The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; cy, ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; kw, yethow brythonek/predennek; br, yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the
Insular Celtic
Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, ...
language family; the other is
Goidelic
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Goidelic languages historically ...
. The name ''Brythonic'' was derived by
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
Celticist
Celtic studies or Celtology is the academic discipline occupied with the study of any sort of cultural output relating to the Celtic-speaking peoples (i.e. speakers of Celtic languages). This ranges from linguistics, literature and art histor ...
John Rhys
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second E ...
from the
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
word , meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
or
Gael
The Gaels ( ; ga, Na Gaeil ; gd, Na Gàidheil ; gv, Ny Gaeil ) are an ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man in the British Isles. They are associated with the Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic languag ...
.
The Brittonic languages derive from the
Common Brittonic
Common Brittonic ( cy, Brythoneg; kw, Brythonek; br, Predeneg), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, was a Celtic language spoken in Britain and Brittany.
It is a form of Insular Celtic, descended from Proto-Celtic, a ...
language, spoken throughout
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
during the
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...
and
Roman period
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...
. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in
Brittany
Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, Historical region, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known ...
and
Britonia
Britonia (which became Bretoña in Galician and Spanish) is the historical, apparently Latinized name of a Celtic settlement by Romano-Britons on the Iberian peninsula following the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. The area is roughly analogous ...
. During the next few centuries the language began to split into several dialects, eventually evolving into
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
,
Cornish,
Breton
Breton most often refers to:
*anything associated with Brittany, and generally
** Breton people
** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany
** Breton (horse), a breed
**Ga ...
,
Cumbric
Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" in what is now the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and northern Lancashire in Northern England and the souther ...
, and probably
Pictish
Pictish is the extinct language, extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited num ...
. Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by
Goidelic
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Goidelic languages historically ...
and
Anglic speech. The
Isle of Man
)
, anthem = "O Land of Our Birth"
, image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg
, image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg
, mapsize =
, map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe
, map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green)
in Europe ...
and
Orkney
Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...
may also have originally spoken a Brittonic language, but this was later supplanted by Goidelic on the Isle of Man and Norse on Orkney. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in (the Welsh settlement in
Patagonia
Patagonia () refers to a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and gl ...
).
Name
The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to the
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated
Common Brittonic
Common Brittonic ( cy, Brythoneg; kw, Brythonek; br, Predeneg), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, was a Celtic language spoken in Britain and Brittany.
It is a form of Insular Celtic, descended from Proto-Celtic, a ...
, in contrast to the
Goidelic languages
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Goidelic languages historically ...
originating in Ireland. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as "British" and "Cymric".
"Brythonic" was coined in 1879 by the Celticist
John Rhys
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second E ...
from the Welsh word .
[Jackson, p. 3.] "Brittonic", derived from "
Briton
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mod ...
" and also earlier spelled "Britonic" and "Britonnic", emerged later in the 19th century.
It became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in
Kenneth H. Jackson
Prof Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson CBE FRSE FSA DLitt (1 November 1909 – 20 February 1991) was an English linguistics, linguist and a translator who specialised in the Celtic languages. He demonstrated how the text of the Ulster Cycle of tales, wr ...
's highly influential 1953 work on the topic, ''Language and History in Early Britain''. Jackson noted that by that time "Brythonic" had become a dated term, and that "of late there has been an increasing tendency to use Brittonic instead."
[ Today, "Brittonic" often replaces "Brythonic" in the literature.] Rudolf Thurneysen
Eduard Rudolf Thurneysen (March 14, 1857 – 9 August 1940) was a Swiss linguist and Celticist.
Biography
Born in Basel, Thurneysen studied classical philology in Basel, Leipzig, Berlin and Paris. His teachers included Ernst Windisch and H ...
used "Britannic" in his influential ''A Grammar of Old Irish'', although this never became popular among subsequent scholars.
Comparable historical terms include the Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned ...
and and the Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
. Some writers use "British" for the language and its descendants, although, due to the risk of confusion, others avoid it or use it only in a restricted sense. Jackson, and later John T. Koch
John T. Koch is an American academic, historian and linguist who specializes in Celtic studies, especially prehistory and the early Middle Ages. He is the editor of the five-volume ''Celtic Culture. A Historical Encyclopedia'' (2006, ABC Clio). He ...
, use "British" only for the early phase of the Common Brittonic language.
