During the first millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much ofEurope and centralAnatolia. Today, they are restricted to the northwestern fringe of Europe anda few diaspora communities. There are six living languages: the four continuously living languagesBreton,Irish,Scottish Gaelic andWelsh, and the tworevived languagesCornish andManx. All are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts atrevitalisation. Welsh is an official language inWales and Irish is an official language across the island ofIreland and of theEuropean Union. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified asendangered byUNESCO. The Cornish and Manx languages became extinct in modern times but have been revived. Each now has several hundred second-language speakers.
Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic form theGoidelic languages, while Welsh, Cornish and Breton areBrittonic. All of these areInsular 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 attestedcontinental Celtic languages, such asCeltiberian,Galatian andGaulish. Gaulish is more closely related toInsular Celtic than either of these two are to Celtiberian; together, Gaulish and Insular Celtic form theNuclear Celtic subfamily. Beyond that, there is no agreement on the subdivisions of the Celtic language family. They may be divided intoP-Celtic andQ-Celtic.
The Celtic languages havea rich literary tradition. The earliest specimens of written Celtic areLepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC in the Alps. Early Continental inscriptions usedItalic andPaleohispanic scripts. Between the 4th and 8th centuries, Irish andPictish were occasionally written in an original script,Ogham, butLatin script came to be used for all Celtic languages. Welsh has hada continuous literary tradition from the 6th century AD.
SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are: theGoidelic languages (Irish andScottish Gaelic, both descended fromMiddle Irish) and theBrittonic languages (Welsh andBreton, descended fromCommon Brittonic).[5] The other two,Cornish (Brittonic) andManx (Goidelic), died out in modern times[6][7][8] with their presumed last native speakers in1777 and1974 respectively.Revitalisation movements in the 2000s led to the reemergence of native speakers for both languages following their adoption by adults and children.[9][10] By the 21st century, there were roughly one million total speakers of Celtic languages,[11] increasing to 1.4 million speakers by 2010.[12]
Classification of Celtic languages according to Insular vs. Continental hypothesis.(click to enlarge)Classification of Indo-European languages.(click to enlarge)TheCeltic nations, where Celtic languages are spoken today, or were spoken into the modern era:
The second of the fourBotorrita plaques. The third plaque is the longest text discovered in any ancient Celtic language. However, this plaque is inscribed in Latin script.[45]
Celtiberian, also called Eastern or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic, spoken in the ancientIberian Peninsula, in the eastern part ofOld Castile and south ofAragon. Modern provinces: Segovia, Burgos, Soria, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Zaragoza and Teruel. The relationship of Celtiberian withGallaecian, in northwest Iberia, is uncertain.[51][52]
Gaulish languages, includingGalatian and possiblyNoric. These were once spoken in a wide arc fromBelgium toTurkey. They are now all extinct.
Brittonic, spoken inGreat Britain andBrittany. Including the living languagesBreton,Cornish, andWelsh, and the lostCumbric andPictish, though Pictish may be a sister language rather than a daughter ofCommon Brittonic.[54] 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 BrittonicIvernic language predating Goidelic speech in Ireland has been suggested, but is not widely accepted.[6]
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) posit that the primary distinction is betweenContinental Celtic andInsular Celtic, arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brittonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages.[55] Other scholars (such as Schmidt 1988) make the primary distinction between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages based on the replacement of initial Q by initial P in some words. Most of the Gallic and Brittonic languages are P-Celtic, while the Goidelic and Hispano-Celtic (or Celtiberian) languages are Q-Celtic. The P-Celtic languages (also calledGallo-Brittonic) are sometimes seen (for example by Koch 1992) as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. According toRanko Matasović in the introduction to his 2009Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic: "Celtiberian ... is almost certainly an independent branch on the Celtic genealogical tree, one that became separated from the others very early."[56]
The Breton language is Brittonic, not Gaulish, though there may be some input from the latter,[57] 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 & Atkinson[58][59] but, because of estimation uncertainty, it could be any time between 1200 and 800 BC. However, they only considered Gaelic and Brythonic. A controversial paper by Forster & Toth[60] 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 archaeologicalUrnfield culture, theHallstatt culture, and theLa Tène culture, though the earlier assumption of association between language and culture is now considered to be less strong.[61][62]
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 (Gaelicainm / Gaulishanuana, Old Welshenuein '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 aGallo-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.[46] 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".[63]
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:
Eska[64] evaluates the evidence as supporting the following tree, based onshared innovations, though it is not always clear that the innovations are notareal 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 seesCisalpine Gaulish as more akin to Lepontic than to Transalpine Gaulish.
