Modern Celtic languages are mostly spoken on the north-western edge of Europe, notably in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man. There are also a substantial number of Welsh speakers in the Patagonia area of Argentina and some speakers of Scottish Gaelic on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Some people speak Celtic languages in the other Celtic diaspora areas of the United States,[7] Canada, Australia,[8] and New Zealand.[9] In all these areas, the Celtic languages are now only spoken by minorities though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as "endangered" by UNESCO.
During the 1st millennium BC, they were spoken across much of Europe, in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Atlantic and North Sea coastlines, up to the Rhine valley and down the Danube valley to the Black Sea, the northern Balkan Peninsula and in central Asia Minor. The spread to Cape Breton and Patagonia occurred in modern times.
The other two, Cornish (a Brittonic language) and Manx (a Goidelic language), died in modern times[11][12][13] with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. For both these languages, however, revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children and produced some native speakers.[14][15]
Taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s.[16] In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages.[17]
Demographics
Language
Native name
Grouping
Number of native speakers
Number of people who have one or more skills in the language
Classification of Celtic languages according to Insular vs. Continental hypothesis. (click to enlarge)Classification of Indo-European languages. (click to enlarge)
Brittonic, including the living languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, and the extinct languages Cumbric, and Pictish though Pictish may be a sister language rather than a daughter of Common Brittonic.[56] Before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, there may have been a Brittonic language on the Isle of Man.
Scholarly handling of the Celtic languages has been contentious owing to scarceness of primary source data. Some scholars (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) distinguish Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic, arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brittonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages.[57] Other scholars (such as Schmidt 1988) distinguish between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic, putting most of the Gaulish and Brittonic languages in the former group and the Goidelic and Celtiberian languages in the latter. The P-Celtic languages (also called Gallo-Brittonic) are sometimes seen (for example by Koch 1992) as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages.
The Breton language is Brittonic, not Gaulish, though there may be some input from the latter,[58] 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 and Atkinson[59][60] but, because of estimation uncertainty, it could be any time between 1200 and 800 BC. However, they only considered Gaelic and Brythonic. The controversial paper by Forster and Toth[61] 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 archaeological Urnfield culture, the Hallstatt culture, and the La Tène culture, though the earlier assumption of association between language and culture is now considered to be less strong.[62][63]
The Celtic nations, where Celtic languages are spoken today, or were spoken into the modern era:
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. 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-Celtic/Q-Celtic hypothesis 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 (Gaelic ainm / Gaulish anuana, Old Welsh enuein "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 a Gallo-Brittonic dialect (Schmidt 1986; Fleuriot 1986).
The interpretation of this and further evidence is still quite contested, and the main argument in favour of Insular Celtic is connected with the development of the 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 hypothesis.[47] 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".[64]
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".
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.[citation needed]
How the family tree of the Celtic languages is ordered depends on which hypothesis is used:
Eska (2010)[65] evaluates the evidence as supporting the following tree, based on shared innovations, though it is not always clear that the innovations are not areal 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 sees Cisalpine 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 a sprachbund. However, if they have another explanation (such as an SOV substratum language), then it is possible that P-Celtic is a valid clade, and the top branching would be:
two grammatical 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)[66][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
(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 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.
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.
It has been suggested that several poorly-documented languages may possibly have been Celtic.
Camunic is an extinct language which was spoken in the first millennium BC in the Valcamonica and Valtellina valleys of the Central Alps. It has most recently been proposed to be a Celtic language.[67]
Ligurian was spoken in the Northern Mediterranean Coast straddling the southeast French and northwest Italian coasts, including parts of Tuscany, Elba island and Corsica. Xavier Delamarre argues that Ligurian was a Celtic language, similar to, but not the same as Gaulish.[68] The Ligurian-Celtic question is also discussed by Barruol (1999). Ancient Ligurian is either listed as Celtic (epigraphic),[69] or Para-Celtic (onomastic).[49]
Lusitanian was spoken in the area between the Douro and Tagus rivers of western Iberia (a region straddling the present border of Portugal and Spain). It is known from only five inscriptions and various place names.[70] It is an Indo-European language and some scholars have proposed that it may be a para-Celtic language, which evolved alongside Celtic or formed a dialect continuum or sprachbund with Tartessian and Gallaecian. This is tied to a theory of an Iberian origin for the Celtic languages.[70][71][72]
It is also possible that the Q-Celtic languages alone, including Goidelic, originated in western Iberia (a theory that was first put forward by Edward Lhuyd in 1707) or shared a common linguistic ancestor with Lusitanian.[73] Secondary evidence for this hypothesis has been found in research by biological scientists, who have identified (firstly) deep-rooted similarities in human DNA found precisely in both the former Lusitania and Ireland,[74][75] and; (secondly) the so-called "Lusitanian distribution" of animals and plants unique to western Iberia and Ireland. Both of these phenomena are now generally believed to have resulted from human emigration from Iberia to Ireland, during the late Paleolithic or early Mesolithic eras.[76]
Rhaetian was spoken in central parts of present-day Switzerland, Tyrol in Austria, and the Alpine regions of northeastern Italy. It is documented by a limited number of short inscriptions (found through Northern Italy and Western Austria) in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet. Its linguistic categorization is not clearly established, and it presents a confusing mixture of what appear to be Etruscan, Indo-European, and uncertain other elements. Howard Hayes Scullard argues that Rhaetian was also a Celtic language.[80]
Tartessian, spoken in the southwest of the Iberia Peninsula (mainly southern Portugal and southwestern Spain).[81] Tartessian is known by 95 inscriptions, with the longest having 82 readable signs.[71][82][83]John T. Koch argues that Tartessian was also a Celtic language.[83]
^"North-West Indo-European". Academia Prisca. Archived from the original on 12 September 2018. Retrieved 12 September 2018. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^"Languages Spoken At Home"Archived 25 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine from Australian Government Office of Multicultural Interests website. Retrieved 27 December 2007; G. Leitner, Australia's Many Voices: Australian English--The National Language, 2004, pg. 74
^Beresford Ellis, Peter (1990, 1998, 2005). The Story of the Cornish Language. Tor Mark Press. pp. 20–22. ISBN0-85025-371-3. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
^"Celtic Languages". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 9 March 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^Crystal, David (2010). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-73650-3.
