Talk:Brythonic languages

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Er, Cornish isn't extinct. I for one speak it after a fashion (and know at least a dozen or so people I can talk Cornish with)... We're doing an admirable job on rescuing it down along.sjc

Your pardon, I was trying to say "no native speakers", as contrasted with Welsh and Breton. This is not the same as extinct, as you point out --PaulDrye
I beg to differ! Cornish does indeed have native speakers. Harrumph! HARRUMPH! harrumph. love, Node 05:17, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

AndyG - it should probably be most, not all, because there were non-Celts in Great Britain (the Picts, and whoever else was there before the Celts). Adam Bishop 23:03 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

If you have a look at Picts, you will see that they may have spoken a celtic language, but that no one really knows. So you can't claim that the Picts are definitely not celts.Alun 11:45, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Old Devonian/Westcountry Brythonic

I really don't think Biddulph qualifies as a linguistic expert, and this reference, and the main article Old Devonian, should be deleted unless substantiated. Evertype 14:24, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

Westcountryguy has reinstated Westcountry Brythonic as a redirect to this page. Evertype 13:21, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

[edit] Improving the article

In the final paragraph there are a number of words suggested to derive from Brythonic. Perhaps we should set to filling this out some, giving Welsh or Cornish or (properly) reconstructed forms. Evertype 09:59, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

[edit] Gaelic invasion?

In the main article it currently and unequivocally states:

"Once, Brythonic languages encompassed most of Great Britain and Ireland – though in Ireland it was replaced with Goidelic when Gaels invaded sometime between 500 and 100 BC."

I've done a bit of reading on the subject and this is the first I've seen that Brythonic is considered older in the British Isles than Goidelic. Most things I've read have suggested the opposite. My reading has hardly been exhaustive, however. Has anyone else heard this before? At the very least I'll bet that it is the subject of some ambiguity, as we are talking about a period of prehistory. Fire Star 20:03, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganised and More Added

I've just reorganised the page, improved the wording in places and added more history about the language. IMO it's still not enough- there's so much more we can add here. I'd like to add that I'm pretty sure of most of the stuff I've added or changed, but I'm also sure that infelicities and errors remain. Please- correct them and add to the content. Dewrad 21:15, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Breton

Western into Cumbric and Welsh and the Southwestern into Cornish and its closely related sister language Breton, which was carried from the south of Britain to continental Armorica by refugees fleeing the Saxon invaders. In school Ysgol Gyfun Llanhari (a Welsh language school in south Wales) I was taught this. In 1996 I was working in a research lab in the University of Huddersfield with a Breton chap. He told me that Bretons are taught the opposite. That is that Breton was transfered to Cornwall by Bretons fleeing Franks! I wonder which is true, or possibly both are true? Can anyone elaborate?--Alun 21:22, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

All the linguistic evidence points to Breton and Cornish being so closely related to Welsh that they must have developed alongside it on Britain, with Breton being introduced to Brittany. But there are Breton linguists who for political reasons want to believe that Breton is a direct descendant of Gaulish, and so they need to find an alternative explanation for the fact that Breton is so very similar to Cornish and Welsh. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 05:14, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
Gaulish scholars do not see Breton as being a direct descendant of Gaulish, but having passed through the earlier phases of the Bythonic to Old Welsh changes first. It seems obvious that Breton and Cornish would continue to inflience each other for some time, being geographically right next to each other. --Nantonos 00:27, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lowland Scots

