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The Brythonic languages (or Brittonic languages) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family. The name Brythonic is derived from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael. The Brythonic branch is also referred to as P-Celtic because the Brythonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme *kw is p as opposed to the Goidelic c. Such nomenclature usually implies an acceptance of the P-Celtic hypothesis rather than the Insular Celtic hypothesis (for a discussion, see Celtic languages).
Other major characteristics include:
- the treatment of -m, -n as -am, -an.
- initial s- followed by a vowel was changed to h-
- Irish sean "old", sior "long", samail "similar"
- Breton hen, hir, heñvel
- Brythonic retains original nasals before -t
- Breton kant "hundred" vs. Irish cead
- sp, sr, sv/sw became f, fr, chw
- *swero "toy, game" became Welsh chwarae and Breton c'hoari
- *srokna "nostril" became W ffroen and Br froen.
- all other intial s- fell before consonants
- smero became W mwyar, Br mouar "fruit"
- slemon became W llyfn, Br levn "smooth"
- v became gw where in Goidelic it is f
- vindos "white" became W gwenn
- vassos "servant, young man" became W gwaz
- double explosives transformed into spirants: pp, cc, tt became f, ch (c'h), th (z) before a vowel or liquid
- cippus > Br kef "tree tronk", W cyff
- cattos > Br kaz, W cath
- bucca > Br boc'h, W boch
- single voiceless explosives and voiced d, b, and m in an intervocalic position became soft spirants
The major Brythonic languages are Welsh and Breton, both of which survive as community languages today. The Cornish language died out at the end of the eighteenth century, but attempts at reviving it started in the 20th century and are ongoing. Also notable are the extinct language Cumbric, and possibly the extinct Pictish (although the late Kenneth H. Jackson argued during the 1950s, from some of the few remaining examples of Pictish, that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language, the majority of modern scholars of Pictish do not agree).
Classification
The family tree of the Brythonic languages is as follows:
- Brythonic
- Pictish (possibly)
- Ivernic (possibly)
- British, ancestral to:
- Western Brythonic language, ancestral to:
- Southwestern Brythonic, ancestral to:
History and origins
The modern Brythonic languages all derive from a common ancestral language termed British, Common Brythonic, Old Brythonic or Proto-Brythonic, which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic, which was introduced to Great Britain from the middle second millennium BC (Hawkes, 1973). Brythonic languages were then spoken at least in the whole of Great Britain south of the rivers Forth and Clyde, presumably also including the Isle of Man. The theory has been advanced (notably by R. F. O'Rahilly) that Ireland was populated by speakers of Brythonic before being displaced by speakers of a Q-Celtic language (possibly from the Quarietii tribe of southern France), although the linguists Dillon and Chadwick reject this theory as being implausible.
During the period of the Roman occupation of Great Britain (AD 43 to c. 410), Common Brythonic borrowed a large stock of Latin words, both for concepts unfamiliar in the pre-urban society of Celtic Great Britain, such as urbanisation and tactics of warfare, and for rather more mundane words which displaced native terms (most notably, the word for "fish" in all the Brythonic languages derives from the Latin piscis rather the native *ēskos). Approximately eight hundred of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brythonic languages.
It is probable that during this period Common Brythonic was differentiated into at least two major dialect groups - Southwestern and Western (in addition we may posit additional dialects spoken in what is now England which have left little or no evidence). Between the end of the Roman occupation and the mid sixth century the two dialects began to diverge into recognisably separate languages, the Western into Cumbric and Welsh and the Southwestern into Cornish and its closely related sister language Breton, which was carried from the south of Great Britain to continental Armorica by refugees fleeing the Saxon invaders.
The Brythonic languages spoken in Scotland, the Isle of Man and England began to be displaced in the 5th century through the influence of Irish, Norse and Germanic invaders. The displacement of the languages of Brythonic descent was probably complete in all of this territory (except Cornwall) by the 11th century (date of extinction in various parts of the territory is debated).
Remnants in England and Scotland
The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the Brythonic languages were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place-names in England and to a lesser extent Scotland are derived (sometimes indirectly) from the Brythonic names, including London, Penicuik, Perth, York, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester. Several place-name elements are thought to be wholly or partly Brythonic in origin, particularly bre-, bal-, and -dun for hills, carr for a high rocky place, coomb for a small deep valley. Others reflect the presence of Brythons, such as Dumbarton - from the Scottish Gaelic Dùn Breatann meaning "Fort of the Britons".
Until recently it was believed that the areas settled by the Anglo-Saxons were uninhabited at the time or that the Britons had fled before their arrival. However, genetic studies show that the British were not pushed out to the Celtic fringes – many tribes remained in what was to become England. These findings strengthen the research of Steven Bassett of the University of Birmingham; his work during the 1990s suggests that much of the West Midlands was only very lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements.
It is generally accepted that linguistic effects on English were lexically rather poor aside from toponyms, consisting of a few domestic words, which may include hubbub, peat, bucket, crock, noggin, gob (c.f. Gaelic gob), nook; and the dialectal term for a badger, i.e. brock (c.f. Welsh broch, and Gaelic Broc). Arguably, the use of periphrastic constructions in the English verb (which is more widespread than in the other Germanic languages) is traceable to Brythonic influence.
Some researchers argue that English syntax reflects more extensive Brythonic influences. For instance, in English tag questions, the form of the tag depends on the verb form in the main statement (aren't I?, isn't he?, won't we? etc). The German nicht wahr? and the French n'est ce pas?, by contrast, are fixed forms which can be used with almost any main statement. It has been claimed that the English system has been borrowed from Brythonic, since Welsh tag questions vary in almost exactly the same way. This view is far from being generally accepted, though, since it is equally possible that the Welsh construction is borrowed from English.
Far more notable, but less well known, are the many Brythonic influences on Scottish Gaelic. Like English, periphrastic constructions have come to the fore, but to a much greater degree. Some important borrowings into Gaidhlig include Beinn meaning mountain, and anglicised "Ben", probably from the Brythonic pen meaning "Head".
References
- The Celtic Roots of English edited by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola and Heli Pitkänen, by Joensuu University.
External links
Brythonic languages | Celtic languages
Brythonisch | Yezhoù predenek | Ieithoedd Brythoneg | Britannische Sprachen | Langue brittonique | Brythonek | Brythonisch | Języki brytańskie | Brittiska språk | Britonike | 布立吞亞支
"Brythonic languages"