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Loch (), is the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word for a lake and a sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and the Welsh word for lake, llwch. In English andHiberno-English, the anglicised spelling lough is commonly found in place names, pronounced the same way as loch. In Scottish English, 'loch' is always used. Some lochs could also be called firths, fjords, estuaries, straits or bays. Sea-inlet lochs are often called sea lochs or sea loughs ==Background== This name for a body of water is Insular Celtic 〔The current form has currency in the following languages: Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx, and has been borrowed into Lowland Scots, Scottish English, Irish English and Standard English.〕 in origin and is applied to most lakes in Scotland and to many sea inlets in the west and north of Scotland. The word is Indo-European in origin; cf. Latin ''lacus''. Lowland Scots orthography, like Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Irish, represents with ''ch'', so the word was borrowed with identical spelling. English borrowed the word separately from a number of loughs in the previous Cumbric language areas of Northumbria and Cumbria. Earlier forms of English included the sound as ''ch'' (compare Scots ''bricht'' with English ''bright''). However, by the time Scotland and England joined under a single parliament, English had lost the sound. This form was therefore used when the English settled Ireland. The Scots convention of using CH remained, hence the modern Scottish English ''loch''. Likewise, in the Insular Celtic languages, the representation of (), is ''lu'' in Old Welsh and ''llw'' in Middle Welsh such as in today's Welsh placenames Llanllwchaiarn, Llwchwr, Llyn Cwm Llwch, Amlwch, Maesllwch. The Goidelic ''lo'' being taken into Scottish Gaelic by the gradual replacement of much Brittonic orthography with Goidelic orthography in Scotland. Many of the loughs in Northern England have also previously been called "meres" (a Northern English dialect word for "lake" and an archaic Standard English word meaning "a lake that is broad in relation to its depth") such as the ''Black Lough'' in Northumberland. However, reference to the latter as ''loughs'' (lower case initial), rather than as ''lakes'', ''inlets'' and so on, is unusual. Although there is no strict size definition, a small loch is often known as a lochan (so spelled also in Scottish Gaelic; in Irish it is spelled lochán). Perhaps the most famous Scottish loch is Loch Ness, although there are other large examples such as Loch Awe, Loch Lomond and Loch Tay. Examples of sea lochs in Scotland include Loch Long, Loch Fyne, Loch Linnhe, Loch Eriboll, Loch Tristan, Trisloch. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Loch」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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