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SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are: the Goidelic languages ( Irish and Scottish Gaelic, both descended from Middle Irish) and the Brittonic languages ( Welsh and Breton, descended from Common Brittonic ). [4]
- Proto-Celtic Languages
- Lepontic
- Gaulish
- Galatian
- Noric
- Celtiberian
- Gallaecian
Proto-Celtic, aka Common Celtic, is a descendant of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It has been spoken between 1300 et 800 BCE. Consonant System Reconstruction Indo-European voiced aspirated stops (*bh, *dh, *gh/ǵh) lose their aspiration and merge with the voiced stops (*b, *d, *g/ǵ), except the voiced aspirate labiovelar *gwh, which did not merge w...
Lepontic was spoken in Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul between c. 550 and 100 BCE. Lepontic was assimilated first by Gaulish following the agreement of Gaulish tribes north of the River Padus or Eridanus, and then by Latin, after the Roman conquestduring the 2nd and 1st century BCE. Some scholars considered it a distinct Continental Celtic language, whi...
Gaulish was spoken by the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul. Gaulish attested in France and in northern Italy are known as Transalpine Gaulish and Cisalpine Gaulish, respectively. Gaulish includes varieties of Celtic that were spoken in Central and Eastern Europe and Anatolia, such as Noric and Galatian. Written records of Gaulish date back to the 3rd cen...
Galatian was closely related to the Gaulish language. It was spoken by the Galatians in Galatia, in central Anatolia from the 3rd century BCE up to the 4th century CE. It was introduced to Anatolia by the Celtic tribes, such as Trocmii, Tolistobogii et Tectosages. According to Strabo, the Tectosages of Anatolia were related to the Volcae Tectosages...
The Noric language or Eastern Celtic is attested in two fragmentary inscriptions from the Roman province of Noricum: in the Ptuj (Slovenia) inscription, found in 1894 and written right to left in a northern Italic alphabet and in the Grafenstein (Austria) inscription (2nd century CE), discovered in 1977. The Ptuj inscription contains two personal n...
Celtiberian or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic was spoken in the 2nd and 1st century BCE by the Celtiberians in the region of the Iberian Peninsula between the headwaters of the Douro, Tagus, Júcar and Turia rivers and the Ebro river. Celtiberian was related to Gallaecian. Celtiberian is attested in almost 200 inscriptions written in Celtiberian script...
Gallaecian, aka Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, was spoken at the beginning of the 1st millennium CE in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Roman Empire, this area became the province of Gallaecia. Nowadays, it covers the Norte Region in northern Portugal, and the Spanish regions of Galicia, western Asturias and the west of the province ...
Among the Indo-European languages, the Italic languages share a higher percentage of lexicon with the Celtic and the Germanic ones, three of the four traditional "centum" branches of Indo-European (together with Greek). The following table shows a lexical comparison of several Italic languages:
May 14, 2024 · Celtic languages - Ancient Contacts, Relationships: The question of the relationship of Common Celtic to the other Indo-European languages remains open. For some time, it was held that Celtic stood in an especially close relation to the Italic branch; some scholars even spoke of a period when an Italo-Celtic “nation” existed, toward the end ...
The six Celtic languages currently spoken are divided into two ranches: Goidelic, and Brythonic. The former branch consists of Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic, while the latter branch includes Welsh, Cornish and Breton.
The Celtic languages that survived into the modern period – Welsh, Irish, Breton, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, and Cornish (the last two only recently extinct) – are spoken as primary languages by about a million people, although easily twice that number might be counted as fluent speakers.
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In historical linguistics, Italo-Celtic is a hypothetical grouping of the Italic and Celtic branches of the Indo-European language family on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. There is controversy about the causes of these similarities.
