Celtic languages

Celtic languages or Celtic is the name by which a group of languages belonging to the Indo-European family is known, including:

• the Breton, in France
• in the United Kingdom
• in the United Kingdom
• Welsh, UK
• Ireland and the United Kingdom
• in the UK
• and all those dead languages of this family that at one time spoke the Celtic peoples in Central Europe and on the Iberian and Anatolia peninsulas.

Number of speakers by language

Historical, social and cultural aspects

Origins

Celtic languages derive from a set of Proto-Indo-European dialects that historically occupy an intermediate position within the Indo-European family, having appeared after the Anatolian languages (2000 BC), the Greek (1400 BC), Indic languages (1000 BC), Iranian languages (700 BC) and the Italic languages (600 BC), but before Germanic languages (1st century AD), Slavic languages (IV century), the Armenian (century V), the tocharian (VIIth century), Baltic languages (15th century) and the Albanian language (XVI century).

Its speakers were the Celtic peoples, a series of tribes and clans from Central and Western Europe that shared similar cultural characteristics: religious beliefs, social structure, artistic styles, production systems, and above all a common language, or rather a series of mutually intelligible dialects. They used various names to call themselves:

• keltikoi 'the elevated' or 'the wrestlers': (Celtics of the Beturia). It was the name adopted by the Greek geographers in the first half of the I millennia a. C. to refer to these peoples (keltoi), term that turned out later latinized as Celtaeto give birth to the current Celtic. The name is built on the root PIE *kel-t- 'get up, get up': Lithuanian kélti 'Stretch', or on the root *kel-t 'couple': old sajón hild 'fight, hit'
• cocki "galardos, brave" (Gálatae or Galatian, Galatians of the Roman province of the center of the current Turkey called Galatia). It was the name adopted by the Romans to refer to the Gallic peoples of the Galliaa region that basically understood France and Belgium. Galloi formed from the root PIE *gelH- to its degree-zero *glH-n  gall-, while gálatai comes from a full degree *gelH-tai  gélatai  gálatai. Gaelige (Ireland cells).
• wedeloi 'save, from the forest, hunters'. Name used by the Welsh to refer to the Irish (Goats.. gwyddel iirlandes'). From the root PIE *weid- 'bosque', through the Celtic *wēdu 'sweet, wild'  *wēdelo.

Although there are scattered various allusions to the Celts in Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus and Aristotle, the first reference to this town is found in the Ora Maritima of Avienus, proconsul in Africa in AD 336. C., who was based on a Greek original from the VI century B.C. C. The Romans called them galli (pronounced gal-li).

There are several hypotheses regarding the appearance of the Celtic languages, several of which are mutually exclusive. These hypotheses have affected the phylogenetic classification of the Celtic languages: some authors classify the insular Celtic languages as a unit against the continental Celtic languages. Another classification advocates the existence of a Gallo-British relationship of a more archaic origin, compared to the Goidelic, the Celtiberian language and the Lepontic language.

Prehistory of the Celtic peoples

The Celtic term (keltoi) is of Greek origin; these could have borrowed it from Iberians or Ligurians. The Celts probably called themselves *gal-,^{[citation needed]} that is: Gauls (derived: Galatian).

It does not seem possible to discern properly Celtic ethnic groups among the first groups of Indo-Europeans that penetrated central Europe. Only up to the V century BC. C., with the emergence of the La Tène culture, it is reasonably safe to identify the carriers of that culture as speakers of Celtic languages. The earliest Indo-European settlers may have been the carriers of the urnfield culture, which spread rapidly and widely across Europe around the 13th century. a. C. The members of this culture expanded down the right bank of the Rhône, occupying Languedoc, Catalonia and the lower Ebro valley. Another line of expansion took them to Belgium and the British southeast. From the 8th century B.C. C., other presumably Indo-European peoples (perhaps pre-Celtic and pre-Illyrian) were the carriers of the Hallstatt culture (Iron-I), extending in this phase through the interior of the Iberian Peninsula (s. VII). In the VI century B.C. C., the presumably Indo-European peoples were displaced from the Iberian northeast at the hands of the Iberians, thus leaving the Celts of Iberia (Basque) isolated from the rest of the continental Celtic peoples by the Iberians to the east and the Aquitanians to the west of the Pyrenees.

