Common Brittonic
| Common Brittonic | |
|---|---|
| *Brittonikā[1] | |
| Region | Great Britain |
| Ethnicity | Britons |
| Era | c. 6th century BC to mid-6th century AD[2] Developed into Old Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, Breton and possibly Pictish[3] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
Linguist List | brit |
| Glottolog | None |
| Linguasphere | 50-AB |
Common Brittonic (Welsh: Brythoneg; Cornish: Brythonek; Breton: Predeneg), also known as British, or Proto-Brittonic,[4][5] is the reconstructed Celtic language thought to be historically spoken by the Celtic Britons in Britain and Brittany. It is the common ancestor of the later Brittonic languages.
It is a form of Insular Celtic, descended from Proto-Celtic, a theorized parent language that, by the first half of the first millennium BC, was diverging into separate dialects or languages.[6][7][8][9] Evidence from early and modern Welsh shows that Common Brittonic was influenced by Latin during the Roman period, especially in terms related to the church and Christianity.[10] By the sixth century AD, the languages of the Celtic Britons were swiftly diverging into Neo-Brittonic: Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, Breton. Pictish may either have been a sister language or a descendant branch.[11][12][13]
Over the next three centuries, Brittonic was replaced by Scottish Gaelic in most of Scotland, and by Old English (from which descend Modern English and Scots) throughout most of modern England as well as Scotland south of the Firth of Forth.[14] Cumbric disappeared in the 12th century,[14] and in the far south-west, Cornish probably became extinct in the 18th century, though it has since been revived.[15][a] Welsh and Breton are the only daughter languages that have survived fully into the modern day.
- ^ Schrijver, Peter (1995). Studies in British Celtic historical phonology. Leiden studies in Indo-european. Amsterdam Atlanta (Ga.): Rodopi. p. 45. ISBN 978-90-5183-820-6.
- ^ Common Brittonic at MultiTree on the Linguist List
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
UGlaswas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Eska, Joseph F. (2019-12-01). "The evolution of proto-Brit. *-/lth/ in Welsh". Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie. 66 (1): 75–82. doi:10.1515/zcph-2019-0003. ISSN 1865-889X. S2CID 212726410.
- ^ Sims-Williams, Patrick (November 1984). "The Double System of Verbal Inflexion in Old Irish". Transactions of the Philological Society. 82 (1): 138–201. doi:10.1111/j.1467-968X.1984.tb01211.x. ISSN 0079-1636.
- ^ Henderson, Jon C. (2007). The Atlantic Iron Age: Settlement and Identity in the First Millennium BC. Routledge. pp. 292–295. ISBN 9780415436427.
- ^ Sims-Williams, Patrick (2007). Studies on Celtic Languages before the Year 1000. CMCS. p. 1.
- ^ Koch, John T. (2006). Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 1455.
- ^ Eska, Joseph (2008). "Continental Celtic". In Woodard, Roger (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Europe. Cambridge.
- ^ Lewis, H. (1943). Yr Elfen Ladin yn yr Iaith Gymraeg. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
- ^ Forsyth, Katherine (2006). Koch, John T. (ed.). Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 1444, 1447.
- ^ Forsyth, Katherine (1997). Language in Pictland: The case against "non-Indo-European Pictish". Utrecht: de Keltische Draak. p. 27.
- ^ Jackson, Kenneth H. (1955). "The Pictish Language". In Wainwright, F. T. (ed.). The Problem of the Picts. Edinburgh: Nelson. pp. 129–166.
- ^ a b Nicolaisen, W. F. H. Scottish Place Names. p. 131.
- ^ Tanner, Marcus (2004). The last of the Celts. Yale University Press. p. 225. ISBN 0300104642.
- ^ Ferdinand, Siarl (2018). "The Promotion of Cornish in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly: Attitudes towards the Language and Recommendations for Policy". Studia Celtica Fennica. 19: 107–130. doi:10.33353/scf.79496.
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