I see that on Brythonic languages you removed "and Anglo-Saxons brought an Anglo-Saxon language with them, Lowland Scots." with the comment (Reverting. Could we have some discussion on this point with dates before introducing Anglo-Saxon Scots at that early date?). It seems non-contentious that Lowland Scots is a Germanic language, derived like Northern English from Northumbrian; and that it displaced Brythonic languages in the south of Scotland as Gaelic displaced them in the north. What is your objection here? Is it that Lowland Scots is not identical to Anglo-Saxon (which is certainly true, but better dealt with by adding 'which evolved into' rather than deleting the phrase entirely. --Nantonos 00:22, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Lowlands Scots and Modern English both derived from post-Norman Middle English dialects. It is incorrect to say that Anglo-Saxons brought Lowlands Scots with them, and there's no reason for giving Lowlands Scots prominence in the Brythonic Languages article, as both it and Modern English derive from Anglo-Saxon. And then there's the question of how closely related Scots and English are. Evertype 07:42, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Common Brythonic and Gaulish

The article seems to assume that Gaulish and Common Brythonic, Old Brythonic or Proto-Brythonic have zero connection beyond proto-Celtic. While this is certainly one view, and boldly overturns the P-Celtic / Q-Celtic model, it fails to explain why the actual Iron Age British evidence that we do have, scanty though it may be, and the Old Welsh material (onve adjusted back for sound shifts) are so readilly analysed as if they were Gaulish. I would like to see the connection between Common Brythonic and Gaulish discussed, in a separate section. --Nantonos 18:18, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the right place for it, though. Insular Celtic languages has some discussion of the Insular Celtic hypothesis vs. Gallo-Brythonic hypothesis debate; maybe that's the place to extend it. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 18:46, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
OK let me split that request into two. Insular Celtic languages should talk about it more, agreed, and Brythonic languages should avoid giving the impression that Common Brythonic appeared from nowhere and has no parallels with any other language. --Nantonos 19:48, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 05:04, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Quarietii"

Is this tribe spelled correctly? --Wetman 11:39, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

The only hits that Google finds are this page and its mirrors or sites that reuse the content. --Nantonos 18:59, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] York?

Many of the place-names in England and to a lesser extent Scotland are derived from the Brythonic names, including London, Penicuik, Perth, York, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester.

I'm surprised to see York in this list. I'm under the impression the name comes from Norse, the Vikings called the town 'Jorvig' or 'Jorvik'. The Roman name 'Eboracum' might have been Brythonic.