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 asprachbund. However, if they have another explanation (such as anSOVsubstratum language), then it is possible that P-Celtic is a valid clade, and the top branching would be:
Within theIndo-European family, the Celtic languages have sometimes been placed with theItalic languages in a commonItalo-Celtic subfamily. This hypothesis fell somewhat out of favour after reexamination by American linguistCalvert Watkins in 1966.[65] Irrespectively, some scholars such as Ringe, Warnow and Taylor and many others have argued in favour of an Italo-Celtic grouping in 21st century theses.[66]
twogrammatical 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)[67][citation needed]
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:
Irish: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.
bhacaigh is the genitive ofbacach. Theigh the result ofaffection; the⟨bh⟩ is thelenited form of⟨b⟩.
leat is the second person singular inflected form of the prepositionle.
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.
The table below has words in the modern languages that wereinherited direct fromProto-Celtic, as well as a few oldborrowings fromLatin 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 theSwadesh list for Celtic.
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.
Irish:Saolaítear 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.
Manx: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.
Scottish Gaelic: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.
Breton: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.
Cornish: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.
Welsh: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.
Camunic is an extinct language spoken in the first millennium BC in theVal Camonica andValtellina valleys of theCentral Alps. It has recently been proposed that it was a Celtic language.[71]
Ligurian, on the Northern Mediterranean Coast straddling the southeast French and northwest Italian coasts, including parts ofTuscany,Elba andCorsica. Xavier Delamarre argues that Ligurian was a Celtic language similar to Gaulish.[72] The Ligurian-Celtic question is also discussed by Barruol (1999). Ancient Ligurian is listed as either Celtic (epigraphic),[73] or Para-Celtic (onomastic).[48]
Lusitanian, spoken in the area between the Douro and Tagus rivers of westernIberia (a region straddling the present border ofPortugal andSpain). Known from only five inscriptions and various place names.[74] It is an Indo-European language and some scholars have proposed that it may be a para-Celtic language that evolved alongside Celtic or formed adialect continuum orsprachbund with Tartessian and Gallaecian. This is tied to a theory of an Iberian origin for the Celtic languages.[74][75][76] It is also possible that the Q-Celtic languages alone, including Goidelic, originated in western Iberia (a theory that was first put forward byEdward Lhuyd in 1707) or shared a common linguistic ancestor with Lusitanian.[77] 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 formerLusitania andIreland,[78][79] and; (2) the so-called "Lusitanian distribution" 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 latePaleolithic or earlyMesolithic eras.[80] Other scholars see greater linguistic affinities between Lusitanian,Old Gallo-Italic (particularly withLigurian) andOld European.[81][82] Prominent modern linguists such asEllis Evans, believeGallaecian-Lusitanian was in fact one same language (not separate languages) of the "P" Celtic variant.[83][84]
Rhaetic, spoken in centralSwitzerland,Tyrol inAustria, and the Alpine regions of northeastItaly. Documented by a limited number of short inscriptions (found through Northern Italy and Western Austria) in two variants of theEtruscan alphabet. Its linguistic categorisation is not clearly established, and it presents a confusing mixture of what appear to beEtruscan,Indo-European, and uncertain other elements.Howard Hayes Scullard argues that Rhaetian was also a Celtic language.[85]
Tartessian, spoken in the southwest of the Iberia Peninsula (mainly southernPortugal and southwest Spain).[86] Tartessian is known by 95 inscriptions, with the longest having 82 readable signs.[75][87][88]John T. Koch argues that Tartessian was also a Celtic language.[88]
^Christina Bratt Paulston (24 March 1994).Linguistic Minorities in Multilingual Settings: Implications for Language Policies. J. Benjamins Pub. Co. p. 81.ISBN1-55619-347-5.
^Pierce, David (2000).Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century. Cork University Press. p. 1140.ISBN1-85918-208-9.
^Pole Études et Développement Observatoire des Pratiques Linguistiques."Situation de la Langue". Office Public de la Langue Bretonne.Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved6 March 2016.
^"Isle of Man Census Report 2011"(PDF). Economic Affairs Division, Isle of Man Government Treasury. April 2012. p. 27. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 5 November 2013. Retrieved9 June 2014.
^abSchumacher, Stefan; Schulze-Thulin, Britta; aan de Wiel, Caroline (2004).Die keltischen Primärverben. Ein vergleichendes, etymologisches und morphologisches Lexikon (in German). Institut für Sprachen und Kulturen,University of Innsbruck. pp. 84–87.ISBN3-85124-692-6.
^Percivaldi, Elena (2003).I Celti: una civiltà europea. Giunti Editore. p. 82.
