"Bernicia - small point, perhaps" Topic

Hello, parachuting in here from the Early Modern.

Today on the radio, I heard a writer refer to the Bernician heritage in Northumberland, which he pronounced'BERNI-SEE- AN'implying the kingdom is pronounced 'BERNI- SEE- AH.'

In my private readings I have already heard BERN-ISSIA, thus BERN- ISSIAN.

Was I mistaken? What does the Ancient-Dark Age hive-mind say?

I can't see/hear any significant difference between the two, obviously we must be pronouncing those syllables differently.

I'm no linguist but should the syllables be BER-NISS-EEA ?

Bernicia is from the Old British/Welsh 'Bernich', meaning something like 'the land of gaps' i.e.the land surrounding the rivers Tyne/Wear/Tees gaps.
From that I've always pronounced it BERN-NICH-EEA ('ch' as in church), but I'm no authority.

BER-NICK-IA

for my money

Interesting that the various online pronunciation guides give several different pronunciations. I'm hearing about two out of three for Ber-NISH-ia, I think.

Considering that the spelling likely is Latin in origin, and would thus be from before the Great Vowel Shift (look it up), the pronunciation would be close to: bayr-NEE-kee-ah. (In Latin, there is no K symbol, and the C is actually a hard "K" sound, whereas only S is pronounced as an S in modern English.)

To be clear, "ay" in my phonetic attempt above is the long "a" sound in modern English.

Prior to the Great Vowel Shift:
A= as in "Father"
E= Long A sound as in "cake"
I = Long E sound as in "beet", or consonant Y as in "you."
AE= Long I sound as in "kite"
O… honestly, I can't remember. I think it's short as in "pot," unless at the end of word, in which case long as in "Poe." But I could be wrong— it may always be long. (Been a while since I studied this.)
U= Long U as in "tune"

(Thus, "Julius Caesar" is correctly spelled IULIUS CAESAR and pronounced "YOO-lee-oos KIE-sar.")

Didn't the Great Vowel Shift occur in Old English (to make it Middle English) an not Welsh?

I can't see how to get 'land of the gaps' out of that in Welsh. To a modern Welsh speaker (gog) it is
Bear-nick-ee-ah

And add that Northumbria still hasn't shifted some of its vowels even today !!!

I can't see how to get 'land of the gaps' out of that in Welsh.

Jackson's tentative etymology runs something like this:

Jackson (1953, 701‒05) derived this from *bern (presumably feminine, cf. the Goidelic cognates), an otherwise unrecorded P-Celtic cognate of Middle Irish bern > beárna, also bearn in place-names, ‘gap, breach or chasm'; in Goidelic place-names, the reference is generally to a narrow pass or defile. For Bernicia he proposed this cognate with a suffix -accjā-, implying an ethnic name *Bern-acci-.

Yes, GurKnan, I was thinking of Jackson's edition of Y Gododdin. I should have mentioned that.

BTW: how would the tribe pronounce 'Gododdin'?

That the Great Vowel Shift occurred in English and not Welsh isn't relevant— it's the fact that the Latin alphabet is used to spell the name, and the understood phonetics of that alphabet changed for English speakers even when reading non-English words. So the letter "i" we read as in "kite" today was pronounced "ee" before the Shift, regardless of language (which is one of the reasons English speakers also tend to mangel words from Romance languages— we use the same letters, but we have different phonetic expectations applied to those letters— as the city English speakers call "PEAR-is" is not pronounced that way at all by the native French, despite the identical spelling).
So what an English speaker reads as "bur-nis-ee-ah" is based on English phonetic assumptions, whereas to speakers of non-English languages the word would most likely be read as "bayr-nee-kee-ah."

And Gododdin is pronounced "GA(w)-da(w)-theen," with my "a(w)" here meaning the initial sound of "aw" but without the full drawn-out w effect— so like "off", not "awe." The "th" is also voiced, as in "there," not soft as in "with."

I believe this shift happen in all of the germanic languages.

Thanks all, some interesting observations that hadn't ocurred to me and gratifying that the majority seems to concur the emphasis should be on the second syllable rather than the third.

My understanding is that the oldest Welsh form we have is Bryneich or Brynaich, and that Bede in his Historia Brittonum renders this Berneich or Birneich – from which derived the medieval Latin form Bernicia.

Obviously I bow down before Keeneth Jackson but I am curious as to why he was considering a Goidelic origin for a Brythonic name relating to the east coast of the mainland circa 6th century – (an area of minimal penetration by Gaelic topnyms)

It's an interesting point that Bede might have pronounced Bernicia as BERNIKIA. Although ancient Latin can have had no bearing on the formation of the original Brittonic/Welsh name, and it might be rash to assume medieval churchmen pronounced Latin the same way as the Romans, but it is possible to see how the 'CH' of the British name was refined to a harder 'K' in the old English- in the same way that many English today pronounce the Scots word 'Loch' as LOCK. Similarly we can see how English speakers with less facility for the rotic 'R' of of the native Bryneich would soften that by transposing the vowel and the consonant of BRYN to BERN- thus 'Berneich'.

However, in medieval Latin, is it not likely local English monks and any other literate people would have automatically softened the 'C' of Bernicia while still pronouncing Berneich/ with CH/K. Interestingly, perhaps, we don't find 'Berniccia' as a version.

I am fairly sure most English speakers today would probably sight-read 'Bernicia' with a soft 'C' – thus BERNISSIA (or BERNISHIA, if you like). I believe it is the influence of French Romance (with its roots in Mediaeval Latin)) that leads us to soften our 'C's when followed by an 'I'- or E' hence 'office/ official' or 'precipice /precipitous.'

Obviously I bow down before Keeneth Jackson but I am curious as to why he was considering a Goidelic origin for a Brythonic name …

Strictly, he wasn't suggesting a Gaelic origin, but hypothesising a lost Brythonic parallel for an Irish word.

The softening of Latin C before front vowels dates to Late Antiquity (first evidence in the fifth century acc'd Allen, Vox Latina), so Latin "Bernicia" is likely to have been pronounced with a soft one almost from the start.

@ GurKhan & The Last Conformist

Interesting, both. Thanks

Is it Boo--di--kah, or Bew--di--see--uh?

Two different versions.

'Boudicca' is the accepted version of her name. If by BEW you mean BO- (or BOW-?), that is to say- 'Boadicea'- although I find it hard to let go entirey, it is now supposed to be a mistaken reading from a corrupt text.