The Celtic languages (
usually
A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated, or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms, or criteria, often taking the form of a custom.
In a social context, a convention may retain the character of an "unwritten law" of custom (for e ...
, 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 Lhuyd in 1707, following
Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the
Celts described by classical writers 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 peopl ...
and
Breton languages.
During the 1st millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much of
Europe and central
Anatolia. Today, they are restricted to the northwestern fringe of Europe and
a few diaspora communities. There are six living languages: the four continuously living languages
Breton,
Irish,
Scottish Gaelic and
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 peopl ...
, and the two
revived language
A revived language is one that, having experienced near or complete language extinction as either a spoken or written language, has been intentionally revived and has regained some of its former status.
The most frequent reason for extinction ...
s
Cornish and
Manx
Manx (; formerly sometimes spelled Manks) is an adjective (and derived noun) describing things or people related to the Isle of Man:
* Manx people
**Manx surnames
* Isle of Man
It may also refer to:
Languages
* Manx language, also known as Manx ...
. All are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts at
revitalisation. Welsh is an official language in
Wales and Irish is an official language of
Ireland and of the
European Union. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as
endangered by
UNESCO. The Cornish and Manx languages went extinct in modern times. They have been the object of revivals and now each has several hundred second-language speakers.
Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic form 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 ...
, while Welsh, Cornish and Breton are
Brittonic. All of these are
Insular Celtic languages, since Breton, the only living Celtic language spoken in continental Europe, is descended from the language of settlers from Britain. There are a number of extinct but attested
continental Celtic languages, such as
Celtiberian,
Galatian and
Gaulish. Beyond that there is no agreement on the subdivisions of the Celtic language family. They may be divided into
P-Celtic and
Q-Celtic.
The Celtic languages have
a rich literary tradition. The earliest specimens of written Celtic are
Lepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC in the Alps. Early Continental inscriptions used
Italic and
Paleohispanic scripts. Between the 4th and 8th centuries, Irish and
Pictish were occasionally written in an original script,
Ogham, but
Latin script came to be used for all Celtic languages. Welsh has had
a continuous literary tradition from the 6th century AD.
Living languages
SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are 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 ...
(
Irish and
Scottish Gaelic, both descended from
Middle Irish) and the
Brittonic languages (
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 peopl ...
and
Breton, both descended from
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 ...
).
The other two,
Cornish (Brittonic) and
Manx
Manx (; formerly sometimes spelled Manks) is an adjective (and derived noun) describing things or people related to the Isle of Man:
* Manx people
**Manx surnames
* Isle of Man
It may also refer to:
Languages
* Manx language, also known as Manx ...
(Goidelic), died out in modern times
with their presumed last native speakers in
1777
Events
January–March
* January 2 – American Revolutionary War – Battle of the Assunpink Creek: American general George Washington's army repulses a British attack by Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, in a second ...
and
1974
Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; f ...
respectively. For both these languages, however,
revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children and produced some native speakers.
Taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages.
Demographics
Mixed languages
*
Beurla Reagaird
Beurla Reagaird (; previously also spelled ''Beurla Reagair'') is a nearly extinct, Scottish Gaelic-based cant used by the indigenous travelling community of the Highlands of Scotland, formerly often referred to by the disparaging name "tinker ...
, Highland travellers' language
*
Shelta, based largely on
Irish with influence from an undocumented source (some 86,000 speakers in 2009).
Classification
Celtic is divided into various branches:
*
Lepontic, the oldest attested Celtic language (from the 6th century BC).
Anciently spoken in
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
and in Northern-Central
Italy. Coins with Lepontic inscriptions have been found in
Noricum and
Gallia Narbonensis
Gallia Narbonensis (Latin for "Gaul of Narbonne", from its chief settlement) was a Roman province located in what is now Languedoc and Provence, in Southern France. It was also known as Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), because it was the ...
.
*
Celtiberian, also called Eastern or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic, spoken in the ancient
Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern part of
Old Castile and south of
Aragon
Aragon ( , ; Spanish and an, Aragón ; ca, Aragó ) is an autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces (from north to sou ...
. Modern provinces: Segovia, Burgos, Soria, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Zaragoza and Teruel. The relationship of Celtiberian with
Gallaecian
Gallaecian, or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, is an extinct Celtic language of a Hispano-Celtic group. It was spoken by the Gallaeci at the beginning of the 1st millennium in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula that became the Roman ...
, in northwest Iberia, is uncertain.
*
Gallaecian
Gallaecian, or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, is an extinct Celtic language of a Hispano-Celtic group. It was spoken by the Gallaeci at the beginning of the 1st millennium in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula that became the Roman ...