^abKruta, Venceslas (1991).The Celts. Thames and Hudson. p. 55.
^Stifter, David (2008).Old Celtic Languages(PDF). p. 12.Archived(PDF) from the original on 2 October 2012. Retrieved19 December 2012.
^Prósper, B.M. (2002).Lenguas y religiones prerromanas del occidente de la península ibérica. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. pp. 422–27.ISBN84-7800-818-7.
^Villar F., B. M. Prósper. (2005).Vascos, Celtas e Indoeuropeos: genes y lenguas. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. pgs. 333–350.ISBN84-7800-530-7.
^"In the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, and more specifically between the west and north Atlantic coasts and an imaginary line running north-south and linking Oviedo and Merida, there is a corpus of Latin inscriptions with particular characteristics of its own. This corpus contains some linguistic features that are clearly Celtic and others that in our opinion are not Celtic. The former we shall group, for the moment, under the label northwestern Hispano-Celtic. The latter are the same features found in well-documented contemporary inscriptions in the region occupied by the Lusitanians, and therefore belonging to the variety known as LUSITANIAN, or more broadly as GALLO-LUSITANIAN. As we have already said, we do not consider this variety to belong to the Celtic language family." Jordán Colera 2007: p.750
^Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that there were two Pictish languages, a pre-Indo-European one and aPritenic Celtic one. This has been challenged by some scholars. SeeKatherine Forsyth's"Language in Pictland: the case against 'non-Indo-European Pictish'""Etext"(PDF).Archived(PDF) from the original on 19 February 2006. Retrieved20 January 2006. (27.8 MB). 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'""Etext"(PDF). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 20 February 2006. (172 KB ). Compare also the treatment of Pictish in Price'sThe Languages of Britain (1984) with hisLanguages in Britain & Ireland (2000).
^James, Simon (1999).The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention?. London:British Museum Press.ISBN0714121657.
^Stifter, David (2008).Old Celtic Languages(PDF). p. 11.Archived(PDF) from the original on 2 October 2012. Retrieved19 December 2012.
^Joseph F. Eska (2010) "The emergence of the Celtic languages". In Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller (eds.),The Celtic languages. Routledge.ISBN9781138969995
^Markey, Thomas (2008). "Shared Symbolics, Genre Diffusion, Token Perception and Late Literacy in North-Western Europe".NOWELE: North-Western European Language Evolution.54–55. NOWELE:5–62.doi:10.1075/nowele.54-55.01mar.
^The inscription of Cabeço das Fráguas revisited. Lusitanian and Alteuropäisch populations in the West of the Iberian Peninsula Transactions of the Philological Society vol. 97 (2003)
Ball, Martin J. & James Fife (ed.) (1993).The Celtic Languages. London: Routledge.ISBN0-415-01035-7.
Borsley, Robert D. & Ian Roberts (ed.) (1996).The Syntax of the Celtic Languages: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0521481600.
Cowgill, Warren (1975). "The origins of the Insular Celtic conjunct and absolute verbal endings". In H. Rix (ed.).Flexion und Wortbildung: Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Regensburg, 9.–14. September 1973. Wiesbaden: Reichert. pp. 40–70.ISBN3-920153-40-5.
Celtic Linguistics, 1700–1850 (2000). London; New York: Routledge. 8 vols comprising 15 texts originally published between 1706 and 1844.
McCone, Kim (1991). "The PIE stops and syllabic nasals in Celtic".Studia Celtica Japonica.4:37–69.
McCone, Kim (1992). "Relative Chronologie: Keltisch". In R. Beekes; A. Lubotsky; J. Weitenberg (eds.).Rekonstruktion und relative Chronologie: Akten Der VIII. Fachtagung Der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Leiden, 31 August – 4 September 1987. Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. pp. 12–39.ISBN3-85124-613-6.
McCone, Kim (1996).Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change. Maynooth: Department of Old and Middle Irish, St. Patrick's College.ISBN0-901519-40-5.
Russell, Paul (1995).An Introduction to the Celtic Languages. Longman.ISBN0582100828.
Schmidt, K. H. (1988). "On the reconstruction of Proto-Celtic". In G. W. MacLennan (ed.).Proceedings of the First North American Congress of Celtic Studies, Ottawa 1986. Ottawa: Chair of Celtic Studies. pp. 231–48.ISBN0-09-693260-0.
Schumacher, Stefan; Schulze-Thulin, Britta; aan de Wiel, Caroline (2004).Die keltischen Primärverben. Ein vergleichendes, etymologisches und morphologisches Lexikon (in German). Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Kulturen der Universität Innsbruck.ISBN3-85124-692-6.
