Talk:British language (Celtic)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Languages, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, and easy-to-use resource about languages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
language Portal
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
WikiProject Celts British language (Celtic) is within the scope of WikiProject Celts, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Celts. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article or you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks or take part in the discussion. Please Join, Create, and Assess. The project aims for no vandalism and no conflict.
??? This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project's quality scale.
??? This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project's importance scale.
After rating the article, please provide a short summary on the article's ratings summary page to explain your ratings and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses.


Contents

[edit] Article name

I think Proto-Brythonic language would be a more appropriate name for this article. That follows the customary naming of protolanguages (e.g. Proto-Celtic language, Proto-Germanic language, Proto-Indo-European language, etc.). Anyone mind? --Angr (t·c) 21:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard tell of a Proto-Brythonic language. Also there is no article entitled Proto-Goidelic language, so I see no point in renaming it. Anyway, my source for this article was entitled "British". Greatgavini 19:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The difference is, there isn't much that can be said about Proto-Goidelic that can't be said at Primitive Irish, which unlike Proto-Brythonic is an attested language (in Ogham inscriptions). What is your source that calls the language simply "British"? --Angr (t·c) 20:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Source- Languages in Britain and Ireland, edited by Granville Price, 2000, ISBN 0-631-21581-6 Greatgavini 07:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Its described as 'Brittonic' in chapters 2 (Brittonic Phonology) and 3 (Brittonic Chronology) of Sims-Williams, Patrick (2003) The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: phonology and chronology, c.400-1200. Oxford, Blackwell. ISBN 1-4051-0903-3 --Nantonos 12:31, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
There are some issues with a name like "Proto-Brythonic". One is that it relies on our current ignorance of British Celtic languages other than Welsh. Brythonic as a term is usually contrasted with Goidelic. There was probably more than one Celtic languages in Britain even prior to the Roman conquest, and all of them were not Goidelic. So is "Proto-Brythonic" the ancestor of these, or the single language spoken by the Romano-Britons in, say, 400 A.D.? --Saforrest 06:08, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I doubt the Romano-Britons in AD 400 spoke just one Brythonic language. There were probably several in different parts of the country, including the ancestors of Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Cumbric (or at the very least, the ancestors of Welsh/Cumbric and Cornish/Breton), but probably also Brythonic languages in the east of what is now England that have been completely lost. Proto-Brythonic refers in principle to the ancestor language of all of these, but in practice can only be reconstructed on the basis of the surviving languages Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Angr (talk) 06:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
You seem to be assuming that the sole evidence of Brythonic comes from modern languages. This is not the case, as has been pointed out several times already. For example, coin evidence covers south-east England. --Nantonos 01:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Not just the modern languages, of course, but the attested medieval languages as well. You seem to keep thinking place names and names on coins count as attestation. User:Angr 06:31, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Geographical range

