At 11:24:46 AM on Saturday, August 25, 2007, Rick
McCallister wrote:
> I've seen Welsh words beginning with ll- & l-. Are the l-
> words all of foreign origin?
Certainly most of them are. <Lan> 'up' is shortened from
the prepositional phrase <i lan> or <i'r lan>, in which
<lan> is apparently the lenited form of <glan> 'river bank,
brink, edge; shore; slope, bank, hillside; hillock,
mountain'; I shouldn't be surprised if there were at least a
few other internal developments of this sort.
> Or is ll- analogous to Spanish ll- from cl-, fl-, pl-?
Initial <ll-> is the normal reflex of *l-, and it can also
come from *sl- (<llu> 'a host, a throng', OIr <slóg> 'a
host, an army'); internally it can also be from *-lt-.
Brian