, also known as Western or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, anciently spoken in the northwest of the peninsula (modern
Northern Portugal,
Galicia
Galicia may refer to:
Geographic regions
* Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain
** Gallaecia, a Roman province
** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia
** The medieval King ...
,
Asturias and
Cantabria
Cantabria (, also , , Cantabrian: ) is an autonomous community in northern Spain with Santander as its capital city. It is called a ''comunidad histórica'', a historic community, in its current Statute of Autonomy. It is bordered on the ea ...
).
*
Gaulish languages, including
Galatian and possibly
Noric Noric may refer to:
*Noricum, an ancient region
*Noric Alps
*Noric language
*Noric race
*Noric steel
*the Taurisci, also called Norici
{{Disambig, geo ...
. These were once spoken in a wide arc from
Belgium to
Turkey. They are now all extinct.
*
Brittonic, spoken in
Great Britain and
Brittany. Including the living languages
Breton,
Cornish, and
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 peopl ...
, and the lost
Cumbric and
Pictish, though Pictish may be a sister language rather than a daughter of
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 ...
. Before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, there may have been a Brittonic language there. The theory of a Brittonic
Ivernic language predating Goidelic speech in Ireland has been suggested, but is not widely accepted.
*
Goidelic, including the extant
Irish,
Manx
Manx (; formerly sometimes spelled Manks) is an adjective (and derived noun) describing things or people related to the Isle of Man:
* Manx people
**Manx surnames
* Isle of Man
It may also refer to:
Languages
* Manx language, also known as Manx ...
, and
Scottish Gaelic.
Continental/Insular Celtic and P/Q-Celtic hypotheses
Scholarly handling of Celtic languages has been contentious owing to scarceness of primary source data. Some scholars (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) distinguish
Continental Celtic and
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, ...
, arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brittonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages. Other scholars (such as Schmidt 1988) distinguish between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages based on their preferential use of these respective
consonants in similar words. Most of the Gallic and Brittonic languages are P-Celtic, while the Goidelic and Celtiberian languages are Q-Celtic. The P-Celtic languages (also called
Gallo-Brittonic) are sometimes seen (for example by Koch 1992) as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages.
The Breton language is Brittonic, not Gaulish, though there may be some input from the latter, having been introduced from Southwestern regions of Britain in the post-Roman era and having evolved into Breton.
In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was Gaelic. It has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages (see Schmidt). In the Insular/Continental classification schema, the split of the former into Gaelic and Brittonic is seen as being late.
The distinction of Celtic into these four sub-families most likely occurred about 900 BC according to Gray and Atkinson but, because of estimation uncertainty, it could be any time between 1200 and 800 BC. However, they only considered Gaelic and Brythonic. The controversial paper by Forster and Toth included Gaulish and put the break-up much earlier at 3200 BC ± 1500 years. They support the Insular Celtic hypothesis. The early Celts were commonly associated with the archaeological
Urnfield culture, the
Hallstatt culture
The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Western Europe, Western and Central European Archaeological culture, culture of Late Bronze Age Europe, Bronze Age (Hallstatt A, Hallstatt B) from the 12th to 8th centuries BC and Early Iron Age Europe ...
, and the
La Tène culture, though the earlier assumption of association between language and culture is now considered to be less strong.
There are legitimate scholarly arguments for both the Insular Celtic hypothesis and the P-/Q-Celtic hypothesis. Proponents of each schema dispute the accuracy and usefulness of the other's categories. However, since the 1970s the division into Insular and Continental Celtic has become the more widely held view (Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; Schrijver 1995), but in the middle of the 1980s, the P-/Q-Celtic theory found new supporters (Lambert 1994), because of the inscription on the Larzac piece of lead (1983), the analysis of which reveals another common phonetical innovation ''-nm-'' > ''-nu'' (Gaelic ''ainm'' / Gaulish ''anuana'', Old Welsh ''enuein'' "names"), that is less accidental than only one. The discovery of a third common innovation would allow the specialists to come to the conclusion of a
Gallo-Brittonic dialect (Schmidt 1986; Fleuriot 1986).
The interpretation of this and further evidence is still quite contested, and the main argument for Insular Celtic is connected with the development of verbal morphology and the syntax in Irish and British Celtic, which Schumacher regards as convincing, while he considers the P-Celtic/Q-Celtic division unimportant and treats Gallo-Brittonic as an outdated theory.
Stifter affirms that the Gallo-Brittonic view is "out of favour" in the scholarly community as of 2008 and the Insular Celtic hypothesis "widely accepted".