Unless anyone objects, I might remove York from the list. We could, however, add Kent and/or Canterbury which appear to come from the name of the Iron Age inhabitants, the 'Cantii'. Chris Jefferies 08:30, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Eboracum was certainly a Brythonic name, and Jorvik comes from Eboracum (a bit of folk etymology adapting the word so it looks like it ends with the Norse element -vik). So yeah, York is Brythonic. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:28, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
Roman Eboracum likely derives from Celtic Eburos (Yew). I understood that Yorvik was folk etymology from Saxon Eoforwic (wild boar settlement) which was itself derived by folk etymology from Eboracum. --Nantonos 21:04, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
Right, that's what I meant! ;-) Anyway, it is Brythonic. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 21:24, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
No it's not. Have you not read any of the above? It's possibly derived from the brythonic, which is a completely different thing to being brythonic. Just look at the two words!!! Eburos is not the same as word Jorvik. If you want to say that York is possibly derived from a brythonic word, that is fine. This is speculation, and should be stated as such in the article.Alun 08:27, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
If it comes to that, Jorvik isn't the same word as York. Saying that Jorvik is derived from Eboracum is no more or less speculative than saying York is derived from Jorvik. The sentence says "many of the place names... are derived from the Brythonic names", and that's as true of York as it is of London, Penicuik, Perth, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:18, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Is it true of York? The similarity between the words Jorvik and York is immediately apparent (given that the J is Scandinavian). The similarity between the words Eburos and York is less apparent. Can we have a reference please, because I need to be convinced that Eburos>York? I always thought that Jorvik is a Scandinavian word. You also seem to have missed my point, which is that above you say it is Brythonic, whereas what I am saying is that it isn't brythonic. I was commenting on your statement in the discussion page, not on the article.Alun 09:53, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
So now I'm hoplessly confused. I've just had a look at folk etymology,and York. It seems to me that what has happened is that Saxons used a Saxon word for the city (Eoforwīc-wild-boar dairy-farm), which sounded a bit like the celtic (Eborakon-yew). The Danes did a similar thing, Jórvík (Horse Bay). If I am understanding this correctly, then York is actually from Jorvik, which is a Danish word. The whole folk etymology arguement actually implies that words like York are in fact not brythonic at all. They are non-brythonic words (with different meanings to the original brythonic words), which were used for place names because they sounded a bit like the brythonic names they replaced. So if words like Jorvik are scandinavian words, with distinct scandinavian meanings, which were just used because they sounded a bit like the original name, then I fail to understand how it can be called brythonic at all. It's not even derived from brythonic, it just sounds like a Northumbrian word which itself just sounded like the brythonic word that used before that. Talk about tenuous to call York a brythonic word!!!!Alun 10:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
The original name of the city was something like Eborakom, derived from the Brythonic word for "yew". When the Saxons came they heard this name and changed it by folk etymology into Eoforwic, which sounded more like Saxon words they knew. When the Norse came they pronounced it Jorvik, and over the centuries Jorvik was simplified to York. But York is derived from Brythonic because neither the Norse nor the Saxons ever really re-named the city, they just adapted the name slightly to make it sound more native to them. In fact, it's really unlikely that if the Norse had wanted to name a town "Horse bay" they would have called it Jórvík. For one thing, jór is a rare, poetic word for horse in Old Norse; the usual words are hross and hestr. For another thing, the -r of jór is just the nominative singular ending, which gets dropped when forming compounds. It's much more likely that Jorvik was just the Norse way of pronouncing Eoforwic and the only folk etymologizing was done by the Saxons to the Brythonic name. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 11:07, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
But that just means that the word York is derived from a Northumbrian word (Eoforwic), by the way you say that the Saxons changed it by folk etymology into Eoforwic, which sounded more like Saxon words they knew so is Eoforwic actually an Anglo-Saxon word, or does it just sound like an Anglo-Saxon word? It's important because if it is a distinct Anglo-Saxon word with a distinct Anglo-Saxon meaning, then how can it be said to have derived from a brythonic word? In that case it just sounds like a brythonic word, which is a different thing altogether. by the way I don't think there were Saxons as far north as York. Surely they were Northumbrians, who were North Angles and not Saxons? It does seem to me that the whole folk etymology thing is just a way of saying that a word from one language is used because it sounds like another word from a different language, this is not the same as being derived from the original language. I'm no linguist and know nothing of etymology, but the whole York being brythonic thing does seem to be very dubious.Alun 11:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
The only reason the Germanic speakers (whether Saxons or Northumbrians is irrelevant to this discussion) called it "Boarville" was that the native Brythonic named already sounded like that. They heard the Celts and Romans calling it "Eboracum" and thought "oh, that must have something to do with boars (eofor)" and so they folk-etymologically adapted it. But even when altered by folk etymology, the name Eoforwic is derived from Eboracum the same way that bridegroom is derived from brýdguma. York has been altered a lot over the past fifteen centuries, but at its root it is a Brythonic name. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 12:29, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
OK I think I understand (finally). A little light just went on in my head! Derived from doesn't mean that the words have to be directly related at all?Alun 13:52, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Derived from in linguistics means basically the same thing as descended from in biology and genealogy. You are descended from your great-grandfather, and you may even look something like him, but that doesn't mean you're identical to him. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 15:23, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Yes that makes perfect sense. But the point is that my great-grandfather and I share an eighth of our genes, which is why we might look similar, there's a good reason for it. These two words are more like unrelated people who just happen to look like each other. Just because you look like someone doesn't mean that you are related to them, and in biology we don't say that a person is descended from someone who they just happen to look like. You seem to be saying that in linguistics it is the case that sometimes words that happen to sound the same are considered related, like in this case. I find this reasoning strange. I would think that one could say that York is desended from a Germanic word that souded like another, different Brythonic word.Alun 17:39, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
But the Germanic word didn't just coincidentally sound like a Brythonic word. It was a loanword from Brythonic to Germanic, and the Germanic speakers altered it to make it seem more Germanic. To push the biology analogy to an extreme, it's like adopting a baby and then giving it plastic surgery to make it look more like you. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 22:01, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
OK, now I'm with you.Alun 05:13, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
One more question and an observation. Are you saying that Eoforwic is itself a loan word from Brythonic, which has been Germanised, and that's why it sounds like "Eboracum"? Of course however much cosmetic surgery your putative adopted child has to resemble you, they will never be descended from you in any biological sense. Alun 09:49, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
Precisely. Germanic "adopted" Eboracum and performed "plastic surgery" (folk etymology) on it to make it look Germanic, but the word remains Brythonic in origin. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 10:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't expect to kick off such a thorough debate with a simple query about York! This leads me to another thought.

