Mae L am Lladin

[muckefuck]

Llyfr dysgu Lladin Jones, Evan J. (Caerdydd : Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1933)

In many ways, this is the quintessential language book in my collection: No one I know can imagine anyone else owning it. Moreover, it came to me cheap and by accident. It's not the sort of thing even I would go out of my way to acquire, yet it's the only title I own on a subject that interests me.

At my old place of work, there was a colleague who reminded everyone of me: He was a lanky, long-haired guy who lived alone, collected books, and learned obscure languages for fun. His chef œuvre was a bibliography of books on Mongolian in the Slavic languages and his small flat in Pilsen was crammed with volumes he had salvaged from one place or another. I have no idea any more where he picked up this work, but when trying to find a good home for it, his thoughts naturally settled on me. I would've paid him the same few dollars I would've forked over to a second-hand bookseller, but he wouldn't accept them.

As for content, this is exactly what the title says it is: A book for learning Latin. It just so happens that the people doing the learning are Welsh speakers. I've never been strongly interested in Latin, but when you're Linguoboy, it's one of those languages that people simply expect you to do, so I figured I could make use of it. And I have, but--I confess--mostly for the tables. Not just the tables of Latin declensions and conjugations either, but more than anything for the tables on pp. 264-267 which show the chief phonological developments of Latin borrowings into Welsh. The heading of the section, Yr elfen Ladin yn y Gymraeg, has two examples: LATINE > Lladin and ELEMENTUM > elfen.

It's the only book I've ever owned in full-on literary Welsh. This is nowhere more apparent than in the simplest examples, such as where Me non amat is translated with the laughably synthetic form Ni'm câr. Even the alternative version, Nid yw yn fy ngaru i, isn't close to anything you'd ever hear someone say. (If I had to express this--even in writing--it would come out Dydy e ddim yn 'ngharu fi.) Now I guess you can see why the textual explanations aren't much use to me.

One of the most charming features of this rara avis is the bookplate, which is neither in Latin nor Welsh nor English. What else would you expect on a Welsh grammar of Latin but Irish Gaelic? Yes, boys and girls, this venerable volume was once the proud possession of:

An t-Ath. Liam Mac Gabhann,
7112 Sr. Foster Thiar
Siocago, Illinois

For those of you scratching your head at the abbreviations, they are athair "father" and sráid "street"; thiar means "west(ern)". You can't imagine how tickled I am to own something that once belonged to an Irish priest living in Norwood Park. (Or perhaps I should say Páirc Coillthuaidh?)