Welsh Journals

Purity or Progress ? By C. Madoc Jones, M.A., B.Sc. /"A AN the Welsh language keep pace with modern progress and retain its compara- Vv tive purity ? One of the aspects of Welsh nationalism with which we are very familiar is an insistence on purity of language and an unyielding resistance to the intrusion of foreign elements. The good intention of such an attitude is unquestionable, but it is doubtful whether its effect may not be detrimental. While we endeavour to guard our language from the danger of corruption by the unrestrained use of foreign words, we must not ignore the greater danger of death from stagnation. The world is ever moving, and language has no choice but to move with it. Those who attempt to close the door against foreign elements are strangely forgetful of the steps by which the vocabulary of their language has largely been formed. The Welsh language, like others, has gained very much by the absorption of foreign words into its vocabulary, and to attempt to resist what is, after all, a natural process by which most languages grow, would appear to be dangerous. And it appears to the writer that there are already indi- cations of the detrimental effect of this resist- ance. The health of any living organism is shown by its capacity to digest and assimilate nourishment. So also the capacity of a language to absorb foreign words and to naturalise them by assimila- tion to itself is a sign of health and vigour, and the Welsh language has this capacity for assimilation in a very striking degree. Very rarely has a foreign word come into habitual use without undergoing the phonetic change which deprives it of its foreign appearance and stamps it with a thoroughly Welsh imprint. And the average Welshman has a strong intuition for the customary phonetic change-so strong that the change is usually made even by an English- speaking Welshman when an English word is used casually. A Welsh preacher recently having occasion to use the word "parrot" in his sermon, pronounced it parod, presumably by analogy with gwasgod, siaced, poced, and a number of other similarly assimilated words. One has also heard boys playing at cricket refer to it as cricied and to the wickets as gwicedi. The wife of a very eminent Welshman once related to me an incident which shows how strong this intuition for assimilation is, even in young children. Her young son, whose mother-tongue was Welsh and whose knowledge of English was very rudiment- ary, had recently been sent to an English board- ing school, and, having torn an article of clothing which with young boys is peculiarly susceptible to damage, he approached the matron with the request that she would please to "truss" his trousers. It will be noted that in anglicising the word trwsio he had not merely discarded the Welsh verb-ending, but had made the correct change of vowel-sound, and so had arrived at the English word from which trwsio is presumably derived, a word moreover which at one time had a meaning very similar to the meaning he in- tended, though it is now obsolete in that sense. (I am presuming that trwsio is derived from "truss" and not directly from the French trousser, but I do not pretend to any authority.) There must have been present in the boy's mind some other examples of the same kind of vowel change, though the only examples I can call to mind at the moment are brwsio (brush), bwtri (buttery) and mwstard. And it is not only by phonetic change that we have naturalised foreign words. There is a small group of words which apparently were originally taken from the English in their plural form and have acquired a Welsh character by the addition of the Welsh singular inflexion yn or en. Examples which occur to me are bricsen (bricks), locsyn (locks), pilsen (pills)), clocsen (clogs), hosan (quasi-plural "hose"). The two latter have been further inflected to form new plural forms, viz. clocsiau and hosanau. If we accept as good Welsh achos, bendith, pwys, and the hundreds of other Latin borrow- ings, then we have no rational grounds for refus- ing recognition to pilsen, gweitied, ffrog (frock), and many others which have been just as legitimately naturalised. It may be objected that some of these foreign words are unnecessary because we already have a native word with the same meaning, e.g., planced and gwrthban, or gweitied and aros. Indeed, Professor Fynes-Clinton seems to raise this objection in his interesting and instructive contribution to the April number of The Welsh Outlook when he suggests a process of standardisation of usage by giving recognition in such cases to the native word only. Purification of the language by this means could only be at- tained by a sacrifice of power of expression. The words "pastor" and "shepherd" in English began with identical meanings, as also did "provi- dence" and "foresight" and "puerile" and "boyish," but in the course of time they have acquired different shades of meaning. This appears to be the usual course taken by words which are originally synonymous,-a gradual divergence in meaning which enriches the language and makes it a better instrument for the expression of thought. And, though it is difficult to imagine the divergence that may occur between planced and gwrthban, there are signs that divergence has already begun between gweitied and aros, the former tending to have a transitive meaning. Everyone will agree with Professor Fynes- Clinton in his condemnation of the facile casual adaptation of English verbs by merely tacking on a Welsh verb-ending, and nothing I have