Why does the article give a geographical distribution up to but not including the Pennines? What language was spoken north of there? Or (since the sole evidence is stated to be from coinage) does it mean that there is no coinage and thus no evidence one way or the other? --Nantonos 12:25, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I see that the article now asserts that Scottish Gaelic was spoken from the Pennines northwards. This seems extremely unlikely, given a) the history of Dalriada b) the clearly P-celtic names such as the Epidii, but maybe there are facts that I am unaware of? --Nantonos 15:39, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't know either. The article doesn't even say when "British" was spoken. Scottish Gaelic language, though, claims that Gaelic was spoken in parts of Scotland since Roman times. But the claim is unsourced, so who knows how reliable it is. --Angr (t·c) 18:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
What other language would be spoken north of the Pennines? --The Great Gavini an post
It is possible that Cumbric was spoken in the Pennines, but... --The Great Gavini an post
The only other thing that comes to mind is Pictish. Cumbric is supposed to be a descendant of "British", isn't it? --Angr (t·c) 10:23, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Mmmm...well, until anyone has information (and the references to back it up), it'll have to stay as Scottish Gaelic for now. --The Great Gavini an post
Cumbric is indeed, like Welsh and Breton, descended from Brittonic. Looking at the tribal names from Ptolemys Geographica, its clear that they are Brittonic (or Gallo-Brittonic, since those seem to be the same language). For example the Epidii, in Kintyre; or the Parisii, in Yorkshire. For further information, look into the Votadini and the post-Roman Kingdom of Gododdin, in Lothian. --Nantonos 21:18, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Cumbric is certainly descended from Proto-Brittonic/Proto-Brythonic, but this page doesn't make it clear that Proto-Brythonic is the language under discussion. The concept of "Gallo-Brittonic" is controversial and probably a minority view among Celticists. --Angr (t·c) 22:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Angr, why do you refer to it as proto anything - such names should be reserved for languages that are unattested, surely. Brittonic is clearly attested (names on coins, place names, ogam stones, an the Bath inscription). So its not clear what proto-language is being discussed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by NantonosAedui (talk • contribs) 23:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
The names on the coins aren't attestation of the language, because they're Latinized. Place names aren't attestation of the language either, because they're either Latinized or Anglicized or otherwise adapted. I thought all the Ogam stones in Britain were written in Primitive Irish, not a Brythonic language. What is the Bath inscription? --Angr (t·c) 23:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh dear. With that set of assumpions, I can see why you would draw erroneous conclusions. I started to write a well-referenced correction, then realised that it would be better in the article itself. However, briefly: (a) the language on British and Gaulish pre-conquest Celtic coinage is Celtic (Brittonic or Gaulish), not Latin. (b) Of the 371 Ogam stones in Britain, 191 are Brittonic. (c) The Bath inscription was already referred to below. I will hopefully get time to greatly expand this article in the next few weeks. --Nantonos 17:17, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Since there are no references to back up this non-historical claim of Scottish Gaelic, I'm going to be bold and change it to a claim of Brythonic people up to the Great Glen, and perhaps beyond - since there are references (such as Y Gododdin) to back that up. --Nantonos 21:18, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I've been bold and removed the bit about Scottish Gaelic being spoken as far south as the Pennines. It run directly counter to all I've ever been taught; for starters, Gaelic wasn't even introduced to the island of Britain until after the Roman period, and it's attested that Strathclyde and Gododdin were British-speaking kingdoms, and Cumbric was definitely a British language. Ref. The history of the Celtic languages in the British Isles, R.L. Thompson, in Trudgill's Language in the British Isles C.U.P. (1984) pp.241-258. ISBN 0-521-28409-0 -- Arwel (talk) 02:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Arwel. Do you have specific page numbers in the work you just cited? --Nantonos 17:17, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Arwel is right. Just got out the other book from the library, and it says pretty much the same thing. It does say British was spoken up to the Pennines, but it also says it was spoken between the Pennines and the Scottish lowlands. It does say Gaelic was spoken north of the Pennines, but at a later stage. Mea culpa est. - Greatgavini an post

[edit] Types of evidence

The statement that coins are the sole evidence is contradicted in the article by later mention of place-name evidence. The lead tablet from Bath would also be evidence, surely. --Nantonos 12:25, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

What lead tablet? Greatgavini 20:33, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry. An inscription on a metal pendant discovered in 1979 in Bath:
Adixovi Devina Devada Andagin Vindiorix Cvam Vnai
  • Lambert, Pierre-Yves (2003) La langue gauloise. 2nd edition. Paris, Editions Errance. p.176
  • Tomlin, R.S.O (1987) Was ancient British Celtic ever a written language, two texts from Roman Bath. The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XXXIV, pp.18-25

[edit] History: Driven?

"By 600 AD, British speakers had been driven into the Cornwall and Wales."

This is ambiguous I think. Can it be proven that the people who spoke 'British' were actually driven away? My suspicion is that the bulk of the population remained where they were, but had adopted the cultures of invaders. Recent DNA studies have shown that, for example, Anglo-Saxons make up a minority of the population of England today - much smaller in number than had been previously assumed. I suggest that this sentence be revamped to reflect this fact. --Mal 00:39, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree this needs to be expanded as it gives only one side to the centuries old academic to and fro on the fate of the native population of what later became England. Basically the options are massacre, emigration and assimilation and the academics (with propagandists cheering on the sidelines or muddying the waters!) argue over the evidence for dominance of each ingredient in the complex history of the British Isles. Currently the favoured theory is that a significant proportion of the native population survived in many parts of Britain where the British language was replaced by Old English or Gaelic. However there is evidence for a substantial population movement from South West England to Brittany carrying with them what was to become the Breton language. Emigration to Wales and Cornwall is a particularly difficult theory to prove since the immigrants would have been speaking the same language as the native population. The main new source of evidence during the past thirty years is from DNA studies.
Ref: Brythonic languages#History and origins (much of that section is relevant to this article); The History of Wales, John Davies, 1993; The Celts, John Davies, 2000.Lloffiwr 12:57, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, wish I had a time-travelling machine too... - The Great Gavini Ave 20:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Driven is now fixed; it talks about where speakers remained, without speculating about the areas where they used to speak it. --Nantonos 20:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Place names

This section as it stands could be taken to imply that British survives only in English place names. The ambiguity would be removed if reworded along the lines of:

Very few traces of British remain in those areas where it was replaced by Old English or Gaelic. Topographic names are its main legacy. The best example....

Ref: Brythonic languages#Remnants in England and Scotland; The History of Wales, John Davies, 1993

Much of the contents of the referenced section cover the same ground as the Place names section in this article.

