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| Common Brittonic | |
|---|---|
| *Brittonikā[1] | |
| Region | Great Britain |
| Ethnicity | Britons |
| Era | c. 6th century BC to mid-6th century AD[2] Developed intoOld Welsh,Cumbric,Cornish,Breton and possiblyPictish[3] |
Indo-European
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
brit | |
| Glottolog | None |
| Linguasphere | 50-AB |
Common Brittonic (Welsh:Brythoneg;Cornish:Brythonek;Breton:Predeneg), also known asBritish, orProto-Brittonic,[4][5] is thereconstructedCeltic language thought to be historically spoken by theCeltic Britons inBritain andBrittany. It is thecommon ancestor of the laterBrittonic languages.
It is a form ofInsular Celtic, descended fromProto-Celtic, a theorized parent language that, by the first half of the first millennium BC, wasdiverging into separate dialects or languages.[6][7][8][9] Evidence from early and modern Welsh shows that Common Brittonic was influenced byLatin during theRoman period, especially in terms related to thechurch andChristianity.[10] By the sixth century AD, the languages of the Celtic Britons were swiftly diverging intoNeo-Brittonic:Welsh,Cumbric,Cornish,Breton.Pictish may either have been a sister language or a descendant branch.[11][12][13]
Over the next three centuries, Brittonic was replaced byScottish Gaelic in most of Scotland, and byOld English (from which descendModern English andScots) throughout most of modern England as well as Scotland south of theFirth of Forth.[14] Cumbric disappeared in the 12th century,[14] and in the far south-west,Cornish probably became extinct in the 18th century, though it has since beenrevived.[15][a] Welsh and Breton are the only daughter languages that have survived fully into the modern day.
No documents in the language have been found, but a few inscriptions have been identified.[17] TheBath curse tablets, found in the Roman feeder pool atBath, Somerset (Aquae Sulis), bear about 150 names – about 50% Celtic (but not necessarily Brittonic). An inscription on a metal pendant (discovered there in 1979) seems to contain an ancient Brittonic curse:[18] "Adixoui Deuina Deieda Andagin Uindiorix cuamenai". (Sometimes the final word has been renderedcuamiinai.) This text is often seen as: 'The affixed – Deuina, Deieda, Andagin [and] Uindiorix – I have bound';[19] else, at the opposite extreme, taking into account case-marking –-rix 'king' nominative,andagin 'worthless woman' accusative,dewina deieda 'divine Deieda' nominative/vocative – is:'May I, Windiorix for/at Cuamena defeat [or 'summon to justice'] the worthless woman, [oh] divine Deieda.'[20]
A tin/lead sheet retains part of nine text lines, damaged, with probable Brittonic names.[21]
LocalRoman Britaintoponyms (place names) are evidentiary, recorded in Latinised forms byPtolemy'sGeography discussed by Rivet and Smith in their book of that name published in 1979. They show most names he used were from the Brittonic language. Some place names still contain elements derived from it. Tribe names and some Brittonic personal names are also taken down by Greeks and, mainly, Romans.
Tacitus'sAgricola says that the language differed little from that ofGaul. Comparison with what is known ofGaulish confirms the similarity.[22]
Pictish, which became extinct around 1000 years ago, was the spoken language of thePicts in Northern Scotland.[3] Despite significant debate as to whether this language was Celtic, items such as geographical and personal names documented in the region gave evidence that this language was most closely aligned with the Brittonic branch of Celtic languages.[3] The question of the extent to which this language was distinguished, and the date of divergence, from the rest of Brittonic, was historically disputed.[3]
Pritenic (alsoPretanic andPrittenic) is a term coined in 1955 byKenneth H. Jackson to describe a hypothetical Roman-era (1st to 5th centuries) predecessor to the Pictish language.[3] Jackson saw Pritenic as having diverged from Brittonic around the time of 75–100 AD.[3]
The term Pritenic is controversial. In 2015, linguist Guto Rhys concluded that most proposals that Pictish diverged from Brittonic beforec. 500 AD were incorrect, questionable, or of little importance, and that a lack of evidence to distinguish Brittonic and Pictish rendered the term Pritenic "redundant".[3]
Common Brittonic vied with Latin after theRoman conquest of Britain in 43 AD, at least in major settlements. Latin words were widely borrowed by its speakers in the Romanised towns and their descendants, and later from church use.