^"Irish Examiner". Archives.tcm.ie. 24 November 2004. Archived from the original on 19 January 2005. Retrieved 19 August 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^Christina Bratt Paulston. 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.
^Department of Finance and Personnel. "Census 2011 Key Statistics for Northern Ireland"(PDF). The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 December 2012. Retrieved 6 March 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^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. Retrieved 6 March 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^Scotland's Census. "Standard Outputs". National Records of Scotland. Archived from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 6 March 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^Equalities and Wellbeing Division. "Language in England and Wales: 2011". Office for National Statistics. Archived from the original on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 6 March 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^"Anyone here speak Jersey?". Independent.co.uk. 11 April 2002. Archived from the original on 11 September 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^"Isle of Man Census Report 2011"(PDF). Economic Affairs Division, Isle of Man Government Treasury. April 2012. p. 27. Archived from the original(PDF) on 5 November 2013. Retrieved 9 June 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^"Shelta". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 29 June 2010. Retrieved 9 March 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^"ROMLEX: Romani dialects". Romani.uni-graz.at. Archived from the original on 27 August 2011. Retrieved 19 August 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ abSchumacher, 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. 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 from the original(PDF) on 2 October 2012. Retrieved 19 December 2012. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^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 Peninula, 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 a Pritenic Celtic one. This has been challenged by some scholars. See Katherine Forsyth's "Language in Pictland: the case against 'non-Indo-European Pictish'" "Etext"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 19 February 2006. Retrieved 20 January 2006. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)(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 from the original(PDF) on 20 February 2006. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)(172 KB ). Compare also the treatment of Pictish in Price's The Languages of Britain (1984) with his Languages in Britain & Ireland (2000).
^Renfrew, Colin (1987). Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN0224024957.
^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 from the original(PDF) on 2 October 2012. Retrieved 19 December 2012. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^Joseph F. Eska (2010) "The emergence of the Celtic languages". In Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller (eds.), The Celtic languages. Routledge.
^Markey, Thomas (2008). Shared Symbolics, Genre Diffusion, Token Perception and Late Literacy in North-Western Europe. NOWELE.
^"Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 May 2013. Retrieved 2015-03-04. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^Kruta, Venceslas (1991). The Celts. Thames and Hudson. p. 54.
^ abWodtko, Dagmar S (2010). Celtic from the West Chapter 11: The Problem of Lusitanian. Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK. pp. 360–361. ISBN978-1-84217-410-4.
^ abCunliffe, Barry (2003). The Celts – A Very Short Introduction – see figure 7. Oxford University Press. pp. 51–52. ISBN0-19-280418-9.
^Ballester, X. (2004). ""Páramo" o del problema del la */p/ en celtoide". Studi Celtici. 3: 45–56.
^Hill, E. W.; Jobling, M. A.; Bradley, D. G. (2000). "Y chromosome variation and Irish origins". Nature. 404: 351–352. doi:10.1038/35006158. PMID10746711.
^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)
^Forsyth 2006, p. 1447 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFForsyth2006 (help); Forsyth 1997 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFForsyth1997 (help); Fraser 2009, pp. 52–53 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFFraser2009 (help); Woolf 2007, pp. 322–340 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFWoolf2007 (help)
^Scullard, HH (1967). The Etruscan Cities and Rome. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
^Koch, John T (2010). Celtic from the West Chapter 9: Paradigm Shift? Interpreting Tartessian as Celtic. Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK. pp. 292–293. ISBN978-1-84217-410-4.
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.
Hindley, Reg (1990). The Death of the Irish Language: A Qualified Obituary. Routledge. ISBN0-415-04339-5.
Lewis, Henry & Holger Pedersen (1989). A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN3-525-26102-0.
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.) (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. {{cite book}}: |editor3= has generic name (help)
McCone, K. (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.
Schrijver, Peter (1995). Studies in British Celtic historical phonology. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN90-5183-820-4.
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.