When referring only to the modern Celtic languages, since no Continental Celtic language has living descendants, "Q-Celtic" is equivalent to "Goidelic" and "P-Celtic" is equivalent to "Brittonic".
How the family tree of the Celtic languages is ordered depends on which hypothesis is used:
"Insular Celtic hypothesis"
*
Proto-Celtic
**
Continental Celtic †
***
Celtiberian †
***
Gallaecian
Gallaecian, or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, is an extinct Celtic language of a Hispano-Celtic group. It was spoken by the Gallaeci at the beginning of the 1st millennium in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula that became the Roman ...
†
***
Gaulish †
**
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, ...
***
Brittonic
***
Goidelic
"P/Q-Celtic hypothesis"
*
Proto-Celtic
** Q-Celtic
***
Celtiberian †
***
Gallaecian
Gallaecian, or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, is an extinct Celtic language of a Hispano-Celtic group. It was spoken by the Gallaeci at the beginning of the 1st millennium in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula that became the Roman ...
†
***
Goidelic
**
P-Celtic
***
Gaulish †
***
Brittonic
Eska (2010)
Eska evaluates the evidence as supporting the following tree, based on
shared innovations, though it is not always clear that the innovations are not
areal features. It seems likely that Celtiberian split off before Cisalpine Celtic, but the evidence for this is not robust. On the other hand, the unity of Gaulish, Goidelic, and Brittonic is reasonably secure. Schumacher (2004, p. 86) had already cautiously considered this grouping to be likely genetic, based, among others, on the shared reformation of the sentence-initial, fully inflecting relative pronoun ''*i̯os, *i̯ā, *i̯od'' into an uninflected enclitic particle. Eska sees
Cisalpine Gaulish as more akin to Lepontic than to Transalpine Gaulish.
* Celtic
**
Celtiberian
**
Gallaecian
Gallaecian, or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, is an extinct Celtic language of a Hispano-Celtic group. It was spoken by the Gallaeci at the beginning of the 1st millennium in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula that became the Roman ...
** Nuclear Celtic?
*** Cisalpine Celtic:
Lepontic →
Cisalpine Gaulish†
*** Transalpine–Goidelic–Brittonic (secure)
****
Transalpine Gaulish† ("Transalpine Celtic")
****
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, ...
*****
Goidelic
*****
Brittonic
Eska considers a division of Transalpine–Goidelic–Brittonic into Transalpine and Insular Celtic to be most probable because of the greater number of innovations in Insular Celtic than in P-Celtic, and because the Insular Celtic languages were probably not in great enough contact for those innovations to spread as part of a
sprachbund
A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lang ...
. However, if they have another explanation (such as an
SOV substratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
language), then it is possible that P-Celtic is a valid clade, and the top branching would be:
* Transalpine–Goidelic–Brittonic (P-Celtic hypothesis)
**
Goidelic
**
Gallo-Brittonic
***
Transalpine Gaulish ("Transalpine Celtic")
***
Brittonic
Italo-Celtic
Within the
Indo-European family, the Celtic languages have sometimes been placed with the
Italic languages
The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient languages was Latin, the official languag ...
in a common
Italo-Celtic subfamily. This hypothesis fell somewhat out of favour after reexamination by American linguist
Calvert Watkins in 1966. Irrespective, some scholars such as Ringe, Warnow and Taylor have argued in favour of an Italo-Celtic grouping in 21st century theses.
Characteristics
Although there are many differences between the individual Celtic languages, they do show many family resemblances.
*
consonant mutations (Insular Celtic only)
*
inflected prepositions (Insular Celtic only)
* two
grammatical genders (modern Insular Celtic only; Old Irish and the Continental languages had three genders, although Gaulish may have merged the neuter and masculine in its later forms)
* a
vigesimal
vigesimal () or base-20 (base-score) numeral system is based on twenty (in the same way in which the decimal numeral system is based on ten). '' Vigesimal'' is derived from the Latin adjective '' vicesimus'', meaning 'twentieth'.
Places
In ...
number system (counting by twenties)
** Cornish "fifty-six" (literally "sixteen and two twenty")
* verb–subject–object (VSO) word order (probably Insular Celtic only)
* an interplay between the subjunctive, future, imperfect, and habitual, to the point that some tenses and moods have ousted others
* an impersonal or autonomous verb form serving as a
passive or
intransitive
** Welsh "I teach" vs. "is taught, one teaches"
** Irish "I teach" vs. "is taught, one teaches"
* no
infinitives, replaced by a quasi-nominal verb form called the verbal noun or
verbnoun
* frequent use of vowel mutation as a morphological device, e.g. formation of plurals, verbal stems, etc.
