> Myn diawl, yn lle dyfalu, darllenwch Jackson, Language and history in > early Britain, tdau. 527-8: "This (prosthetic on-glide) cannot have > existed in British Latin, or not sufficiently to have been perceived > and adopted by speakers of British, because the Britt. @- (= schwa, > maddeuwch i mi, does dim schwa yn ascii) is limited to Welsh only > (h.y. does dim "yst-, ysb-, ysg- yng" Nghernyweg nac yn Llydaweg) and > is found there equally in native and in Latin words." The question whether Welsh gets it from Latin is separate from the question whether (British) Latin had it. If British Latin didn't have it, then of course Welsh didn't get it from British Latin. But the fact (if it is a fact) that Welsh didn't get it from British Latin doesn't show that British Latin had it. Jackson's argument on this latter point is highly peculiar: it's rather like saying that Old French couldn't have had it in a word like "estreit", or not sufficiently to be perceived by English ears, because when English borrows it, it comes out as "strait". But it may be that its development in Welsh is quite independent of Latin. Morris Jones agrees with Jackson on that point. You could add that y-prothesis in Welsh doesn't just apply to "sC-" anyway: you get it sporadically with e.g. "ch" -- ychwaith : chwaith. And then there's ymenyn : menyn. ************************ Nigel Love Linguistics Cape Town NLOVE@BEATTIE.UCT.AC.ZA ************************