Before Jackson's work, "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" were often used for all the P-Celtic languages, including not just the varieties in Britain but those Continental Celtic languages
The Continental Celtic languages are the now-extinct group of the Celtic languages that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central Anatolia, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles and Brittany. ''Contine ...
that similarly experienced the evolution of the Proto-Celtic language
Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed through the compar ...
element to . However, subsequent writers have tended to follow Jackson's scheme, rendering this use obsolete.[
The name "Britain" itself comes from la, Britannia~Brittania, via ]Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...
' and Middle English ', possibly influenced by Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
', probably also from Latin ''Brittania'', ultimately an adaptation of the native word for the island, ''*Pritanī''.
An early written reference to the British Isles may derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas
Pytheas of Massalia (; Ancient Greek: Πυθέας ὁ Μασσαλιώτης ''Pythéas ho Massaliōtēs''; Latin: ''Pytheas Massiliensis''; born 350 BC, 320–306 BC) was a Greeks, Greek List of Graeco-Roman geographers, geographer, explor ...
of Massalia
Massalia (Greek: Μασσαλία; Latin: Massilia; modern Marseille) was an ancient Greek colony founded ca. 600 BC on the Mediterranean coast of present-day France, east of the river Rhône, by Ionian Greek settlers from Phocaea, in Western An ...
; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily
Diodorus Siculus, or Diodorus of Sicily ( grc-gre, Διόδωρος ; 1st century BC), was an ancient Greek historian. He is known for writing the monumental universal history ''Bibliotheca historica'', in forty books, fifteen of which su ...
and Strabo
Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could see ...
who quote Pytheas' use of variants such as (), "The Britannic and, island, and νησοι βρεττανιαι (), "Britannic islands", with ' being a Celtic word that might mean "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk", referring to body decoration (see below).
Evidence
Knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. The early language's information is obtained from coins, inscriptions, and comments by classical writers as well as place names and personal names recorded by them. For later languages, there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, together with place names. The names recorded in the Roman period are given in Rivet and Smith.
Characteristics
The Brittonic branch is also referred to as ''P-Celtic
The Gallo-Brittonic languages, also known as the P-Celtic languages, are a subdivision of the Celtic languages of Ancient Gaul (both '' celtica'' and '' belgica'') and Celtic Britain, which share certain features. Besides common linguistic in ...
'' because linguistic reconstruction
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction:
* Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to ...
of the Brittonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme * is ''p'' as opposed to Goidelic
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Goidelic languages historically ...
''c''. Such nomenclature usually implies acceptance of the P-Celtic and Q-Celtic hypothesis rather than the Insular Celtic hypothesis because the term includes certain Continental Celtic languages as well. (For a discussion, see Celtic languages
The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
.)
Other major characteristics include:
* The retention of the Proto-Celtic sequences ''am'' and ''an'', which mostly result from the Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasals.
* Celtic (written ''u'' in Latin texts and ''ou'' in Greek) became ''gw-'' in initial position, ''-w-'' internally, whereas in Gaelic it is ''f-'' in initial position and disappears internally:
** Proto-Celtic 'white, fair' became Welsh (masculine), (feminine), Cornish , Breton . Contrast Irish 'fair'.
** Proto-Celtic 'servant, young man' became Welsh, Cornish and Breton . Contrast Middle Irish .
Initial ''s-'':
* Initial ''s-'' followed by a vowel was changed to ''h-'':
** Welsh 'old', 'long', 'similar'
** Breton 'ancient', 'long', 'similar'
** Cornish 'ancient', 'long', 'similar'
** Contrast Irish 'old', 'long', 'similarity'
* Initial ''s-'' was lost before , and :
** became Welsh , Cornish and Breton 'smooth'. Contrast Irish 'smooth, slimy'
** became Welsh , Cornish , and Breton 'marrow'. Contrast Irish
* The initial clusters ''sp-, sr-, sw-'' became ''f-, fr-, chw-'':
** became Welsh 'ankle', Cornish 'shank, lower leg' and Breton 'ankle'. Contrast Old Irish 'heel, ankle'
** 'nostril' became Welsh , Cornish and Breton . Contrast Irish
** 'you' (plural) became Welsh , Cornish and Breton . Contrast Old Irish
Lenition:
* Voiceless plosives become voiced plosives in intervocalic position.