* use of preverbal particles to signal either subordination or illocutionary force of the following clause
** mutation-distinguished subordinators/relativisers
**
particles for
negation
In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...
, interrogation, and occasionally for affirmative declarations
* pronouns positioned between particles and verbs
* lack of simple verb for the
imperfective "have" process, with possession conveyed by a composite structure, usually BE + preposition
** Cornish "I have a cat", literally "there is a cat to me"
** Welsh "I have a cat", literally "a cat is with me"
** Irish "I have a cat", literally "there is a cat at me"
* 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 to express verbal tense, voice, or
aspectual distinctions
* distinction by function of the two versions of BE verbs traditionally labelled substantive (or existential) and
copula
* bifurcated
demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
structure
* suffixed pronominal supplements, called confirming or supplementary pronouns
* use of singulars or special forms of counted nouns, and use of a singulative suffix to make singular forms from plurals, where older singulars have disappeared
Examples:
: ga, Ná bac le mac an bhacaigh is ní bhacfaidh mac an bhacaigh leat.
: (Literal translation) ''Do not bother with son the beggar's and not will-bother son the beggar's with-you.''
:* is the genitive of . The the result of
affection
Affection or fondness is a "disposition or state of mind or body" that is often associated with a feeling or type of love. It has given rise to a number of branches of philosophy and psychology concerning emotion, disease, influence, and sta ...
; the is the
lenited form of .
:* is the second person singular inflected form of the preposition .
:* The order is verb–subject–object (VSO) in the second half. Compare this to English or French (and possibly Continental Celtic) which are normally subject–verb–object in word order.
: cy, pedwar ar bymtheg a phedwar ugain
: (Literally) ''four on fifteen and four twenties''
:* is a mutated form of , which is ("five") plus ("ten"). Likewise, is a mutated form of .
:* The multiples of ten are .
Comparison table
The
lexical similarity between the different Celtic languages is apparent in their
core vocabulary, especially in terms of
actual pronunciation. Moreover, the
phonetic differences between languages are often the product of regular
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 ...
(i.e.
lenition of /b/ into /v/ or Ø).
The table below has words in the modern languages that were
inherited directly from
Proto-Celtic, as well as a few old
borrowings from
Latin that made their way into all the daughter languages. There is often a closer match between Welsh, Breton, and Cornish on the one hand, and Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx on the other. For a fuller list of comparisons, see the
Swadesh list for Celtic.
† Borrowings from Latin.
Examples
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
''All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.''
* ga, Saoláitear gach duine den chine daonna saor agus comhionann i ndínit agus i gcearta. Tá bua an réasúin agus an choinsiasa acu agus ba cheart dóibh gníomhú i dtreo a chéile i spiorad an bhráithreachais.
* gv, Ta dagh ooilley pheiagh ruggit seyr as corrym ayns ard-cheim as kiartyn. Ren Jee feoiltaghey resoon as cooinsheanse orroo as by chair daue ymmyrkey ry cheilley myr braaraghyn.
* gd, Tha gach uile dhuine air a bhreith saor agus co-ionnan ann an urram 's ann an còirichean. Tha iad air am breith le reusan is le cogais agus mar sin bu chòir dhaibh a bhith beò nam measg fhèin ann an spiorad bràthaireil.
* br, Dieub ha par en o dellezegezh hag o gwirioù eo ganet an holl dud. Poell ha skiant zo dezho ha dleout a reont bevañ an eil gant egile en ur spered a genvreudeuriezh.
* kw, Genys frank ha par yw oll tus an bys yn aga dynita hag yn aga gwiryow. Enduys yns gans reson ha kowses hag y tal dhedha omdhon an eyl orth y gila yn spyrys a vrederedh.
* cy, Genir pawb yn rhydd ac yn gydradd â'i gilydd mewn urddas a hawliau. Fe'u cynysgaeddir â rheswm a chydwybod, a dylai pawb ymddwyn y naill at y llall mewn ysbryd cymodlon.
Possible members of the family
Several poorly-documented languages may have been Celtic.
*
Ancient Belgian
Ancient Belgian is a hypothetical extinct Indo-European language, spoken in Belgica (northern Gaul) in late prehistory. It is often identified with the hypothetical Nordwestblock. While it remains a matter of controversy, the linguist Maurits G ...
*
Camunic is an extinct language spoken in the first millennium BC in the
Val Camonica and
Valtellina valleys of the
Central Alps. It has recently been proposed to be a Celtic language.