Should the list of examples include York if the derivation is so indirect? Maybe we should provide readers with a list of obvious examples (like Kent) and then add a new paragraph explaining that in many cases there are quite indirect influences on modern place names, perhaps providing York as an example of that.

It's mainly a question of what will best help an inquiring reader understand the idea of Brythonic languages as a whole. In its present form, I'm afraid York may confuse rather than enlighten. More thoughts please! Chris Jefferies 08:42, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we could say York is "ultimately derived from Brythonic" or something. Even the other towns mentioned were affected by Old English phonology too, though, just not folk-etymologized the way York was. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 10:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Okey-dokey. I've put a note (sometimes indirectly) in the text. I think it improves the article but if anyone else disagrees please just take it out again or reword it differently. Thanks for the discussion, I feel I've been educated :-) Chris Jefferies 20:51, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reference for Steven Bassett's work

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.
Can we have a reference to some of his work please, just for verifiability? I have included a link to the Capelli paper on Y chromosomes, and a link to the Y chromosome section in the Anglo-Saxons article, because the article is available online (so why not include it?), and because I have been trying to clarify the situation at Anglo-Saxons for a while, where people were using hopelessly misinformed journalistic interpretations of the papers as sources, rather than the correct research papers. Alun 07:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] References

I'm thinking of putting an unreferenced tag on this page. Surelly all this information is not from a single source? Alun 07:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion of displaced Brythonic languages

The following paragraph is somewhat ambiguous:

The Brythonic languages spoken in Scotland, the Isle of Man and England were displaced at the same time by Goidelic and Old English speaking invaders.

Can I suggest a certain amount of expansion, along the following lines:

The Brythonic languages (or their descendants) spoken in Scotland, the Isle of Man and England began to be displaced after the end of the Roman era by Goidelic and Old English speaking invaders, a process probably completed in all of this territory except Cornwall by the 11th Century (date of extinction in various parts of the territory is debated).

References: The History of Wales, John Davies, 1993; Cumbric

Lloffiwr 12:35, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Firstly, I don't think "Roman era" really applies to most of Scotland, or the Isle of Man. Secondly, there is no mention of the Norse, who may well have played a part as well. --MacRusgail 16:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Fair point - the aim was to remove ambiguity, not to confuse matters more! Since you haven't amended the above I have had another go at it:

The Brythonic languages (or their descendants) 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 completed in all of this territory except Cornwall by the 11th Century (date of extinction in various parts of the territory is debated).

Lloffiwr 21:10, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Remnants in England and Scotland

I'm removing this paragraph from the "Remnants in England and Scotland" section since, although nicely sourced, it is irrelevant to the issue at hand, namely the linguistic influence of Brythonic on English and Gaelic. Chromosomal evidence has nothing to do with linguistics.

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.[1] 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 lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements.

