''Cumbraek''. Whilst the basis for Cumbraek remained rooted in the historical evidence for Cumbric and it was developed with constant reference to the other Celtic languages (particularly Welsh), this was a far more creative and personal endeavour than Cymbraġec was ever intended to be. As such Cumbraek can only really be described as a constructed language and it cannot claim to be an accurate representation of the historical language in any real sense.

With greater creative freedom, Cumbraek developed gradually over the years. Two major milestones in its development are the (online) publication of the first ''Geryadour'' "Dictionary" and the first comprehensive grammar in 2015. It also has an online presence with its own website and Facebook page.