Welsh Journals

WELSH METHOD OF COUNTING. By Rev. D. STEDMAN DAVIES, M.A. In The Cambrian Popular Antiquities (by Peter Roberts, A.M., Rector of Llanarmon, illustrated with copper-plates, coloured from nature and printed in the year 1815), there is on page 233 a curious but interesting method of counting, which Mr. Roberts considered to be peculiar to the Welsh language alone and is not in use among other nations. Like other nations, the Welsh seem to have started counting the fingers on both hands up to ten (Welsh, deg "), then by one and ten," two and ten (" un ar ddeg," deu ddeg "), etc., to fifteen (" pimp a deg," or pymtheg "), followed by one and fifteen," two and fifteen (" un ar bymtheg," deu ar bymtheg "), etc., up to twenty, with the exception of eighteen," which in common use is called deu- naw (" two nines "). To the twenty, they add the same figures up to 40, 60, etc., to a hundred. In the English language, the counting is continuous up to twenty, then by tens (thirty, forty, etc.). Mr. Roberts believed the Welsh mode is not used by any other European nation, certainly not by those he had been able to examine, without mentioning their names. This lead one to wonder whether the Irish, Cornish and Breton used the same scheme. To this suggestion, Dr. R. A. S. Macalister, LL.D., F.S.A., Professor of Celtic Archaeology, University College Dublin, has kindly contributed the following valuable notes on the subject So far as I know, the Brythonic scheme of counting by fives, with i fresh start at fifteen, is peculiar to Welsh, at least among European languages. Even the closely cognate Cornish and Breton do not share this peculiarity with Welsh they form their numerals, running through fifteen, by suffixing ten to the units as in English.