** ''d'' , ''g'' , ''b''
* Voiced plosives , (later or , then lost in Welsh and Cornish; remained as in Breton), , and became soft spirants in an intervocalic position and before liquids:
** Welsh ,
** Cornish ,
** Breton , ,
Voiceless spirants:
* Geminated voiceless plosives transformed into spirants; (pp), (cc), (tt) became (later ), (ch/c'h), (th/zh) before a vowel or liquid:
** > Breton , Cornish , Welsh , 'tree trunk'
** > Breton , Cornish , Welsh , 'cat' vs. Irish
** > Breton , Cornish , Welsh , 'cheek'
* Voiceless stops become spirants after liquids:
** 'bear' > Welsh/Cornish , Breton , compare Old Irish
Nasal assimilation:
* Voiced stops were assimilated to a preceding nasal:
* Brittonic retains original nasals before ''-t'' and ''-k'', whereas Goidelic alters ''-nt'' to ''-d'', and ''-nk'' to ''-g'':
** Breton 'hundred' vs. Irish , Breton (personification of) Death, Irish 'die'
Classification
The family tree of the Brittonic languages is as follows:
*Common Brittonic
Common Brittonic ( cy, Brythoneg; kw, Brythonek; br, Predeneg), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, was a Celtic language spoken in Britain and Brittany.
It is a form of Insular Celtic, descended from Proto-Celtic, a ...
ancestral to:
**Western Brittonic languages
Western Brittonic languages ( cy, Brythoneg Gorllewinol) comprise two dialects into which Common Brittonic split during the Early Middle Ages; its counterpart was the ancestor of the Southwestern Brittonic languages. The reason and date for the ...
ancestral to:
***Cumbric
Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" in what is now the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and northern Lancashire in Northern England and the souther ...
***Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
**Southwestern Brittonic languages
The Southwestern Brittonic languages ( kw, Brythonek Dyghowbarthgorlewin, br, Predeneg Kreisteizkornôg) are the Brittonic Celtic languages spoken in what is now South West England and Brittany since the Early Middle Ages. During the period of ...
ancestral to:
*** Cornish
***Breton
Breton most often refers to:
*anything associated with Brittany, and generally
** Breton people
** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany
** Breton (horse), a breed
**Ga ...
Brittonic languages in use today are Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
, Cornish and Breton
Breton most often refers to:
*anything associated with Brittany, and generally
** Breton people
** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany
** Breton (horse), a breed
**Ga ...
. Welsh and Breton have been spoken continuously since they formed. For all practical purposes Cornish died out during the 18th or 19th century, but a revival movement has more recently created small numbers of new speakers. Also notable are the extinct language Cumbric
Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" in what is now the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and northern Lancashire in Northern England and the souther ...
, and possibly the extinct Pictish
Pictish is the extinct language, extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited num ...
. One view, advanced in the 1950s and based on apparently unintelligible ogham
Ogham (Modern Irish: ; mga, ogum, ogom, later mga, ogam, label=none ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish langua ...
inscriptions, was that the Picts may have also used a non-Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
language. This view, while attracting broad popular appeal, has virtually no following in contemporary linguistic scholarship.
History and origins
The modern Brittonic languages are generally considered to all derive from a common ancestral language termed ''Brittonic'', ''British'', ''Common Brittonic'', ''Old Brittonic'' or ''Proto-Brittonic'', which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic or early Insular Celtic by the 6th century BC.
A major archaeogenetics
Archaeogenetics is the study of ancient DNA using various molecular genetic methods and DNA resources. This form of genetic analysis can be applied to human, animal, and plant specimens. Ancient DNA can be extracted from various fossilized specimen ...
study uncovered a migration into southern Britain in the middle to late Bronze Age, during the 500-year period 1,300–800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from Gaul
Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only during ...
. During 1,000–875 BC, their genetic markers swiftly spread through southern Britain, but not northern Britain. The authors describe this as a "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain". There was much less inward migration during the Iron Age, so it is likely that Celtic reached Britain before then. Barry Cunliffe
Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe, (born 10 December 1939), known as Barry Cunliffe, is a British archaeologist and academic. He was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2007. Since 2007, he has been an Emeri ...
suggests that a Goidelic
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Goidelic languages historically ...
branch of Celtic may already have been spoken in Britain, but that this middle Bronze Age migration would have introduced the Brittonic branch.
