{"id":62,"date":"2020-01-20T08:46:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T08:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=62"},"modified":"2022-04-18T08:13:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T08:13:28","slug":"british-mb","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=62","title":{"rendered":"British *mb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The British consonant cluster&nbsp;<em>mb&nbsp;<\/em>regularly became WCB.&nbsp;<em>m(m)<\/em>, as can be seen in W.&nbsp;<em>crwm<\/em>, CB.&nbsp;<em>kromm&nbsp;<\/em>&#8216;curved&#8217; &lt; Br.&nbsp;<em>*crumbo-<\/em>.&nbsp; But in several instances, it occurs in the Cumbric evidence as&nbsp;<em>mb<\/em>.&nbsp; For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Ancrum<\/strong>&nbsp;(near Jedburgh), which contains Br.<em>&nbsp;*crumbo-&nbsp;<\/em>is recorded as&nbsp;<em>Alnecrumba&nbsp;<\/em>and&nbsp;<em>Alncromb&nbsp;<\/em>in the 12th century.<\/li><li><strong>Cam Beck<\/strong>&nbsp;(north Cumbria) retains the sound to this day, thanks to a later re-analysis with the dialectal&nbsp;<em>beck<\/em>&nbsp;&#8216;stream&#8217;.&nbsp; The name derives from Br.&nbsp;<em>*camb\u0101co-&nbsp;<\/em>&#8216;crooked, bent&#8217; (cf. W.&nbsp;<em>cam<\/em>, CB.&nbsp;<em>kamm<\/em>).<\/li><li><strong>Crummock Water<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Crummock Beck&nbsp;<\/strong>(Cumbria) and&nbsp;<strong>Crummack Dale<\/strong>&nbsp;(West Yorkshire) are derived from Br.&nbsp;<em>*crumb\u0101co- &lt; *crumbo-<\/em>.&nbsp; These are recorded as&nbsp;<em>Crombocwater&nbsp;<\/em>(14th century),&nbsp;<em>Cromboc&nbsp;<\/em>(13th century) and&nbsp;<em>Crombok&nbsp;<\/em>(12th century) respectively.<\/li><li><strong>Cumberland<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Cumbria<\/strong>.&nbsp; Both are from the OE&nbsp;<em>Cumbras&nbsp;<\/em>&#8216;Cumbrians&#8217; which is a borrowing from W.&nbsp;<em>Cymry&nbsp;<\/em>or its equivalent.&nbsp; The former is recorded as<em>&nbsp;Cumbraland<\/em>&nbsp;in the 10th century; the latter is an early Latinisation based on the English word.&nbsp; The same element occurs in&nbsp;<strong>Cumbrae<\/strong>&nbsp;(<em>Cumberays&nbsp;<\/em>13th century) and&nbsp;<strong>Cummersdale<\/strong>&nbsp;(<em>Cumbredal&nbsp;<\/em>and&nbsp;<em>Cumberdale<\/em>,12th century).<\/li><li><strong>Crimple Beck&nbsp;<\/strong>(West Yorkshire) is supposedly from Br.&nbsp;<em>*crumbo-pull-&nbsp;<\/em>&#8216;curved pool&#8217;.<\/li><li><strong>Cumdivock<\/strong>&nbsp;(Cumbria) is recorded as&nbsp;<em>Combe\u00f0eyfoch<\/em>&nbsp;in the 11th century and contains the Br.&nbsp;<em>cumbo-<\/em>.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Crummack Dale and Crimple Beck are of limited use to this discussion, since they lie outside the Cumbric zone and could well have been borrowed before&nbsp;<em>mb&nbsp;<\/em>was assimilated in British.&nbsp; Examples with OE&nbsp;<em>Cumbras&nbsp;<\/em>are also dubious since we don&#8217;t know when or where this word was borrowed &#8211; compare OE&nbsp;<em>cumb&nbsp;<\/em>&#8216;valley&#8217;, an early borrowing from Br.&nbsp;<em>cumbo-<\/em>&nbsp;which also retains&nbsp;<em>mb<\/em>.&nbsp; The same is true for OI&nbsp;<em>Combrec<\/em>, which was used to refer to any Brythonic language.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jackson (1953) concludes that the assimilation of<em>&nbsp;*mb &gt; mm<\/em>&nbsp;was complete in WCB by the 7th century but that it lingered in the north perhaps half a century longer.&nbsp; The evidence certainly suggests that&nbsp;<em>mb&nbsp;<\/em>was retained longer in Cumbric than further south, and the fact that the late names Cumwhitton and Cumwhinton contain no trace of&nbsp;<em>b&nbsp;<\/em>in early records suggests the sound did eventually become assimilated.&nbsp; If Jackson&#8217;s summation and dating is correct, it does point to a deviation for Cumbric, but hardly a defining one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The British consonant cluster&nbsp;mb&nbsp;regularly became WCB.&nbsp;m(m), as can be seen in W.&nbsp;crwm, CB.&nbsp;kromm&nbsp;&#8216;curved&#8217; &lt; Br.&nbsp;*crumbo-.&nbsp; But in several instances, it&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":25,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62\/revisions\/64"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/old-north.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}