TI-KRAMPOUZ (Ty-Crempog)

We had to nip into the Mérignac Soleil shopping centre today to get Gwilym's phone unblocked after a slight slip with the old fingers. Oh I HATE these huge French shopping centres. All marble and bright lights.

But we did see this crêperie with the Breton name as well - TI-KRAMPOUZ (I think you can just about make out the blur) which is, of course, very similar to what the Welsh would call their crêperies, if we had 'em.

Incidentally, usually that ê sign marks a consonant that has disappeared - like an "s" etc. Hôtel or hôpital, for example. I just wonder whether crêpe used to have an "m"...

There's a surprising amount of Breton about around here. For example, the chappie who is building the two houses in front of ours is Breton and started off in Breton school. His dad is big in Breton culture in the Vannes area (lovely area!). We got onto the subject because his name is Yann. Posted by Picasa

Comments

Anonymous said…
Alan
As ever I'm very slow but I'm beginning to catch on.
Unbelievably technophobia has kept me from your site until now. I actually linked from M Downes.
We had a French teacher (Mr Tremayne - Cornish?) who called the ^Circumflex^ a tombstone for a dead 'S'.
Gary
1:32 pm
Alan said…
Indeed. I have thought of it the same way myself. And when I look in an online etymology website for crepe it tells me that the word lost an s - it came from crispus, meaning curled.

So it's us Welsh who got an "m" from somewhere and stuck it in, I guess...
2:07 pm
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