Brittonic languages were probably spoken before the Roman invasion throughout most of Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
, though the Isle of Man
)
, anthem = "O Land of Our Birth"
, image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg
, image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg
, mapsize =
, map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe
, map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green)
in Europe ...
later had a Goidelic language, Manx. During the period of the Roman occupation of what is now England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
(AD 43 to c. 410), Common Brittonic borrowed a large stock of Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
words, both for concepts unfamiliar in the pre-urban society of Celtic Britain such as urbanization and new tactics of warfare as well as for rather more mundane words which displaced native terms (most notably, the word for "fish" in all the Brittonic languages derives from the Latin ''piscis'' rather than the native *''ēskos'' - which may survive, however, in the Welsh name of the River Usk
The River Usk (; cy, Afon Wysg) rises on the northern slopes of the Black Mountain (''y Mynydd Du''), Wales, in the westernmost part of the Brecon Beacons National Park. Initially forming the boundary between Carmarthenshire and Powys, it fl ...
, ). Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brittonic languages. Pictish may have resisted Latin influence to a greater extent than the other Brittonic languages.
It is probable that at the start of the Post-Roman period ''Common Brittonic'' was differentiated into at least two major dialect groups – Southwestern and Western (also we may posit additional dialects, such as Eastern Brittonic, spoken in what is now the East of England
The East of England is one of the nine official regions of England. This region was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics purposes from 1999. It includes the ceremonial counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire ...
, which have left little or no evidence). Between the end of the Roman occupation and the mid 6th century the two dialects began to diverge into recognizably separate varieties, the Western into Cumbric and Welsh and the Southwestern into Cornish and its closely related sister language Breton, which was carried to continental Armorica
Armorica or Aremorica (Gaulish: ; br, Arvorig, ) is the name given in ancient times to the part of Gaul between the Seine and the Loire that includes the Brittany Peninsula, extending inland to an indeterminate point and down the Atlantic Coast ...
. Jackson showed that a few of the dialect distinctions between West and Southwest Brittonic go back a long way. New divergencies began around AD 500 but other changes that were shared occurred in the 6th century. Other common changes occurred in the 7th century onward and are possibly due to inherent tendencies. Thus the concept of a Common Brittonic language ends by AD 600. Substantial numbers of Britons certainly remained in the expanding area controlled by Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
, but over the fifth and sixth centuries they mostly adopted the English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
.
Decline
The Brittonic languages spoken in what is now Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
, the Isle of Man
)
, anthem = "O Land of Our Birth"
, image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg
, image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg
, mapsize =
, map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe
, map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green)
in Europe ...
and what is now England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
began to be displaced in the 5th century through the settlement of Irish-speaking Gaels
The Gaels ( ; ga, Na Gaeil ; gd, Na Gàidheil ; gv, Ny Gaeil ) are an ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man in the British Isles. They are associated with the Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic langu ...
and Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and ear ...
. Henry of Huntingdon
Henry of Huntingdon ( la, Henricus Huntindoniensis; 1088 – AD 1157), the son of a canon in the diocese of Lincoln, was a 12th-century English historian and the author of ''Historia Anglorum'' (Medieval Latin for "History of the English"), ...
wrote that Pictish was "no longer spoken" in c.1129.
The displacement of the languages of Brittonic descent was probably complete in all of Britain except Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
and Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
and the English counties bordering these areas such as Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...
by the 11th century. Western Herefordshire
Herefordshire () is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthshire ...
continued to speak Welsh until the late nineteenth century, and isolated pockets of Shropshire
Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...
speak Welsh today.
Sound changes
The regular consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
al sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
s from Proto-Celtic to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton are summarised in the following table. Where the graphemes have a different value from the corresponding IPA symbols, the IPA equivalent is indicated between slashes. V represents a vowel; C represents a consonant.
Remnants in England, Scotland and Ireland
Place names and river names
The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the Brittonic languages were displaced is that of toponyms
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
(place names) and hydronym
A hydronym (from el, ὕδρω, , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a ...
s (names of rivers and other bodies of water). There are many Brittonic place names in lowland Scotland and in the parts of England where it is agreed that substantial Brittonic speakers remained (Brittonic names, apart from those of the former Romano-British towns, are scarce over most of England). Names derived (sometimes indirectly) from Brittonic include London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, Penicuik
Penicuik ( ; sco, Penicuik; gd, Peighinn na Cuthaig) is a town and former burgh in Midlothian, Scotland, lying on the west bank of the River North Esk. It lies on the A701 midway between Edinburgh and Peebles, east of the Pentland Hills.