The remainder of this section badly needs sourcing. —Angr 20:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a case for keeping this paragraph. The genetic evidence supports the conclusion that the West Midlands was lightly settled by Germanic-speaking people, demonstrating that it's more likely there might be Brythonic survivals here, particularly place name elements like 'coombe'. There are various reasons for words and name elements to be retained, but one of them is the lack of sufficient numbers of settlers bringing in a replacement language. Chris Jefferies 13:52, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's just too great a leap from "the West Midlands was lightly settled by Germanic-speaking people" to "Brythonic had a palpable effect on the English of the West Midlands". It's certainly too great a leap for an encyclopedia with a policy against original research to be making, since the second proposition doesn't simply logically follow from the first. —Angr 14:29, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I won't press the point further. The second part should certainly have been milder, perhaps along the lines, 'Its possible Brythonic had an effect on the English of the West Midlands'. Whether this counts as original research is, I think, open to interpretation. But let's leave it there, I'm content. Chris Jefferies 16:40, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


There seems to be a distasteful attempt in many articles to link "Celticity" with genes, which is inaccurate, and borderline racist. While it is certainly notable that genetic evidence points to pre-Anglo-Saxon origins for many people in England, and probably deserves something of a mention, it should also be pointed at that a) there is no "Celtic gene", any more than an Anglophone one, and b) it seems that in many cases, the genes come from the pre-Celtic peoples of modern day England. This points to the bulk of the population being surprisingly static, yet absorbing new cultural influences, languages and rulers several times over in some cases. --MacRusgail 18:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

--MacRusgail 18:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

It may deserve a mention somewhere, but not in an article about the Brythonic languages. Genetics and linguistics have nothing to do with each other. —Angr 18:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] language evolution chart

I was thinking it would be nice if a knowledgeable individual could put up a chart showing how Brythonic languages became the modern languages of Welsh, Breton, and Cornish. There's a similar chart on the Proto-Celtic page, and something approaching it here, but not quite. It'd just be nice to know, I think, how vowel sounds shifted and why certain names are the way they are...I wonder if I'm making my point clear or not? Anyhow, I mean it's all well and good to see how Proto-Celtic became modern Welsh, but what about the in between? Ryan 06:07, 23 December 2006 (UTC) 06:05, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Second? Millennium BC

The modern Brythonic languages are generally considered to 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 possibly introduced to Great Britain from the middle second millennium BC (Hawkes, 1973).

Is this right? I haven't got access to Hawkes' book but I'm pretty sure this timing is about a thousand years out. It's generally considered that the 'Celtic' culture is an Iron Age culture and the Iron Age didn't reach Britain until about 700 BC. I wasn't sure if this was a mis-quote or if Hawkes actually said it. I've certainly never heard anything that puts Celtic influences this early in Britain. Halstatt culture didn't even start on the continent until about 1200 BC.

Anyone know where this date came from? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Psammead (talk • contribs) 12:55, 16 March 2007 (UTC).

Christopher Hawkes was a professor at Oxford in the 1940s and 50s and wrote several books on the Iron Age. He postulated multiple invasions during the Iron Age but his views have been superceeded by DNA based population analysis. The connection between Celtic and the Iron Age is an assumption that does not seem to be consistent with lingustics analysis dated by, for example, Gray and Atkinson. Adresia (talk) 11:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I've changed it to what An Atlas for Celtic Studies suggests, namely that Britain and Ireland were Celtic-speaking by 500 BC. I think that's an accurate reflection of the mainstream view. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 18:40, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dating of Brythonic

It seems hard to determine quite what period this article is referring to; the main body of the text seems to imply that it's dealing with the pre-Roman period, but then there's a table of sound shifts which are clearly those of post-Roman times. Could there be some clarification about whether the article deals with the language of the "Ancient Britons" (as it would have been spoken by, e.g. Caratacus and Boudicca) or the language in a later phase of "Common Brythonic" (as it would have been spoken by e.g. Gildas) shortly before it split into Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric and Breton? Paul S (talk) 19:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)