The 'Celtic languages' are the
languages descended from
Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater
Indo-European language family. During the
1st millennium BC, they were spoken across
Europe, from the Bay of Biscay and the North Sea, up the Rhine and down the Danube to the Black Sea and the Upper Balkan Peninsula, and into
Asia Minor (
Galatia). Today, Celtic languages are limited to a few areas in
Great Britain, the
Isle of Man,
Ireland,
Cape Breton Island,
Patagonia, and on the peninsula of
Brittany in
France. Proto-Celtic apparently divided into four sub-families:
★
Gaulish and its close relatives,
Lepontic,
Noric and
Galatian. These languages were once spoken in a wide arc from
France to
Turkey and from
Belgium to northern
Italy.
★
Celtiberian, anciently spoken in the
Iberian peninsula [1] ,namely in the areas of modern Northern and
South-central Portugal, and
Galicia,
Asturias,
Cantabria,
Aragón and
León in
Spain.
★
Goidelic, including
Irish,
Scottish Gaelic, and
Manx.
★
Brythonic (also called Brittonic), including
Welsh,
Breton,
Cornish,
Cumbric, the hypothetical
Ivernic, and possibly also
Pictish.
[1]
Scholarly handling of the Celtic languages has been rather argumentative owing to lack of primary source data. Some scholars distinguish Continental and Insular Celtic, arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brythonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages. Other scholars distinguish P-Celtic from Q-Celtic, putting most of the Continental Celtic languages in the former group (except for Celtiberian, which is Q-Celtic).
The Breton language is Brythonic, not Gaulish. When the
Anglo-Saxons moved into
Great Britain, some of the native
Brythons or "
Welsh" (from a Germanic word for "foreigners") fled across the
English Channel and landed in
Brittany. They brought their Brythonic language with them, which evolved into Breton — which is still partially intelligible with Modern Welsh and Cornish.
The distinction of Celtic into these four sub-families probably occurred about
1000 BC. The early Celts are commonly associated with the archaeological
Urnfield culture, the
Hallstatt culture, and the
La Tène culture.
Classification
There are two competing schemata of categorization. One scheme, argued for by Schmidt (1988) among others, links Gaulish with Brythonic in a 'P-Celtic' node, leaving Goidelic as 'Q-Celtic'. The difference between P and Q languages is the treatment of
Proto-Celtic ★ ''k
w'', which became
★ ''p'' in the P-Celtic languages but
★ ''k'' in Goidelic. An example is the Proto-Celtic verb root
★ ''k
wrin-'' "to buy", which became ''pryn-'' in Welsh but ''cren-'' in
Old Irish.
The other scheme, defended for example by McCone (1996), links Goidelic and Brythonic together as an
Insular Celtic branch, while Gaulish and Celtiberian are referred to as
Continental Celtic. According to this theory, the "P-Celtic" sound change of to occurred independently or areally. The proponents of the Insular Celtic hypothesis point to other shared innovations among Insular Celtic languages, including inflected prepositions, VSO word order, and the lenition of intervocalic to , a
nasalized voiced bilabial fricative (an extremely rare sound). There is, however, no assumption that the Continental Celtic languages descend from a common "Proto-Continental Celtic" ancestor. Rather, the Insular/Continental schemata usually considers Celtiberian the first branch to split from Proto-Celtic, and the remaining group would later have split into Gaulish and Insular Celtic.
There are legitimate scholarly arguments in favour of both the Insular Celtic hypothesis and the P-Celtic/Q-Celtic hypothesis. Proponents of each schema dispute the accuracy and usefulness of the other's categories. Since the realization that Celtiberian was Q-Celtic in the
1970s, the division into Insular and Continental Celtic is the more widespread opinion.
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 "Brythonic".
Within the
Indo-European family, the Celtic languages have sometimes been placed with the
Italic languages in a common
Italo-Celtic subfamily, a hypothesis that is now largely discarded, in favour of the assumption of
language contact between pre-Celtic and pre-Italic communities.