Since the IV century BC. C., the continental Celts inaugurate the culture of La Tène, specifically Celtic (Iron II). In this phase, the Celts finished occupying the north and center of France (Gaul), as well as most of the British Isles. They also spread through the Balkans, even reaching a region of Asia Minor, which will be known as Galatia. Important fortified towns called oppidum (plural, oppida) are built at this time, which function as commercial and political centers. It is also in this period when druidism, a descendant of the ancient megalithic cults of Great Britain and Ireland,^{[citation needed]} was introduced among the Celts of the islands, later passing to the mainland.

History and classic references

From the II and III a. C. some classical authors offer concrete data on the history of the Celtic peoples. The Romans used the term galli to refer to various Celtic peoples, among which would be the Gauls, the Galatians, or regions such as Gaul. However, although the Romans referred to the tribes by their individual names (aedui, belgae, helvetti, boii...), they do recognize certain common cultural characteristics between them. The linguistic unity of these peoples is revealed by Tacitus when perceiving the similarity between the Brittonic and Gallic languages. Saint Jerome recorded in his writings that the language of the Galatians was similar to the Gallic dialect of Trier.

Celtic peoples spread between the 8th century centuries BC. C. and century V a. C. from its original central European core to other regions, occupying the north and center of France (Gaul), the Po Valley in northern Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, as well as most of the British Isles. They also spread through the Balkans, even reaching a region of Asia Minor, which will be known as Galatia.

In all these migrations their language accompanied them wherever they went; in the I century B.C. C. they extended by great part of Europe, from present Turkey (Galacia) to Portugal. However, the Celtic languages found refuge from Romanization in the far north-west of Europe, in the British Isles. From the II century B.C. C., the Celts accuse the increasing military pressure of the Germans in the north and, somewhat later, that of the Romans in the south. In a few decades "all Gaul is occupied" except Ireland. In any case, the Roman presence in Great Britain was also short-lived, allowing the Celtic languages of this island (Welsh) to survive and later return to the mainland (French Brittany). As late as the 7th century, the Celts made their perhaps last expansion: the Irish Scotti invaded Caledonia and renamed it for that of Scotland.

Decline

Although in ancient times they were widely spoken in Western Europe in the first millennium BC. C., the Celtic languages have experienced a gradual decline since Roman times, well replaced first by Latin and then by the Romance languages in France, Portugal, Italy and Spain, well displaced and replaced by other branches such as Germanic in the islands. British and Central Europe or the Slavic in the Balkans, or by the dissipation and integration of the Celtic people and their languages within new historical realities. Despite these facts, there were small linguistic islands that survived this influx for quite some time, with testimonies of Celtic-speaking Galatians being found in the fourth century d. c.

Celtic languages held sway in the British Isles. There the native Gaelic and Brittonic languages maintained their hegemony until the Middle Ages, being the predominant language in the Kingdom of Scotland and in the Irish and Welsh counties and kingdoms. Its decline in Britain began with the Anglo-Saxon invasions, reducing its presence behind Offa's Wall to Wales and the Kingdom of Scotland. A few centuries later, the Celtic languages also began to lose weight and presence in these regions and in Ireland, mainly due to the loss of political and cultural independence, as well as economic isolation, to the detriment of the then thriving Kingdom of England in the XVI, although this process occurred slowly and steadily for centuries. The language spoken on the Isle of Man would be highly influenced by Nordic contributions, the result of successive Viking invasions.