Na ...
, Perth
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...
, Aberdeen
Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...
, York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
, Dorchester, Dover
Dover () is a town and major ferry port in Kent, South East England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies south-east of Canterbury and east of Maidstone ...
and Colchester
Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian.
Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...
. Brittonic elements found in England include ''bre-'' and ''bal-'' for hills, while some such as combe or coomb(e) for a small deep valley and tor
Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to:
Places
* Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain
* Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city
* Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano
* Tor Bay, Devon, England
* Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia
Sc ...
for a hill are examples of Brittonic words that were borrowed into English. Others reflect the presence of Britons such as Dumbarton
Dumbarton (; also sco, Dumbairton; ) is a town in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, on the north bank of the River Clyde where the River Leven flows into the Clyde estuary. In 2006, it had an estimated population of 19,990.
Dumbarton was the ca ...
– from the Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
''Dùn Breatainn'' meaning "Fort of the Britons", or Walton meaning a ''tun'' or settlement where the '' Wealh'' "Britons" still lived.
The number of Celtic river names in England generally increases from east to west, a map showing these being given by Jackson. These names include ones such as Avon, Chew, Frome, Axe, Brue and Exe, but also river names containing the elements "der-/dar-/dur-" and "-went" e.g. "Derwent, Darwen, Deer, Adur, Dour, Darent, Went". These names exhibit multiple different Celtic roots. One is *dubri- "water" ret. "dour", C. "dowr", W. "dŵr" also found in the place-name "Dover" (attested in the Roman period as "Dubrīs"); this is the source of rivers named "Dour". Another is *deru̯o- "oak" or "true" ret. "derv", C. "derow", W. "derw" coupled with 2 agent suffixes, *-ent- and *-iū; this is the origin of "Derwent", " Darent" and "Darwen" (attested in the Roman period as "Deru̯entiō"). The final root to be examined is "went". In Roman Britain, there were three tribal capitals named "U̯entā" (modern Winchester, Caerwent and Caistor St Edmunds), whose meaning was 'place, town'.
Brittonicisms in English
Some, including J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philology, philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was ...
, have argued that Celtic has acted as a substrate to English for both the lexicon and syntax. It is generally accepted that Brittonic effects on English are lexically few, aside from toponyms, consisting of a small number of domestic and geographical words, which 'may' include bin, brock, carr, comb, crag and tor.[Coates, Richard, ‘Invisible Britons: The View from Linguistics’, in ''Britons in Anglo-Saxon England'', ed. by Nick Higham, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 7 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), pp. 172–91 (pp. 177-80).] Another legacy may be the sheep-counting system Yan Tan Tethera
Yan Tan Tethera or yan-tan-tethera is a sheep-counting system traditionally used by shepherds in Northern England and some other parts of Britain. The words are numbers taken from Brythonic Celtic languages such as Cumbric which had died out in ...
in the north, in the traditionally Celtic areas of England such as Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumb ...
. Several Cornish mining words are still in use in English language mining terminology, such as costean
Costeaning is the process by which miners seek to discover metallic lodes. It consists in sinking small pits through the superficial deposits to the solid rock, and then driving from one pit to another across the direction of the vein
Veins are ...
, gunnies, and vug
A vug, vugh, or vugg (
) is a small- to medium-sized cavity inside rock. It may be formed through a variety of processes. Most commonly, cracks and fissures opened by tectonic activity (folding and faulting) are partially filled by quartz, ...
.
Those who argue against the theory of a more significant Brittonic influence than is widely accepted point out that many toponyms have no semantic continuation from the Brittonic language. A notable example is Avon which comes from the Celtic term for river abona or the Welsh term for river, afon, but was used by the English as a personal name. Likewise the River Ouse, Yorkshire
The River Ouse ( ) is a river in North Yorkshire, England. Hydrologically, the river is a continuation of the River Ure, and the combined length of the River Ure and River Ouse makes it, at , the sixth-longest river of the United Kingdom and ...
contains the word usa which merely means 'water' and the name of the river Trent simply comes from the Welsh word for a trespasser ''(an over-flowing river)''.