How the family tree of the Celtic languages is ordered depends on which hypothesis is used -
Characteristics of Celtic languages
Although there are many differences between the individual Celtic languages, they do show many family resemblances. While none of these characteristics is necessarily unique to the Celtic languages, there are few if any other languages which possess them all. They include:
★
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)
★ a
vigesimal number system (counting by twenties)
★ verb-subject-object (VSO) word order
★ 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 ''dysgais'' "I taught" vs. ''dysgwyd'' "was taught, one taught"
★ 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/relativizers
★
★ particles for negation, interrogation, and occasionally for afirmative declarations
★ infixed 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
★ use of periphrastic phrases 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 structure
★ suffixed pronominal supplements, called confirming or supplementary pronouns
★ use of singulars and/or special forms of counted nouns, and use of a singulative suffix to make singular forms from plurals, where older singulars have disappeared
Examples:
(Irish) ''Ná bac le mac an bhacaigh is ní bhacfaidh mac an bhacaigh leat.''
(Literal translation) Don't bother with son the beggar's and not will-bother son the beggar's with-you.
★ ''bhacaigh'' is the genitive of ''bacach''. The ''igh'' the result of
affection; the ''bh'' is the
lenited form of ''b''.
★ ''leat'' is the second person singular inflected form of the preposition ''le''.
★ The order is VSO in the second half.
(Welsh) ''pedwar ar bymtheg a phedwar ugain''
(literally) four on fifteen and four twenties
★ ''bymtheg'' is a mutated form of ''pymtheg'', which is ''pump'' ("five") plus ''deg'' ("ten"). Likewise, ''phedwar'' is a mutated form of ''pedwar''.
★ The multiples of ten are ''deg, ugain, deg ar hugain, deugain, hanner cant, trigain, deg a thrigain, pedwar ugain, deg a phedwar ugain, cant''.
Mixed languages
★
Bungee language, a Metis mix of
Scottish Gaelic and
Cree language
★
Shelta, a mix of
Romany language, the
Irish language and
English
★ Some forms of
Romany language in Wales, also combined Romany itself with
Welsh language and
English language forms.
See also
★
Language families and languages
★
Celtic League (political organisation)
★
Celtic Congress
External links
★
Aberdeen University Celtic Department
★
Ethnologue report for Celtic languages
★
Ethnologue report for Indo-European languages
★
"Labara: An Introduction to the Celtic Languages", by Meredith Richard
★
Celts and Celtic Languages
References
★ Ball, Martin J. & James Fife (ed.) (1993). ''The Celtic Languages''. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415010357.
★ Borsley, Robert D. & Ian Roberts (ed.) (1996). ''The Syntax of the Celtic Languages: A Comparative Perspective''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521481600.
★ ''Celtic Linguistics, 1700-1850'' (2000). London; New York: Routledge. 8 vol.s comprising 15 texts originally published between 1706 and 1844.
★ Hindley, Reg (1990). ''The Death of the Irish Language: A Qualified Obituary''. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415043395.
★ Lewis, Henry & Holger Pedersen (1989). ''A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar''. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 3525261020.
★
Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change, McCone, K., , , Department of Old and Middle Irish, St. Patrick's College, 1996, ISBN 0-901519-40-5
★ Russell, Paul (1995). ''An Introduction to the Celtic Languages''. London; New York: Longman. ISBN 0582100828.
★
Proceedings of the First North American Congress of Celtic Studies, Ottawa 1986, Schmidt, K. H., , , Chair of Celtic Studies, 1988, ISBN 0-09-693260-0
Notes
1. The late Kenneth Jackson proposed a non-Indo-European Pictish language existing alongside a ''Pretenic'' one. This is no longer generally accepted. See Katherine Forsyth's ''"Language in Pictland : the case against 'non-Indo-European Pictish'" '' . See also the introduction by James & Taylor to the ''"Index of Celtic and Other Elements in W.J.Watson's 'The History of the Celtic Place-names of Scotland'"'' . Compare also the treatment of Pictish in Price's ''The Languages of Britain'' (1984) with his ''Languages in Britain & Ireland'' (2000).
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