The origin of Breton, although one could easily think due to its geographical location that it is a redoubt of the Gallic language spoken in pre-Roman times in present-day France, dates back to British migrations (mainly from Cornwall and Wales) in the V century d. C. who fled from the Anglo-Saxon invasions to Great Britain, establishing themselves after crossing the English Channel on the coast of Armorica, present-day Britain. Some of these Britons even reached the Iberian Peninsula, specifically north of Gallaecia, a historical region that included present-day Galicia and a good part of Asturias and northern Portugal, where they founded the bishopric of Britonia, headed by the famous Bishop Mailoc, mentioned in the Galician councils of Lugo and Braga in the VI century AD.

Despite their slow decline, today four languages of the Celtic branch still survive, limited to small regions of Europe: Irish or Irish Gaelic in Ireland, Scottish Gaelic in Scotland (a name that leads to confusion with the called Scotch, Germanic language), Welsh in Wales and Breton in Brittany. Likewise, until the 18th century in Cornwall the Cornish language was spoken, very similar to Breton and Welsh. Until the beginning of the XX century, Manx was spoken on the Isle of Man. Also, as a result of emigration, there are small colonies of Celtic-language speakers in Argentine Patagonia and in some parts of Canada.

However, to a greater or lesser extent, but in most cases very small, generally the languages later spoken in Celtic-speaking regions maintain a Celtic substratum in their vocabulary, such as the Spanish, the French, the Portuguese, the Galician, the asturian, English or the German.

Literature

Bronze II at the Provincial Museum of Zaragoza.

Texts from the Continental Celtic languages are not abundant and are mostly small inscriptions, coins, glosses, and names. The oldest surviving texts (3rd century BCE BC to I AD,) are written in Gaulish and Celtiberian. The longest text written in Gaulish is the Coligny Calendar (II century AD), which contains 60 words written in Latin characters. The longest texts in Celtiberian are the four bronzes from Botorrita. Specifically, bronze III, in Celtiberian script, is the longest text preserved in any ancient Celtic language. In addition, numerous inscriptions have been found in stone or bronze, both in Celtiberian and Latin script, dating from the 15th century. III a. C. up to the I century d. Inscriptions from before the I century in Lepontic, using a variant of the Etruscan alphabet, have been found in northern Italy.

Dating from the II century, the Insular Celtic languages have an extensive and varied literature, one of the oldest in Europe. Originally written on stone monuments in Ogham script in Wales and mainly Ireland from the IV to the VI d. C., later manuscripts were written in Irish during the Middle Ages, such as the Ulster Cycle or the Annals of the four masters.

Already in the XX century, two Irish-language writers stand out, Michael Hartnett and the Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney. There has also been literature in Breton, Scottish and Welsh since the Middle Ages, in some cases still alive today.

Classification of Celtic languages

Celtic languages belong to the western branch of the Indo-European family, and within this to the centum language group. Celtic may be closely related to the Italic languages based on a number of unique cognates and some morphological similarities. Such a larger family has been called Italo-Celtic. The study of ancient Celtic languages has occasionally relied on conjecture due to a lack of primary sources. The internal classification of the Celtic languages can be done from two points of view: geographical and linguistic.

Geographic classification

The geographical subdivision of these languages leads us to classify them into two groups:

• Continental Celtic Languages:
  • Hispanic-Celtic Languages
    • Celtiberus, Celtibérico or Spanish-Celta oriental, in the former Celtiberia (in present Spain).
    • Hispano-celta Occidental, is the generic name given by the researchers (Prosper, De Bernardo) to refer to all those Celtic languages not strictly inscribed in the Celtibérico (very fragmentedly known tongues of Galaicos, Astures, Cabins, Vacceos, Vetons, etc.)
    • In the event of confirmation of the Celtic filiation of lusitano, a matter still under discussion, it would also be included in this subgroup.
  • Gallo-celtic languages
    • The Gaul, in ancient Galia (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland).
    • The Galatian, of great similarity to the gallon according to Saint Jerome, in Galatia in Anatolia (now Turkey).
    • The lepostic, in ancient Galia Cisalpina (now, often regarded as a galaxy dialect).
    • The noric, spoken by the noric tribe in lands of the present Austria and Bavaria and equally close to the gallon.
• Insular Celtic Languages:
  • British languages
    • The Breton, of great similarity to the Corn and Welsh, brought to Brittany by emigrants from those regions.
    • Cornality or Cornwall, born from a south-west dialect, spoken in Devon, Cornwalls and parts of Somerset and Dorset until the centuryXVIII.
    • The cubic, born of a northern dialect, spoken until the centuryXII in the northwest of England and south of Scotland.
    • Welsh, born of a western and northern dialect, spoken today in Wales.
    • The picto, although his Celtic affiliation is not yet clear.
  • Governmental languages
    • The Scottish Gaelic in Scotland.
    • Irish or Irish Gaelic, Ireland, being an official language of the Republic of Ireland.
    • The manes, on the island of Man.