By 500–550 AD, Common Brittonic had diverged into the Neo-Brittonic dialects:[3]Old Welsh primarily in Wales,Old Cornish in Cornwall,Old Breton in what is now Brittany,Cumbric in Northern England and Southern Scotland, and probably Pictish in Northern Scotland.[3]
The modern forms ofBreton andWelsh are the only direct descendants of Common Brittonic to have survived fully into the 21st century.[23]Cornish fell out of use in the 1700s but has since undergone arevival.[24] Cumbric and Pictish are extinct and today spoken only in the form of loanwords in English,Scots, andScottish Gaelic.[25][3]
In the 21st century, numerous grassroots attempts began to revive Common Brittonic from reconstructions based on inscriptive and comparative insight.[26] There has been sporadic interest in reviving the language from various sources for various reasons.[27] The first attempt to gain some nominal success was that of Edward Hatfield, who published a dictionary of the language based on the older ''Proto-Brittonic'' form of it. Though the book contained only 167 entries, it was groundbreaking by being the first of its kind and for containing clear comparative insights for each entry's form in Old Irish and Old Welsh as well. This book was quoted,[28], as a major inspiration for the current ongoing revival movement, which has begun to seek official recognition.
This new movement is based on the Revival of Brettica, the name of this particular form of Brittonic in the language itself. This form is based on the form of Common Brittonic as it was spoken in Southern Britain circa 100-300 C.E. The reconstruction of Brettica relied on all existing inscriptional evidence as well as comparative insight from Gaulish, Old Irish, and Old Welsh/Cornish/Breton. The lexical foundations were inspired by Deiniol ab Ioan's 'Gallo-Brittonic Lexicon'.[29]
The movement conceptualizes Brettica as a reclaimed heritage language for Anglo-Britons to embrace for connecting with their Brittonic heritage, in light of newfound genetic revelations.[30] Positive publicity came to Brettica when it was featured as one of the main languages focused on by the Linguistic Legacies Initiative (LLI), an inmate-founded heritage language program in the Arizona State Prison.[31] The collaboration led to Cantieporix (Thomas Steres) of LLI becoming a major figure within the Brettica Revival. In league with other Brettica Revivalists like linguist Yowenn Druwisacos, Cantieporix has released several audio learning courses for Brettica,[32], and a multilingual Pan-Brythonic learners dictionary known as the 'Brictionary'.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labial– velar | Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | (ŋ) | |||||||||||
| Stop | p | b | t | d | k | ɡ | (ɡʷ) | |||||||
| Fricative | oral | ɸ | β | θ | ð | s | x | ɣ | h | |||||
| nasal | β̃ | |||||||||||||
| Approximant | j | (ʍ) | w | |||||||||||
| Lateral | l | |||||||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||||
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close | i | iː | ʉː | u | ||
| Close-mid | e | eː | o | |||
| Open-mid | ɛː | ɔː | ||||
| Open | a | ɑː | ||||
The early Common Brittonic vowel inventory is effectively identical to that of Proto-Celtic./ɨ/ and/ʉ/ have not developed yet.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | rounded | ||
| Close | i | y | ɨ | ʉ | u | |
| Close-mid | e | ø | o | |||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | ||||
| Open | a | |||||
By late Common Brittonic, theNew Quantity System had occurred, leading to a radical restructuring of the vowel system.
Notes:
| Proto-Celtic | Stage | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | II | III | IV | V | Vb | VI | VII | VIII | IX | |
Short vowels | *a | |||||||||
| *e | ||||||||||
| *i | *ɪ | |||||||||
| *o | *o,*ʉ | |||||||||
| *u | *u,*ʉ | |||||||||
Long vowels | *ā | *ɔ̄ | *ɔ | |||||||
| *ē | *ui | |||||||||
| *ī | *i | |||||||||
| *ō | *ū | *ǖ | *ü | |||||||
| *ū | *ǖ | *ī | *i | |||||||
Diphthongs | *ai | *ɛ̄ | *oi | |||||||
| *au | *ɔ̄ | *ɔ | ||||||||
Brittonic-derived place names are scattered across Great Britain, with many occurring in theWest Country; however, some of these may be pre-Celtic. The best example is perhaps that of each (river)Avon, which comes from the Brittonicaβon[a], "river" (transcribed into Welsh asafon, Cornishavon,Irish andScottish Gaelicabhainn,Manxawin, Bretonaven; the Latin cognate isamnis). When river is preceded by the word, in the modern vein, it istautological.
Examples are:
Basic wordstor,combe,bere, andhele from Brittonic are common in Devon place-names.[35] Tautologous,hybrid word names exist in England, such as: