Neo-Brittonic, also known as Neo-Brythonic, is a stage of the Insular Celtic

Brittonic Brittonic or Brythonic may refer to: *Common Brittonic, or Brythonic, the Celtic language anciently spoken in Great Britain *Brittonic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages descended from Common Brittonic *Britons (Celtic people) The Br ...

languages that emerged by the middle of the sixth century CE. Neo-Brittonic languages include Old, Middle and Modern Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, as well as

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 potentially

Pictish Pictish is the 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 number of geographica ...

History

Neo-Brittonic emerged out of Late Brittonic around the middle of the sixth century CE. It is marked by the loss of Brittonic final syllables ( apocope) and the eventual loss of compositional vowels in compound words ( syncope) among other features, such as

vowel shift A vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language. The best-known example in the English language is the Great Vowel Shift, which began in the 15th century. The Greek language also underwent a vow ...

(notably quantity collapse with the lengthening of short stressed vowels before short consonants), vowel affection,

lenition In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a pa ...

of internal

consonants 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 ...

, and the development of complex system of grammatical mutations. The initial stage of the Neo-Brittonic, from around the middle of the sixth century CE to the emergence of Old Welsh,

Old Cornish Cornish (Standard Written Form: or ) , is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is a revived language, having become extinct as a living community language in Cornwall at the end of the 18th century. However, k ...

, and Old Breton by the

ninth century The 9th century was a period from 801 ( DCCCI) through 900 ( CM) in accordance with the Julian calendar. The Carolingian Renaissance and the Viking raids occurred within this period. In the Middle East, the House of Wisdom was founded in Abbas ...

CE has been termed ''Common Archaic Neo-Brittonic'' by Celticist

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 ...

. Documents written in Neo-Brittonic languages (or non-Brittonic documents containing Neo-Brittonic

onomastic Onomastics (or, in older texts, onomatology) is the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names. An '' orthonym'' is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onomastic study. Onomastics can be helpful in data mining, ...

material, primarily written in

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 ...

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 settlers in the mid-5th c ...

) during this time are scarce, but seem to show a pre-dialectal state in which the

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 ...

(Cornish and Breton) had not yet significantly diverged from

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 ...

(Welsh and Cumbric), though differences may have been masked by scribes across the Neo-Brittonic world using a common

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

dating to an earlier period.

Apocope

One of the most notable changes in the language was the mid-sixth century loss of Brittonic final syllables of words in a process called ''apocope''. Apocope was due partially to Brittonic penultimate stress access and resulted in the change of inflection type from synthetic to analytic. Brittonic final syllables, which were used to mark grammatical

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...

and case, likely began to erode much earlier than the sixth century, judging from the evidence of Brittonic's cousin language,

Gaulish Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switze ...

, in which the final consonants already began to disappear in writing by the 3rd-4th centuries CE.Schrijver, Peter, "The Châteaubleau tile as a link between Latin and French and between Gaulish and Brittonic", Études celtiques, Vol. 34, 1998, pp. 135-142

References

Bibliography

* Ball, Martin J. and Müller, Nichole ds.(2015), ''The Celtic Languages'', 2nd ed., New York: Routledge; . * Evans, D. Ellis. (1990) ''Insular Celtic and the emergence of the Welsh language'', in: Bammesberger, Alfred, Wollmann, Alfred ds. ''Britain 400-600. Language and History'', Heidelberg, C. Winter, pp. 149–177 * Falileyev, Alexander, and Morfydd E. Owen. (2005). ''The Leiden leechbook. A study of the earliest Neo-Brittonic medical compilation'', Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Sonderheft 122, Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck. * Jackson, Kenneth H. (1953), ''Language and History in Early Britain'', Edinburgh University Press. * Koch, John T. (1997), ''The Gododdin of Aneirin. Text and context from Dark-Age North Britain'', Cardiff: University of Wales Press. * Koch, John. (1989), ''Neo-Brittonic Spirants from Old Celtic Geminates'', Ériu 40, pp. 119–28. * Koch, John T (1985–6), ''When was Welsh Literature First Written Down?'', Studia Celtica 20/21, pp. 43–66. * Russell, Paul (2014), ''An Introduction to the Celtic Languages'', Routledge. * Schrijver, Peter (1995), ''Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology'', Rodopi. * Sims-Williams, Patrick (2003), ''The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: Phonology and Chronology, c. 400–1200''; Oxford, Blackwell; . * Sims-Williams, Patrick, Sims-Williams, P. (1990). ''Dating the Transition to Neo-Brittonic: Phonology and History, 400-600''. In A. Bammesberger, & A. Wollmann (Eds.), Britain 400-600: Language and History. (Vol. 205, pp. 217–261). (Anglistische Forschungen). Heidelberg: Universitaetsverlag Winter. * Ternes, Elmar d.(2011), ''Brythonic Celtic – Britannisches Keltisch: From Medieval British to Modern Breton''; Bremen: Hempen Verlag.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brittonic, Neo- * History of the Welsh language Brythonic Celts Proto-languages Languages attested from the 6th century