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Brittonic languages

The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; Welsh: ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; Cornish: yethow brythonek/predennek; and Breton: yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic.[1] It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael.

For the individual language ancestral to the Brittonic languages, see Common Brittonic.

Brittonic

The Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic language, spoken throughout Great Britain during the Iron Age and Roman period. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia. During the next few centuries, in much of Britain the language was replaced by Old English and Scottish Gaelic, with the remaining Common Brittonic language splitting into regional dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric, and probably Pictish. Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by Goidelic and Anglic speech. The Isle of Man and Orkney may also have originally spoken a Brittonic language, but this was later supplanted by Goidelic on the Isle of Man and Norse on Orkney. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in Y Wladfa (the Welsh settlement in Patagonia).

Name[edit]

The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to the Celtic languages of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated Common Brittonic, in contrast to the Goidelic languages originating in Ireland. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as "British" and "Cymric".[2] "Brythonic" was coined in 1879 by the Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython.[2][3] "Brittonic", derived from "Briton" and also earlier spelled "Britonic" and "Britonnic", emerged later in the 19th century.[4] It became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in Kenneth H. Jackson's highly influential 1953 work on the topic, Language and History in Early Britain. Jackson noted that by that time "Brythonic" had become a dated term, and that "of late there has been an increasing tendency to use Brittonic instead."[3] Today, "Brittonic" often replaces "Brythonic" in the literature.[4] Rudolf Thurneysen used "Britannic" in his influential A Grammar of Old Irish, although this never became popular among subsequent scholars.[5]


Comparable historical terms include the Medieval Latin lingua Britannica and sermo Britannicus[6] and the Welsh Brythoneg.[2] Some writers use "British" for the language and its descendants, although, due to the risk of confusion, others avoid it or use it only in a restricted sense. Jackson, and later John T. Koch, use "British" only for the early phase of the Common Brittonic language.[5]


Before Jackson's work, "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" were often used for all the P-Celtic languages, including not just the varieties in Britain but those Continental Celtic languages that similarly experienced the evolution of the Proto-Celtic language element /kʷ/ to /p/. However, subsequent writers have tended to follow Jackson's scheme, rendering this use obsolete.[5]


The name "Britain" itself comes from Latin: Britannia~Brittania, via Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Breteyne, possibly influenced by Old English Bryten(lond), probably also from Latin Brittania, ultimately an adaptation of the native word for the island, *Pritanī.[7][8]


An early written reference to the British Isles may derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas' use of variants such as πρεττανική (Prettanikē), "The Britannic [land, island]", and νησοι βρεττανιαι (nēsoi brettaniai), "Britannic islands", with *Pretani being a Celtic word that might mean "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk", referring to body decoration (see below).[9]

Evidence[edit]

Knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. The early language's information is obtained from coins, inscriptions, and comments by classical writers as well as place names and personal names recorded by them. For later languages, there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, together with place names. The names recorded in the Roman period are given in Rivet and Smith.[10]

The retention of the Proto-Celtic sequences am and an, which mostly result from the Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasals.

The Brittonic branch is also referred to as P-Celtic because linguistic reconstruction of the Brittonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme * is p as opposed to Goidelic k. Such nomenclature usually implies acceptance of the P-Celtic and Q-Celtic hypothesis rather than the Insular Celtic hypothesis because the term includes certain Continental Celtic languages as well. (For a discussion, see Celtic languages.)


Other major characteristics include:


Initial s-:


Lenition:


Voiceless spirants:


Nasal assimilation:

Aleini M (1996). Origini delle lingue d'Europa.

Dillon M and Chadwick N (1967). Celtic Realms.

Filppula, M., Klemola, J. and Pitkänen, H. (2001). The Celtic roots of English, Studies in languages, No. 37, University of Joensuu, Faculty of Humanities,  952-458-164-7.

ISBN

Hawkes, J. (1973). The first great civilizations: life in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and Egypt, The history of human society series, London: Hutchinson,  0-09-116580-6.

ISBN

Jackson, K., (1994). Language and history in early Britain: a chronological survey of the Brittonic languages, 1st to 12th c. A. D, Celtic studies series, Dublin: Four Courts Press,  1-85182-140-6.

ISBN

Jackson, K. (1955), "The Pictish Language", in Wainwright, F.T., The Problem of the Picts, Edinburgh: Nelson, pp. 129–166

Rivet A and Smith C (1979). The Placenames of Roman Britain.

(1995), Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 90-5183-820-4.

Schrijver, P.

Willis, David. 2009. "Old and Middle Welsh". In Ball, Martin J., Müller, Nicole (ed). The Celtic Languages, 117–160, 2nd Edition. Routledge Language Family Series.New York: Routledge.  0-203-88248-2.

ISBN

Driscoll, S T 2011. Pictish archaeology: persistent problems and structural solutions. In Driscoll, S T, Geddes, J and Hall, M A (eds) Pictish Progress: new studies on northern Britain in the early Middle Ages, Leiden and Boston: Bril pp 245–279.

Coates, Richard (2007) (archived)

Invisible Britons: the view from linguistics.