Lloffiwr 12:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Language extinction in table

This should read:

developed into Early Welsh & Early Cornish by the 7th century

see references on talk page for Old Welsh and Brythonic languages. Lloffiwr 13:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Texts written about the language

Very little is known about British, as there are no written texts in Britain about the language

I suspect this was edited from "there are no texts in the language" or some such. Regardless, the claim that there are no texts written in Britain about the language is probably wrong; its likely that there are mediaeval glosses that comment on some British words. --Nantonos 20:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, the question is, do we have anything written about the British language? What exactly do the Greek and Latin texts say? Do they just give names? Do they gloss a few words (e.g. "the Britanni call a fort a dunum")? How do we know that the language the Greek and Latin authors are describing is the same language as the one that evolved into the modern Brythonic languages? Angr/talk 20:48, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Known British words

I could not find most of the listed words anywhere else on the Internet. I was wondering where those words came from (besides the ones on the pendant). --Narfil Palùrfalas 20:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Some of them are reconstructed from attested Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, Breton) words; others are found as elements in place or personal names. Others may have just been made up for this article, I suspect. User:Angr 07:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I wondered. . . --Narfil Palùrfalas 01:16, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh wow, what a mess. Someone is going to have to go through and check every single one of these? In all seriousness, would it not be better to delete the lot and re-add a little paragraph with a few examples cited from a definite source? Telsa (talk) 20:52, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Clean slate would be best, no? Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
You mean, delete the lot? Fine by me, but is there nothing salvageable at all? Telsa (talk) 12:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brythonic language in Ireland

Angr and I seem to have a difference of opinion as to whether or not a variant of Brythonic was spoken in Ireland.

I added the region to the introductory paragraph in light of the fact that some of the same tribes are found in both islands (Great Britain and Ireland). It is not beyond reason, in my opinion, to deduce that the people of these tribes who were found to exist on both islands are likely to have spoken the same language.

I do understand Angr's point of view in that this should be verified (as per WP policy). I know that Wikipedia itself should not be used as a source, but I'd like to use examples from it for discussion purposes here.

To start with, the article Brythonic languages suggests that the name Brittonic (later modified to Brythonic) had its roots in the Welsh (Brythonic) word Prettanic (Prydien). We know that historians such as Diodorus Siculus referred to the islands as the Pretannic Isles. We also know that Ptolemy listed the names of tribes that were found to be living on the island of Ireland, including the Damnoni (cognate to the Dumnoni), the Brigantes, the Fir Bolg (Belgae) and other Belgic tribes.

I think it would be safe to assume that these Belgic tribes and other Brythonic-speaking tribes which the islands were named after, spoke the same language as they did when they made their various ways across the Irish Sea and the North Channel etc, from Albion, to settle in Ivernia.

I would be interested to know if there is specific evidence that would suggest that Brythonic was never spoken in Ireland. --Setanta747 (talk) 01:28, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, of course you can't prove a negative, but it seems to me you're making a lot of assumptions. The fact that the islands were called the Pretannic Isles hardly proves anything considering that to this day they're called the British Isles even though no one there except the Welsh and a handful of Cornish revivalists speak Brythonic languages. The same for groups called Damnoni, Brigantes, and Fir Bolg - even if their names are cognate to known Brythonic words, that doesn't prove they were Brythonic speakers themselves. More later, I have to go to work now. —Angr 04:30, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Basically, this article is about the barely attested ancestor of the known Brythonic languages: Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and Cumbric. Even if we could be 100% certain that non-Goidelic Insular Celts lived in Ireland (and we can't), we don't know anything at all about their language. It could be (and the geographic distance makes it highly probable) a sister language to the language of Roman Britain rather than being the same language. It could be some third branch of Proto-Insular Celtic, neither Goidelic nor Brythonic. The tribal names you mention aren't terribly compelling - the word "brigant-" is in Goidelic too, in the name Brigit/Brighid/Bríd. How do we know Damnoni is cognate to Dumnoni? Superficial similarity? Assuming Dumnoni comes from *dubno- "depth, water", why did the u become an a? Considering the Belgic tribes probably weren't Brythonic (certainly attested Gaulish has no shared innovations in common with Brythonic but the sound change kw > p, and even that isn't exceptionless in Gaulish), why should the word Bolg of Fir Bolg imply that the Fir Bolg were Brythonic? And again, why would the e become an o? And even if these names really are cognates of each other, that doesn't really prove anything more than that the Damnoni, Brigantes, Fir Bolg, etc., were Celts. Nothing about these names is obligatorily Brythonic as opposed to some other branch of Celtic. So to reiterate, I still have seen no compelling evidence (and certainly no published sources) that the language discussed in this article – the Celtic language of Roman Britain (basically England and Wales), attested directly in only a handful of names and otherwise known only in the form of the reconstructed ancestor of Welsh, Breton, and Cornish – was ever spoken in Ireland. —Angr 19:17, 9 June 2008 (UTC)