Ireland was settled, like the rest ofnorthern Europe, after the retreat of theice sheets c. 10,500 BC.[1]Indo-European languages are usually thought to have been a much later arrival. Some scholars hypothesize that the Goidelic languages may have been brought by theBell Beaker culture circa 2500 BC. This dating is supported by DNA analysis indicating large-scale Indo-European migration to Britain about that time.[2] In contrast, other scholars argue for a much later date of arrival of Goidelic languages to Ireland based on linguistic evidence.Peter Schrijver has suggested that Irish was perhaps preceded by an earlier wave of Celtic-speaking colonists (based on population names attested inPtolemy'sGeography) who were displaced by a later wave of proto-Irish speakers only in the 1st century AD, following a migration in the wake of theRoman conquest of Britain, with Irish andBritish Celtic languages only branching off from a common Insular Celtic language around that time.[3]
that words and grammatical constructs from the original language, or languages, may nevertheless persist as asubstrate in the Celtic languages, especially in placenames and personal names.[4][5]
Schrijver noted the numerousness of words relating to fishing. He suggested that the presence ofunlenited stops among these fishing words may indicate that these words entered Irish as late as 500AD.[9] In a further study he gives counter-arguments against some criticisms byGraham Isaac.[10]
He also points out that there are words of possibly or probably non-Indo-European origin in other Celtic languages as well; therefore, the substrate may not have been in contact withPrimitive Irish but rather withProto-Celtic.[12] Examples of words found in more than one branch of Celtic but with no obvious cognates outside Celtic include:
Middle Irishbrocc 'badger', Middle Welshbroch 'badger', GaulishBroco- (name element) (borrowed into English asbrock)
Old Irishcarpat '(war) chariot', Welshcerbyd, Gaulishcarpento-,Carbanto-
Old Irisheó 'salmon', Middle Welshehawc 'salmon', Gaulish *esoks (borrowed into Latin asesox); has been compared with Basqueizokin[13]
Old Irishcuit 'piece', Middle Welshpeth 'thing', Gaulish *pettia (borrowed into Latin aspetia and French aspièce)
Old Irishmolt 'wether', Middle Welshmollt 'ram, wether', GaulishMoltus (name) and *multon- (borrowed into French asmouton, from which to English asmutton)
TheOld Irish word for "horn",adarc, is also listed as a potential Basque loanword; inBasque the word isadar.[11]
^Schrijver, Peter (2014).Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages. New York, London: Routledge. pp. 79–85.ISBN978-0-415-35548-3.
^Indo-European and non-Indo-European aspects to the languages and place-names in Britain and Ireland: the state of the art, by George Broderick, in 'From the Russian rivers to the North Atlantic' (2010), pp. 29–63.
^Trask, R. Larry (2008), Wheeler, Max W. (ed.),Etymological Dictionary of Basque(PDF), Falmer, UK: University of Sussex, p. 236, archived fromthe original(PDF) on 7 June 2011, retrieved17 September 2013