Regarding Ivernian or Paleo-Irish, its Brittonic or Goidelic affiliation is not clear.

Linguistic classification

The division of the Celtic languages by linguistic criteria separates them into two groups: Celtic P languages, or P-group, and Celtic Q languages, or Q-group. The difference between them lies in how the sound *kw evolved, becoming *p in some and *k in others..

Several studies affirm that the Q Celtic languages would derive from the first cultural waves of the Celtic Hallstatt culture between the centuries VIII and VI a. C., which spread through central and northwestern Europe to the Iberian Peninsula. The presumed common language of these peoples, which would later branch off, retained many of the features of the original Indo-European, including the aforementioned preservation of the *kw sound. There is even talk of an Italo-Celtic subgroup to refer to these languages, due to their supposed similarity with the Italic languages.

Similarly, the Celtic P languages would come from a second Celtic cultural wave that also came from Central Europe, but with different cultural patterns marked by the La Tène culture, and which occupied Central and Western Europe from the island of Great Britain, through northern Italy, as far as the Danube Valley and northern Anatolia (Turkey). The main feature of these languages, as already mentioned, consists in the substitution of the sound *kw by the sound *p.

This theory is supported, in addition to linguistic theories, by the geographical fact that the peoples who preserved the Q-Celtic languages are found in the western extremes of Europe, Ireland, Scotland and the Iberian Peninsula, as if they had been displaced west by other migrations, while the P-Celts occupy the center of Europe and the area of Celtic culture.

Celtic P

In the languages belonging to this first group, the Indo-European labiovelar sound /*k^w/ is reduced to /p/. To this group would belong the British languages, the Lepontic, the Galatian and most of the Gallic.

Celtic Q

In contrast, in the languages of this second group, the Indo-European /*k^w/ sound was maintained during ancient times, delabializing into /k/ later. Within this group would be included the Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx) and Celtiberian.

Lexical comparison of Celtic-P and Celtic-Q

For example, the Proto-Celtic verbal root *kwrin- (‘to buy’) is pryn- in Welsh but cren- in Irish. Consequently, in this scheme, Goidelic is Celtic-Q and Brythonic and Gallic Celtic-P.

Originally the only Q-Celtic languages were considered to be those of the Goidelic branch, while those of the British branch, together with Gaulish, would constitute the P-Celtic group of languages. An example of this hypothesis is the Proto-Celtic verbal stem *kwrin- ("to buy"), which is pryn- in Welsh but cren- in Irish.

The discovery that Celtiberian retained the sound *kw led to its being considered as part of the Celtic-Q group. However, since this is not an insular language, it could not be considered Goidelic, a fact that led some authors to consider the Celtic-P/Celtic-Q division as superficial and explicable in terms of external contacts, and, although there are valid arguments and convincing in favor of both hypotheses, the insular-continental system hypothesis has gained greater acceptance.

In favor of the geographical division, some shared innovations among the components of the continental group can be pointed out, such as inflected prepositions, the order of words in a sentence, and the nasalization of [m] to [β], a phenomenon extremely rare.

