Revue celtique - National Library of Scotland

Etymological Scraps. 195
jf the Welsh article ? As generally used the word is rather colourless,
)ut we can at least bring it into contrast with another démonstrative so
is to show that as such it dénotes ihefurther rather than the nearer, thaï
ather than this. Thus « to day » is heddyw = *he, « this, » and dyw,
;< day, » while « to-morrow » is y fory =: « the [next] morning ; » simi-
arly « yesterday « is in books doe (breton déach and décn), while in the
poken language it is oftener y ddoe =2 « the [other] day, « doe being
he représentative probably of an early form "dagja of the same origin
.s English d.iy. Similarly «this year» is eleni ïor *he-vleni, Breton hévléné,
nvolving the same démonstrative and the same form oiblynedd, «year,»
vhile « last year » is y llynedd (=5 yr (fjlynedd), « the [other] year. »
rhis last reminds one of the Greek zéc'jai, Skr. parut, « last year. » —
Or. Windisch fmds the Irish équivalent for thèse in uraid (see Curtius
is regular, and this leads me
;r. d. Gr. EtJ no. 360) : the omission of p
dérive yr from the same origin as the Greek préposition Trapà and to
dentify it with the Sanskrit adjective para, among the meanings of
vhich I fmd in the Petersburgh Dictionary : (a) Weiterhin-, ferner ge-
îgen-, stehend, entfernter, jenseitig. l'b) Vergangen,frùher. (c) Spaeter,
:ukùnftig, folgend, nachfolgend. (d) Der vorzûglichere, bessere, treffli-
here, der vorzùglichste, beste, trefflichste, aùsserste, aergste, summus.
'he account hère suggested of our ir (jr) is confirmed by Ebel's com-
arison (in Kuhn's Beitr. i. 3 1 1) of 0. irish ire, «ulterior, « comparative
reia, with Greek r.t^aXoc, : it is possible that ir =3 Ir. ire, but I am more
iclined to think that 0. W. ir is to O. Ir. ire as Skr. para is to Greek
;£pato-ç. As to yr wyf, « I am, » yr oeddwn, « I was, » it is possible that
ère yr = Greek -xçà in xape'.ij-i and r.xpffK
VIII.
' Since writing the foregoing jottings, in which the disappearance oi p
ithe Celtic languages has been more than once assumed, it has occur-
;d to me that it is rather singular that such a consonant should be
)tally elided in ail positions in a word, and that it would be more reaso-
able to regard it rather as having been changed into another consonant
'hich might eventually disappear. The latter, I vould wenture to sug-
est, was no other than h. Such a réduction of p to h, it is true, is not
Dmmon. I do not recollect having heard of its being usual in any lan-
uage but Japanese ; but as far as the physiology of the case is concer-
ed Japanese is perhaps as much to the point as a Japhetic language
'ould be. However this may be, I beg to call attention to the fact that