It has been argued that the use of periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one infl ...
constructions (using auxiliary verb
An auxiliary verb (abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a p ...
s such as ''do'' and ''be'' in the continuous/progressive) in the English verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
, which is more widespread than in the other Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
, is traceable to Brittonic influence. Others, however, find this unlikely due to the fact that many of these forms are only attested in the later Middle English period; these scholars claim a native English development rather than Celtic influence.[John Insley, "Britons and Anglo-Saxons," in ''Kulturelle Integration und Personnenamen in Mittelalter'', De Gruyter (2018)] Ian G. Roberts postulates Northern Germanic influence, despite such constructions not existing in Norse. Literary Welsh has the simple present Caraf = ''I love'' and the present stative (al. continuous/progressive) Yr wyf yn caru = ''I am loving'', where the Brittonic syntax is partly mirrored in English (Note that ''I am loving'' comes from older ''I am a-loving'', from still older ich am on luvende "I am in the process of loving"). In the Germanic sister languages of English there is only one form, for example ich liebe in German, though in ''colloquial'' usage in some German dialects, a progressive aspect form has evolved which is formally similar to those found in Celtic languages, and somewhat less similar to the Modern English form, e.g. "I am working" is ich bin am Arbeiten, literally: "I am on the working". The same structure is also found in modern Dutch (ik ben aan het werk), alongside other structures (e.g. ik zit te werken, lit. "I sit to working"). These parallel developments suggest that the English progressive is not necessarily due to Celtic influence; moreover, the native English development of the structure can be traced over 1000 years and more of English literature.
Some researchers (Filppula ''et al.'', 2001) argue that other elements of English syntax reflect Brittonic influences. For instance, in English tag questions, the form of the tag depends on the verb form in the main statement (''aren't I?'', ''isn't he?'', ''won't we?'' etc.). The German nicht wahr? and the French n'est-ce pas?, by contrast, are fixed forms which can be used with almost any main statement. It has been claimed that the English system has been borrowed from Brittonic, since Welsh tag questions vary in almost exactly the same way.
Brittonic effect on the Goidelic languages
Far more notable, but less well known, are Brittonic influences on Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
, though Scottish and Irish Gaelic, with their wider range of preposition-based periphrastic constructions, suggest that such constructions descend from their common Celtic heritage. Scottish Gaelic contains several P-Celtic loanwords, but, as there is a far greater overlap in terms of Celtic vocabulary, than with English, it is not always possible to disentangle P- and Q-Celtic words. However, some common words such as monadh = Welsh mynydd, Cumbric *monidh are particularly evident.
The Brittonic influence on Scots Gaelic is often indicated by considering Irish language
Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...
usage, which is not likely to have been influenced so much by Brittonic. In particular, the word srath (anglicised
Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influen ...
as "Strath") is a native Goidelic word, but its usage appears to have been modified by the Brittonic cognate ystrad whose meaning is slightly different. The effect on Irish has been the loan from British of many Latin-derived words. This has been associated with the Christianisation of Ireland from Britain.
References
Notes
Sources
*Aleini M (1996). Origini delle lingue d'Europa.
*Dillon M and Chadwick N (1967). Celtic Realms.
*Filppula, M., Klemola, J. and Pitkänen, H. (2001). ''The Celtic roots of English'', Studies in languages, No. 37, University of Joensuu, Faculty of Humanities, .
*Hawkes, J. (1973). ''The first great civilizations: life in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and Egypt'', The history of human society series, London: Hutchinson, .
*Jackson, K., (1994). ''Language and history in early Britain: a chronological survey of the Brittonic languages, 1st to 12th c. A. D'', Celtic studies series, Dublin: Four Courts Press, .
*Jackson, K. (1955), "The Pictish Language", in Wainwright, F.T., The Problem of the Picts, Edinburgh: Nelson, pp. 129–166
*Rivet A and Smith C (1979). The Placenames of Roman Britain.
* Schrijver, P. (1995), ''Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology''. Amsterdam: Rodopi. .
*Willis, David. 2009. "Old and Middle Welsh". In Ball, Martin J., Müller, Nicole (ed). ''The Celtic Languages'', 117–160, 2nd Edition. Routledge Language Family Series.New York: Routledge. .
*Driscoll, S T 2011. ''Pictish archaeology: persistent problems and structural solutions''. In Driscoll, S T, Geddes, J and Hall, M A (eds) Pictish Progress: new studies on northern Britain in the early Middle Ages, Leiden and Boston: Bril pp 245–279.
External links
*Coates, Richard (2007
''Invisible Britons: the view from linguistics.''
(archived)
{{Authority control
Iron Age Britain
Ancient Britain