History
Welsh emerged in the 6th century from British, the common ancestor of Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and the extinct language known as Cumbric.
Four periods are identified in the history of Welsh, with rather indistinct boundaries: The period immediately following the language's emergence from British is sometimes referred to as Primitive Welsh; this was followed by the Old Welsh period, considered to stretch from the beginning of the 9th century to the 12th century. The Middle Welsh period is considered to have lasted from then until the 14th century, when the Modern Welsh period began (itself divided into Early and Late Modern Welsh).
The name Welsh originated as an exonym given to its speakers by the Anglo-Saxons, meaning "foreign speech" (see Walha). The native term for the language is Cymraeg, and Cymru for "Wales".
Read more about this topic: Welsh Language
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)