| Proto-celtic Language |
Website Links For Language |
Information AboutProto-celtic Language |
|
! align="center" bgcolor=pink | Language Classification |- | Indo-European Celtic Proto-Celtic |} The Proto-Celtic language, also called '''Common Celtic''', is the putative ancestor of all the known Celtic Languages . Probably spoken around 800 BC , its lexis can be confidently reconstructed on the basis of the Comparative Method of Historical Linguistics . Proto-Celtic is a direct daughter-language of Proto-Indo-European and is widely regarded as the first of the Indo-European Languages to spread in North-Western and Atlantic Europe. The area in which the language seems to have first become distinguishably Proto-Celtic, as opposed to earlier Centum dialect, corresponds to the Hallstatt Culture , on the western fringes of the Urnfield . From roughly 800 BC, this culture by influence of " Thraco-Cimmerian " elements introduced the Iron Age to Europe. The contemporary Cimmerians were variously claimed as ancestors of the Cimbri , Sugambri and Cymru , although other etymologies better explain the latter term (see also British Israelism ). The reconstruction of Proto-Celtic is currently being undertaken. While Continental Celtic presents much substantiation for Phonology , and some for Morphology , recorded material is largely still too scanty to allow a secure reconstruction of Syntax . Although some complete sentences are recorded in Gaulish and Celtiberian , the oldest substantial Celtic Literature is found in Old Irish , the earliest recorded of the Insular Celtic Languages . Phonological reconstruction Consonants
The terms P-Celtic and '''Q-Celtic''' are useful when we wish to group the Celtic languages according to the way they handle this one phoneme. However a simple division into P- and Q-Celtic may be untenable, as it does not do justice to the evidence of the ancient Continental Celtic Languages . The large number of unusual shared innovations among the Insular Celtic Languages are often also presented as evidence against a P-Celtic ''vs'' Q-Celtic division, but they may instead reflect a common Substratum influence from the pre-Celtic languages of the British Isles {Link without Title} , in which case they would be irrelevant to Celtic language classification. Q-Celtic languages may also have /p/ in loan words, though in some early borrowings from Welsh into Irish /k/ was used by sound substitution, as in Gaelic ''Cothrige'', an early form of "Padraig" . Gaelic ''póg'' "kiss" was a later borrowing (from the second word of the Latin phrase ''osculum pacis'' "kiss of peace") at a stage where ''p'' was borrowed directly as ''p'', without substituting ''c''. Vowels
Transition to Welsh The regular Consonant al Sound Change s from Proto-Celtic to the Welsh Language may be summarised in the following table: Morphology The al forms depending on whether they appear in absolute initial position in the sentence (Insular Celtic having Verb Subject Object or VSO word order) or whether they are preceded by a preverbal Particle . The situation is most robustly attested in Old Irish , but it has remained to some extent in Scottish Gaelic and traces of it are present in Middle Welsh as well. Forms that appear in sentence-initial position are called absolute, those that appear after a particle are called '''conjunct'''. The Paradigm of the Present Active Indicative of the Old Irish verb ''beirid'' "carry" is as follows; the conjunct forms are illustrated with the particle ''ní'' "not". In Scottish Gaelic this distinction is still found in the Future Tense : In Middle Welsh, the distinction is seen most clearly in Proverb s following the formula "X happens, Y does not happen" (Evans 1964: 119):
Continental Celtic Languages cannot be shown to have any absolute/conjunct distinction. However, they seem to show only SVO and SOV word orders, as in other Indo-European languages. The absolute/conjunct distinction may thus be an artifact of the VSO word order that arose in Insular Celtic. References
See also External links A reference for Proto-Celtic Vocabulary is provided by the University Of Wales at the following sites:
Alternatively, the University of Leiden provides a Proto-Celtic dictionary: |