There is no suggestion that there was a common ancestry between them and Proto-Celtic: rather it is considered that the Celtiberian branch was the first to split off and that Gaulish and Insular Celtic would have originated from it. However, there are additional differences between the two subgroups that make it convenient to retain them at least provisionally. For example, in the Goidelic group the sounds *an, am have been transformed into a desnalized and lengthened vowel é before a fricative. For example, Old Irish éc ("death"), écath ("hook"), dét ("tooth"), cét ('hundred') compared to Welsh angau, angad, dant and cant.

Nevertheless, the debate is not closed, since the proponents of each side dispute the certainty and usefulness of one or the other scheme. In modern terms, and since Continental Celtic has no spoken descendants, Q-Celtic is used as the equivalent of Goidelic and P-Celtic of Brythonic.

Linguistic features

One of the characteristic features compared to other Indo-European branches of Celtic languages is the loss of the phoneme /p/; this is, for example, that words with /p/ in initial or middle position in Latin, Greek or Sanskrit, start to do without it in Celtic languages. Thus, porcus, in Latin «pig», «pig», in Gaelic it is orc; plenus, Latin for “full”, Welsh llawn and Breton leun; platys, Greek for 'wide', Welsh lydan and Breton ledan.

As mentioned above, within the Celtic family, in the Goidelic languages the Indo-European labiovelar sound /*k^w-/ (later written /c/) is preserved, while in the Celtic languages Brythonic became /p/ after the general fall of primitive /p/ in Old Celtic. For example, cuig, Irish for five, is Welsh for pump. In addition, they also differ in other phonetic aspects.

The pronunciation of these languages tends to be very complicated, since the writing does not usually coincide with the pronunciation and the consonants at the beginning of words vary according to the last phoneme of the preceding word. Thus, fuil, is Irish for "blood", and ar bhfuil is "our blood". In Welsh tad is "father", while fy nhad is "my father", and ei thad and y dad are "her (his) father" and "her (her) father" respectively. The mechanism of mutations, which in a certain number of cases modify, in initial position, seven of the consonants of the alphabet, in these languages, as has been explained, seems not to have come into use until after the V.

Vocalism of Celtic languages preserves the Indo-European short vowels /-i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u-/ and the long vowels /-i:/, /a:/, /or:-/. However, Indo-European /e:/ becomes /i:/; thus, verus, Latin for "truth", is Welsh and Breton gwir; the Latin rex "king" was Gaulish rix. In addition, the /o:/ of Indo-European changes to /a:/; Latin cōrnu, "Celtic horn", cārnos.

The semivowels /w/ and /j/ also remain in Common Celtic, retaining them in Welsh.

It also developed the voiced /l/ and /r/ into /li/ and /ri/, and the change of the labiovelar /gw/ into /b/. Word-final /m/ tends to become /n/ except in Gaulish, Lepontic, and Celtiberian. As in other Indo-European languages /s/ had an allophone in /z/.

Celtic languages initially had the three cases of gender of Indo-European, masculine, feminine and neuter, but the neuter gender is lost from Middle Irish, remaining minimally in the Brittonic languages. There are three numbers: singular, plural and dual.

Like other Indo-European languages, Celtic form nouns from verbs, rather than from present participles (as English does). Another property of these is that the sentences always have a verb and that the action is expressed through the impersonal passive.

The order of the elements of the sentence varies from one language to another: in the insular languages it is usually verb-subject-predicate, although in Old Irish and Cornish it used to be subject-verb-predicate; However, in the continental ones the order used to be subject-verb-predicate. For example, in Welsh Collodd Sion ddwy bunt would literally mean "Sion lost two pounds", and coch mawr "big red bus" ("a big red bus"), preceding the noun to the adjectives.

Lexical comparison

The following table shows the numerals from one to ten in the most well-known Celtic groups: Q-Insular Celtic (Goidelic), P-Insular Celtic (British) and Continental Celtic (with the P-Celtic variant being found in Gaulish, which leads to a different origin than the Goidelics of the Brittonics, the latter being able to be direct descendants of the Gauls while the Goidelics may arise from the first Celtic migration that reached the British Isles).