Talk:Sulis

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Discretion in linking

Not every proper name found on any inscription offers a link to a possible new article. Too many dead-end or irrelevant links obscure the ones that are actually useful to a Wikipedia reader interested in following up concerns that are central to the entry. Some discretion in linking is urged. --Wetman 19:13, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Suleviae

The distribution, etymology and the function of the Matres Suleviae differs from that of Sulis. It is incorrect to conflate them. --Nantonos 18:21, 21 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

saya sangat terharu dapatdi beri kesempatan untuk melakukan edit terhadap subyek ini semoga kita dapat saling berbagi cerita diantara sesamanya, wlaupun saya sangata miskin pengetahuan semoga dengan ini akan menambah perbendaharaan diantara kita ok nanti aku akan membuat artikel salam dari anak indramayu —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 222.124.17.115 (talk • contribs) on 14 December 2005.

repetition

the last paragraph in the section about syncretism with Minerva and the first para in the section about the etymology of the name are duplicated. The two could possibly be joined to form a section about the name.--stib 10:28, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Attempted. --Old Moonraker (talk) 10:59, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

generic abstraction justifiable?

The article begins with the assertion: "In ancient Celtic polytheism, the deification of spring-water, especially of thermal spring-water, conceived as a nourishing, life-giving Mother goddess." Since there is no inscription aside from the ones at Bath, can we delete this generic "deification of spring-water" as unwarranted? --Wetman 21:49, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. --Nantonos 11:52, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Any problems with editing a more cautious, less sweeping referenced version of this article? --Wetman 00:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quite the contrary. (I've been preoccupied with a yet-unpublished overhaul of Celtic polytheism; but by all means, this article could use attention.) Quartier Latin1968

16:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

no contradiction

Celtic dedications to Minerva per se are common. I meant that it is not common to see pairings like Sulis Minerva or *Brigantia Minerva (or for that matter *Hygeia Sirona). Maybe the confusing part is calling them "Celtic dedications", but I couldn't think of a compact way of saying "dedications found in the (Romano-)Celtic territories of Britain and Gaul". Quartier Latin1968 21:01, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Súil or suíl

I've removed the accent from this word in the text as the two sources used spell it differently. It's a minor point, but one that might grate with language experts without an explanation. --Old Moonraker (talk) 10:57, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What about Coracle? That’s Brittonic and ends in -l.

Given the convention and the fact that the most authoritative sources on inscriptions in Roman Briton prefer Sul, the page should probably be renamed. Noted the objection that “no Britonnic words end in -L” but we cannot possibly know this without knowing all Brittonic words. In fact we know only a tiny fraction. And anyway the word coracle, which is Britonnic, ends phonetically in an L sound. Dena.walemy (talk) 10:09, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please leave this to those of us who have actually studied Brittonic? It is totally inaccurate to say that "we know only a tiny fraction" of Brittonic words; linguists have reconstructed thousands of Brittonic words by studying the development of the daughter branches of Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and Cumbric and via the comparative method (likewise, a large database of earlier Proto-Celtic and Proto-Indo-European vocabulary has reconstructed, which helps to inform us on Brittonic words). Coracle is an Anglicization of WELSH (not Brittonic!) corwgl, which itself comes from Brittonic *corucos, but with a borrowed Vulgar Latin diminutive suffix added, i.e., *coruc(u)lus. It never ended in -l in Brittonic; in fact, no nouns ended in -l in Brittonic. Cagwinn (talk) 18:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't think I need to leave the discussion to people who have spent more time studying Brittonic than me. According to you, Welsh is a daughter branch of Britonnic anyway. If 'corwgl' comes from Welsh then it doesn't seem to be beyond the realm of all reasonable conjecture that there might have been Brittonic words ending in -L. And my suggestion of coracle was just the first example. Besides, unless you know all the words that were ever used in the Brittonic language, and specifically all the words of the dialect that was used around Bath, then you can't say for sure that no Brittonic word ever ended in L. So even if you are the greatest scholar of Brittonic who ever existed, you cannot be sure. First because by your own admission we only know a few thousand words, second because regional variations tend to make a mockery of generalising assertions about language (some will tell you that in British English, the R in card is not pronounced). Given the fact that the deity has generally been known in English as Sul and has been for at least 200 years, I do not see a pressing need for a change to Sulis, which strikes me as confusing. It has no point other than drawing attention to the person making the change. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dena.walemy (talk • contribs) 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Cagwinn on this one. 'Coracle' is a red herring: there can be a huge difference between a daughter language and a parent language. [To give one trivial example, Old English had no words that end with /ʒ/ (a phoneme not reconstructed for Old English at all), whereas Modern English does in a word like 'rouge'. French or Portuguese have a totally different sound and feel from their parent language, Latin (including different rules about what's permissible in a well-formed syllable).] More to the point, what evidence do you have that "the deity has generally been known in English as Sul and has been for at least 200 years"? In the literature I'm familiar with, "Sulis" is very much the form favoured in English. Q·L·1968 ☿ 21:12, 9 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What I’m challenging is the over-bold assumption that there were no words in Brittonic that ended in L. We cannot possibly know all Brittonic words, especially since they would have morphed over the centuries that the languages were spoken and varied in the different localities where it was spoken. Indeed it shows a surprising ignorance of the extent to which languages can change. Even in modern times a language can change so much over just a few dozen miles as to become unintelligible. It is not convincing to say that while a Welsh word might end in L, a Brittonic word cannot end in L no matter when or where the language was spoken. Moving on to Sul – few texts written before the 1980s and 90s referred to the goddess as Sulis. You could Google "aquae sulis" "waters of sul" and note the date stamp. Of course a search for "aquae sulis" "waters of sulis" leads far more results, but this is presumably partly due to the influence of Wikipedia and the erroneous reference to Sulis in the nominative that I have already objected to. Using google is not the best way of conducting research, but it does at least show clearly that Sulis is a neologism and that all earlier works use Sul. I would like to add that I peppered my original amendment to the Wikipedia page with different references to “Sul” usage, but these were all removed. Finally, the very fact that we are having this debate shows that the disrespectful request “Can you please leave this to those of us who have actually studied Brittonic?” was unjustified. I suspect this was written in the heat of the moment. People with a rudimentary knowledge of Brittonic are quite capable of commenting constructively if they are knowledgeable on other relevant aspects that can illuminate the findings of those who claim to specialize. That’s how scholarship works. You don’t shout people down because you don’t agree with them. Dena.walemy (talk • contribs)