Celtic languages - Characteristics of Celtic languages, Mixed languages

The languages of the Celts, the first Indo-European peoples to spread throughout Europe. The dialects spoken on the continent are known as Continental Celtic; traces remain in several inscriptions and place-names in Gaulish (from the tribal name Galli or Gaul), and in Celtiberian (from Celtiberi, the name given to the Celtic tribes of Spain). Insular Celtic is the name given to the Celtic languages of the British Is and Brittany. There are two branches: Goidelic comprises the Gaelic spoken in Ireland, which spread to the Isle of Man (Manx) and Scotland; Brythonic (also called Brittonic or British) comprises Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. The two branches of Insular Celtic are labelled Q-Celtic (Goidelic) and P-Celtic (Brythonic), because of a distinctive divergence in the development of the Indo-European sound system: the consonant sequence kw became q or c in Goidelic, and p in Brythonic, as is evidenced in the final consonant of the surnames Mac (Gaelic) and Ap (Welsh).

Celtic
Geographic distribution:	Formerly widespread in Europe, today only British Isles and Brittany
Genetic classification:	Indo-European  Celtic
Subdivisions:	Continental Celtic Insular Celtic

The Celtic languages are the languages descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. Today, Celtic languages are now limited to a few areas in the British Isles, eastern Canada, Patagonia, scattered groups in the United States and Australia, and on the peninsula of Brittany in France.

Scholarly handling of the Celtic languages has been rather argumentative owing to lack of primary source data. Some scholars distinguish Continental and Insular Celtic, arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brythonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages. Other scholars distinguish P-Celtic from Q-Celtic, putting most of the Continental Celtic languages in the former group (except for Celtiberian, which is Q-Celtic).

The distinction of Celtic into these four sub-families probably occurred about 1000 BC.

The other scheme, defended for example by McCone (1996), links Goidelic and Brythonic together as an Insular Celtic branch, while Gaulish and Celtiberian are referred to as Continental Celtic. The proponents of the Insular Celtic hypothesis point to other shared innovations among Insular Celtic languages, including inflected prepositions, VSO word order, and the lenition of intervocalic [m] to [β̃], a nasalized voiced bilabial fricative (an extremely rare sound). There is, however, no assumption that the Continental Celtic languages descend from a common "Proto-Continental Celtic" ancestor. Rather, the Insular/Continental schemata usually considers Celtiberian the first branch to split from Proto-Celtic, and the remaining group would later have split into Gaulish and Insular Celtic.

There are legitimate scholarly arguments in favour of both the Insular Celtic hypothesis and the P-Celtic/Q-Celtic hypothesis.

When referring only to the modern Celtic languages, since no Continental Celtic language has living descendents, "Q-Celtic" is equivalent to "Goidelic" and "P-Celtic" is equivalent to "Brythonic".

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.

Assuming the Insular/Continental hypothesis, the family tree of the Celtic languages would be:

Proto-Celtic or Common Celtic Continental Celtic Gaulish Lepontic Noric Galatian Celtiberian Insular Celtic Goidelic Primitive Irish Old Irish Middle Irish Irish Scottish Gaelic Manx Brythonic Cumbric Pictish Old Welsh Middle Welsh Welsh British Southwestern Brythonic Breton Cornish

Assuming the P-Celtic/Q-Celtic hypothesis, the Celtic family would be organised this way:

Proto-Celtic or Common Celtic P-Celtic Gaulish Lepontic Noric Galatian Brythonic Cumbric Pictish Old Welsh Middle Welsh Welsh Southwestern Brythonic Breton Cornish Q-Celtic Celtiberian Goidelic Primitive Irish Old Irish Middle Irish Irish Scottish Gaelic Manx

Characteristics of Celtic languages

Although there are many differences between the individual Celtic languages, they do show many family resemblances. While none of these characteristics is necessarily unique to the Celtic languages, there are few if any other languages which possess them all. They include:

consonant mutations (Insular Celtic only) inflected prepositions (Insular Celtic only) two grammatical genders (modern Insular Celtic only;

Mixed languages

Bungee language, a Metis mix of Scottish Gaelic and Cree language Shelta, a mix of Romany language, the Irish language and English Some forms of Romany language in Wales, also combined Romany itself with Welsh language and English language forms.