*
Ivernic
*
Ligurian, in the Northern Mediterranean Coast straddling the southeast French and northwest Italian coasts, including parts of
Tuscany,
Elba island and
Corsica
Corsica ( , Upper , Southern ; it, Corsica; ; french: Corse ; lij, Còrsega; sc, Còssiga) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of ...
. Xavier Delamarre argues that Ligurian was a Celtic language, similar to Gaulish. The Ligurian-Celtic question is also discussed by Barruol (1999). Ancient Ligurian is either listed as Celtic (epigraphic),
or Para-Celtic (onomastic).
*
Lusitanian, spoken in the area between the Douro and Tagus rivers of western
Iberia (a region straddling the present border of
Portugal and
Spain). Known from only five inscriptions and various place names.
It is an Indo-European language and some scholars have proposed that it may be a para-Celtic language, which evolved alongside Celtic or formed a
dialect continuum or
sprachbund
A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lang ...
with Tartessian and Gallaecian. This is tied to a theory of an Iberian origin for the Celtic languages.
It is also possible that the Q-Celtic languages alone, including Goidelic, originated in western Iberia (a theory that was first put forward by
Edward Lhuyd in 1707) or shared a common linguistic ancestor with Lusitanian. Secondary evidence for this hypothesis has been found in research by biological scientists, who have identified (1) deep-rooted similarities in human DNA found precisely in both the former
Lusitania
Lusitania (; ) was an ancient Iberian Roman province located where modern Portugal (south of the Douro river) and
a portion of western Spain (the present Extremadura and the province of Salamanca) lie. It was named after the Lusitani or Lusita ...
and
Ireland, and; (2) the so-called "
Lusitanian distribution
In biology, a taxon with a disjunct distribution is one that has two or more groups that are related but considerably separated from each other geographically. The causes are varied and might demonstrate either the expansion or contraction of a ...
" of animals and plants unique to western Iberia and Ireland. Both phenomena are now generally thought to have resulted from human emigration from Iberia to Ireland, in the late
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
or early
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...
eras.
Other scholars see greater linguistic affinities between Lusitanian,
proto-Gallo-Italic (particularly with
Ligurian) and
Old European.
Prominent modern linguists such as
Ellis Evans
David Ellis Evans FBA (23 September 1930 – 26 September 2013) was a Welsh scholar and academic. He was born in the Tywy Valley in Carmarthenshire and went to Llandeilo Grammar School.
After studying at Jesus College, Oxford and receivin ...
, believe
Gallaecian
Gallaecian, or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, is an extinct Celtic language of a Hispano-Celtic group. It was spoken by the Gallaeci at the beginning of the 1st millennium in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula that became the Roman ...
-Lusitanian was in fact one same language (not separate languages) of the "P" Celtic variant.
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Rhaetic
Rhaetic or Raetic (), also known as Rhaetian, was a language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by around 280 texts dated from the 5th up until the 1st century BC, which wer ...
, spoken in central
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
,
Tyrol in
Austria, and the Alpine regions of northeast
Italy. Documented by a limited number of short inscriptions (found through Northern Italy and Western Austria) in two variants of the
Etruscan alphabet. Its linguistic categorization is not clearly established, and it presents a confusing mixture of what appear to be
Etruscan,
Indo-European, and uncertain other elements.
Howard Hayes Scullard argues that Rhaetian was also a Celtic language.
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Tartessian, spoken in the southwest of the Iberia Peninsula (mainly southern
Portugal and southwest Spain).
Tartessian is known by 95 inscriptions, with the longest having 82 readable signs.
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 ...
argues that Tartessian was also a Celtic language.
See also
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Ogham
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Celts
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Celts (modern)
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A Swadesh list of the modern Celtic languages
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Celtic Congress
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Celtic League
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Continental Celtic languages
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Italo-Celtic
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Language family
Notes
References
* Ball, Martin J. & James Fife (ed.) (1993). ''The Celtic Languages''. London: Routledge. .
* Borsley, Robert D. & Ian Roberts (ed.) (1996). ''The Syntax of the Celtic Languages: A Comparative Perspective''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
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* ''Celtic Linguistics, 1700–1850'' (2000). London; New York: Routledge. 8 vols comprising 15 texts originally published between 1706 and 1844.
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* Lewis, Henry &
Holger Pedersen (1989). ''A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar''. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. .
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Further reading
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* .
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External links
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Aberdeen University Celtic Department
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ttp://www.breizh.net/icdbl/saozg/Celtic_Languages.pdf Celts and Celtic Languages(PDF)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Celtic languages