Walh

Walh (in the plural Walha ) is a Germanic name nominating a person speaking a Celtic language and by extension a Latin or Romance language.

Regarded wrongly as meaning foreign, it has a linguistic range and nonethnic or geographical like showed it John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in its article English and Welsh .

“That seems clear that the word walh , wealh that English took with him was a Germanic common word for a man which one should say that it is of Celtic expression. But in all the known Germanic languages it appears that it was also used for people of Latin expression. That can be due, as it is usually assumed, with the fact that Latin occupied the majority of the known zones celtophones German people. But it is, I believe, also partly a linguistic judgment, reflecting the large similarities between Latin and the gallo-brittonique one whom I already mentioned. It sometimes happened at nobody to call Goth a walh even if it were for a long time installed in Italy or a Gaulle. Although foreign is given like first translation in the Anglo-Saxon dictionaries, it is misleading. The word was never applied the abroads of Germanic language, nor of language foreign: Lapps, Finnish, Estonians, Lithuanians, Slavic or Huns, with which the German-speaking people were in contact for a long time. (But borrowed as Slavic old man in the form vlach it was applied to the Roumanians.) It was, consequently, simply a linguistic word of importation; and in itself implied by its users plus a curiosity and a linguistic differentiation that the simple stupidity of the Greek word barbaros .

The word would be a very old lexical loan coming from the name of a Celtic tribe, the Volcae, with which the German ones would have had prolonged contacts. It would date from the IV E since it highlights the First consonant shift (H → K) and the vocalic change in the Proto-Germanic (O → a). This term gave rise to many proper names, then geographical, in various languages.

Linguistic descent

The Walh term of Proto-Germanic is found in the languages which succeeded to him, and was adopted in other Slavic and Romance languages mainly and with progressive semantic contractings.

Scandinavian branch

" wrought iron Rune on the part welsh : Helda Kunimundi"
" Helda forged iron rune on the Roman part for Kunimundi" -->

The presence of Walh / Walha in the Scandinavian one is attested as of the Proto-norrois on coins. bractéates of Tjurkö carry the inscription in Vieux futhark walhakurne which means “Roman crown”, the bracteates are supposed to have been of the copies recto of the Roman coins for then being used in jewels.

Walh is transformed in the Vieux norrois into Valir or Vælir to designate the Romans and the Celts and Valland their country. One can also speak about the adjectival forms: välsk , velsk in Norwegian, vaelsk in Danish.

Eastern branch

One finds the term in the Gotique but also in the burgonde and the lombard. Via the gotique one, Walh was adopted in the Slavic languages in the form Vlach which were also used to designate various people like the Aroumains, the Valaques (with the Walh root) and still today the Rumanian, even the Italian (Polish Wloch ). By the means of the Slavic languages, Walh was also borrowed in other languages, like Vlahos in Greek, but also Iflak in Turkish and Walak in Arabic (out-of-date in these the last two cases).

Western branch

Southernmost subbranch

High German

The Walh or Walha of the Vieux high German ( Althochdeutsch ) becomes Walch , and its adjectival form Walhisk becomes " welsche" in Average high German - as for example in the Romance of Alexandre of Rudolf von Ems - from where modern Welsche in German to speak about the speakers of Romance language. A geographical term also appeared in German, Welschland , particularly used by the Swiss Germanic ones, for the Romandie. In Swiss German ( Schwytzerdütsch ), the French-speaking Switzerland is called Welsch .

German-speaking Italian of the the Tyrol of the South uses Walsche to speak about Italian or the Rhéto-roman S.

Francic languages

Francic the Walha and its adjectival form Walhisk is used for the populations Romance and Celtic but its direction is restricted more and more with time: populations of Gaulle Romance, then those of the Neustrie and Austrasie. At this time, medieval Latin borrows the term francic by transforming it into Walonicus or Gualonicus and a late geographical derivative Wallonia . All having its semantic range to decrease, the word francic becomes Waal in Bas-francique and then Waals in Dutch, and of the bas-francic master key again in the novel with some other Romance alternatives and Walloon and its geographical derivative Wallonia whose direction continues to be reduced still today.

Anglo-Friesian subbranch

English languages

The direction of the Walh term in the English language which one finds in the words Wealh or Walas and the adjective Wielisc in Vieil English was very quickly restricted to the speakers of brittonic Langue and Latin E of the Great Britain, then in only for Britons progressively of the disappearance of Latin in the island:

Son special association by the English with Britons was a product of their invasion of insular Brittany. It contained the linguistic judgment, but it did not make the difference between the speakers of Latin and those of the brittonique one. But with the decline of the Latin speech on the island, and the concentration of the English interests in insular Brittany, walh and its derivatives became synonymous with Brett and brittisc , until the remplacer.

The direction still more restricts as of the Middle English ( Walsch (men) ) and in modern English ( Welsch ) with the inhabitants of the Wales whose English name comes from the same root: Wales .

Scottish language

In the Scots, the word Welsche or Welche comes from the Middle English and is used to speak about the Welsh, because the contracting of the semantic field already took place.

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