BRITISH LANGUAGE (CELTIC)

'British' was an ancient Celtic language spoken in much of southern and central Britain, up to the central lowlands of Scotland. According to Julius Caesar, it was similar to the language spoken in central Gaul. It is not known when the British language arrived - times from the Neolithic to the Iron Age have been suggested. The language is likely to have been modified during the Roman period by the influence of Latin. It evolved into Brythonic about AD500. British was later replaced in Scotland by Gaelic.

Contents

History

Sources

Evolution of British

Place names

List of place names derived from British

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

History

Sources

There appear to be no written documents in the language except for a few inscriptions.^[1] There is an inscription on a metal pendant discovered in 1979 in Bath, which seem to be Latinised Celtic names:^[2]
''Adixovi Devina Devada Andagin Vindiorix Cvam Vnai''
(see also Tomlin 1987).
Place-names are another type of evidence. The place names of Roman Britain were discussed by Rivet and Smith in their book of that name published in 1979. They show that the majority of names used were derived from British. English place names still contain elements derived from British in a few cases. Latinised forms of these placenames occur in Ptolemy's Geography, for example.
Modern knowledge of the tongue is limited to a few names of people and places. Comparison with Continental Celtic languages, specifically Gaulish, shows that it was very similar to other Celtic languages of the time.

Evolution of British

An important discussion about the language was given by Kenneth Jackson in his book, ''Language and History in Early Britain'', published in 1953. Later discussions are given by Price, Trughill and Lockwood.
British competed with Latin since the Roman invasion of AD 43, at least, in major settlements. A number of Latin words were borrowed by British speakers. The Anglo-Saxon invasions several centuries later marked the beginning of a decline in the language, as Germanic languages spread through England and the south of Scotland. Some British speakers migrated to Amorica and Gallica. By AD 700, British was mainly spoken in Cumbria, Cornwall and Wales possibly together with parts of Scotland. Its descendents today are Cornish, Welsh and Breton.
The British language changed in structure after the Roman period and evolved into Common Brythonic (Brittonic), spoken over the whole of Britain. However, with the Anglo-Saxon invasions and progressive occupation of what became England and south Scotland, the Celtic languages were mainly restricted to the west and south-west. However, languages derived from British have continued to be spoken in Britain to the present day. Surprisingly few British words have been adopted into modern English, but recently some influence on its structure has been identified, see Filppula.
Recently, calculations of the dating of the split off of British have been carried out usung phylogenic methods, eg by Gray and Atkinson, and by Forster and Toth. The latter suggest that the language arrived earlier than previously suggested and this is also the view of Oppenheimer.
In the post-Roman period, inscriptions in Ogham, 191 of which are in British, demonstrate the evolution of the British language towards Old Welsh (Sims-Williams).

Place names

British survives today in a few English place names and river names. However, some of these may be pre-Celtic. The best example is perhaps that of the River(s) Avon, which comes from the British ''abona'' "river" (compare Welsh ''afon'', Cornish ''avon'', Cumbric, ''avan'' Irish ''abhainn'', Manx ''awin'', Breton ''aven'').

List of place names derived from British

British-derived place-names are scattered across England, with more in the west, Examples are:

★ ''Avon'' from ''abonā'' = "river"

★ ''Britain'' from ''britani'' = "painted (people)"

★ ''Cumbria'' from ''cumbā'' = "valleys" (possibly from Cumbric)

★ ''Dover'' from ''dubrīs'' = "waters"

★ ''Kent'' from ''cantus'' = "border"

★ ''Severn'' from ''sabrīna''

★ ''Thanet'' from ''tan-arth'' = "fire-height"

★ ''Thames'' from ''tamesis''

★ ''York'' from ''ebor-acon'' = "place of yew trees" (indirectly)
Some British place names are known but are no longer used. In a charter of 682 the name of Creech St Michael (Somerset) is given as "cructan".

Notes

# - ''Language in the British Isles''
Devada - Looks very like 'dafad' (sheep , sing.) and 'defaid' (sheep, pl.) in Welsh

References

1. Ireland and the Classical World, Philip Freeman, , , University of Texas Press, 2001,
2. Was ancient British Celtic ever a written language? Two texts from Roman Bath, Tomlin, R.S.O., , , Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 1987

Bibliography

★ Lambert, Pierre-Yves (2003) ''La langue gauloise''. 2nd edition. Paris, Editions Errance. p.176

★ Price, G. (2000). ''Languages of Britain and Ireland'', Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-21581-6

★ Sims-Williams, Patrick (2003) ''The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: phonology and chronology, c.400-1200.'' Oxford, Blackwell. ISBN 1-4051-0903-3

★ Trudgill, P. (ed.) (1984). ''Language in the British Isles'', Cambridge University Press.

★ W.B.Lockwood. ''Languages of the British Isles past and present'', ISBN 0-521-28409-0

★ Forster and Toth, ''Toward a phylogenetic chronology of ancient Gaulish, Celtic and Indo-European''. PNAS July 22 2003.

★ Nicholas Ostler ''Empires of the Word''

★ Atkinson and Gray, ''Are Accurate Dates an Intractable Problem for Historical Linguistics''. In ''Mapping Our Ancestry'', Eds Obrien, Shennan and Collard.

★ S Oppenheimer, ''The Origins of the British''.

★ M Fippula, ''The Celtic Roots of English''.

External links

★ http://www.roman-britain.org/chase/_romans.htm