Quick Facts
Also called:
John David Rhys, or John Davies
Born:
1534, Llanfaethlu, Anglesey, Wales
Died:
c. 1609, Clun Hir?, Brecknockshire
Subjects Of Study:
Welsh language
grammar

Siôn Dafydd Rhys (born 1534, Llanfaethlu, Anglesey, Wales—died c. 1609, Clun Hir?, Brecknockshire) was a Welsh physician and grammarian whose grammar, Cambrobrytannicae Cymraecaeve linguae institutiones et rudimenta (1592), was the first to expound the Welsh language through the international medium of Latin.

Rhys spent some time at Oxford then earned a degree in medicine from the University of Siena, Italy. He practiced as a physician at Cardiff, Wales, before devoting all his time to his grammar. He attempted to set down the rules of bardic poetry and the principles of the Welsh language but did so according to the Latin grammatical structure. His book includes a greeting in Welsh, a grammar of the Welsh language, a discussion of the poetic art, and a collection of Welsh poetry. It is valuable in that it contains items of knowledge that otherwise might have been lost.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Welsh:
Cymraeg

Welsh language, member of the Brythonic group of the Celtic languages, spoken in Wales. Modern Welsh, like English, makes very little use of inflectional endings; British, the Brythonic language from which Welsh is descended, was, however, an inflecting language like Latin, with word endings marking such grammatical categories as noun case and verb tense. The spoken language occurs in several local dialects but has been declining on the whole since the accession of Henry Tudor (Henry VII), of Welsh descent, to the English throne in 1485. At present few people speak only Welsh.