Language

Celtic Language

The Indo-European family of languages has at least eleven basic idioms from which more than fifty modern languages can trace their roots. One of these basic idioms is Celtic.
The two divisions of Celtic are Q-Celtic or Goidelic, long believed to be the older of the two, and P-Celtic or Brithonic. 'Q' and 'P' are used to designate differences between the two divisions. Where the Q-Celtic word for 'horse' is 'Equos', the P-Celtic word is 'Epos'. The word 'Who' in Q-Celtic is 'cia' (with the hard K sound) while it is 'pwy' in P-Celtic Welsh. The Irish word for 'son' is 'mac', while the Welsh word is 'map'. And so on.
The word 'Celtic' is not used in a linguistic sense to define any group of people from the stone age to the bronze age due to lack of written evidence. Linguists must depend on Classical references to Celtic words and to Celtic place names still in use between the 6th to 5th centuries BC and the 5th century of the Common Era. The Celts left no written record during that time.
There are six distinct Celtic languages either still in use or in use within recent memory. Q-Celtic languages are: Modern Irish, Scots-Gaelic, and Manx. P-Celtic languages are: Welsh, Breton, and Cornish. The language of Gaul (modern France) may have been P-Celtic.
The Picts possibly spoke two languages, Brithonic Celtic and an aboriginal tongue, or they used a mixture of these two languages. Either way, their literature remains for the most part indecipherable.

Word Play:

Sanskrit 'Raj'
Italic 'Rex'
Celtic 'Rix'
all mean 'King'.

Sanskrit 'Agni'
Italic 'Ignis'
Fire.

Tantalizing:
Are there really inscriptions from the sixth century BC in northern Italy which are in Celtic and attributed to the Insubre tribe?

According to Diodorus, the Celtic funerary rites involved the mourners throwing letters on the pyres of the dead, apparently so they could read them in the afterlife.

Are Ogham inscriptions only as old as the fourth century AD, or were they in use much earlier but on perishable items such as skins, leather, and wood?

References:
'The Celts' by Gerhard Herm St. Martin's Press New York first published in the United States in 1977
'The World of the Celts' by Simon James Thames and Hudson Ltd, London/ Thames and Hudson inc, New York 1993
'Celtic Warriors' by Tim Newark Blandford Press Ltd. 1986

Gaelic pronounciations for several words
Gaul vocabulary
Language Links

Links to other sites on the Web

Preseli-- A Bilingual Welsh Page with links to Welsh-language sites
Knud Mariboe's Page-- Celtic Encyclopaedia, for one thing
Gach uile rud faoi Ogham ar an Lion-- Every Ogham thing on the Web
CyberSpoke's Learning Irish Gaelic
StudyWeb®: Language_Arts: Irish Gaelic

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