Celtic languages

From Wikinfo

Within Indo-European, the Celtic languages are most closely related to the Italic languages, with which they form the Italo-Celtic branch.

Celtic is split into two branches:

• Continental -- Celtiberian, Galatian, Noric, Gaulish, Leptonic, and perhaps including one dialect of Breton, which would be the only living language in this branch.
• Insular

Insular Celtic is further split into:

• Q-Celtic -- Goidelic, including Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and Manx
• P-Celtic -- Brythonic, including Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Cumbric (extinct) and possibly the extinct language of the Picts

The differences between P and Q languages are most easily seen in the word for son, mac in Q (hard K sound) and map in P languages. P-languages have a slightly simpler structure and may be younger than the Q-languages.

Characteristics of Celtic Languages

Although there are many differences between the individual Celtic languages they do show many family resemblences. While none of these characteristics is necessarily unique to the Celtic languages, there are few if any other languages which possess them all. They include:

• Initial consonant mutation.
• Inflected prepositions.
• VSO word order as standard.
• Two grammatical genders.
• Definite but no indefinite article.
• Genitive construction by apposition.

This list could be extended. These items need explanations and examples.

There is also considerable overlap between the vocabularies of the Celtic languages.

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Celtic languages" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages July 28, 2003