Brittonic languages: Difference between revisions

| mapcaption    = The Brittonic-speaking community around the [[sixth century]]

| altname      = Brythonic,<!--please read the discussion page before altering--> British Celtic<br>{{lang|cel-x-combrit|[[Linguistic reconstruction|*]]Brittonikā}}

| region        = [[Wales]], [[Cornwall]], [[Brittany]], in antiquity all of [[Great Britain]], during the [[Early Middle Ages]] in [[Hen Ogledd|Northern England and Southern Scotland]] and other western parts of Britain, [[Pictland]], [[Britonia]]

| fam3          = [[Nuclear Celtic languages|Nuclear Celtic]]/[[Insular Celtic languages|Insular Celtic]]

| child3        = ?''[[Pictish language|Pictish]]''/[[Pritenic]] {{Extinct}}

The '''Brittonic languages''' (also '''Brythonic''' or '''British Celtic''')<ref>({{langx|cy|ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig}}; {{langx|kw|yethow brythonek/predennek}}; and {{langx|br|yezhoù predenek}})</ref> form one of the two branches of the [[Insular Celtic languages|Insular Celtic]] languages; the other is [[Goidelic languages|Goidelic]].<ref>{{cite book |url= https://archive.org/details/historyenglisha01chamgoog |title=History of English: A Sketch of the Origin and Development of the English Language |date=1893 |via=[[Internet Archive]] |publisher=Macmillan |access-date=7 July 2013}}</ref> It comprises the extant languages [[Breton language|Breton]], [[Cornish language|Cornish]], and [[Welsh language|Welsh]]. The name ''Brythonic'' was derived by [[Wales|Welsh]] [[Celtic studies|Celticist]] [[John Rhys]] from the [[Welsh language|Welsh]] word {{lang|cy|Brython}}, denoting a [[Celtic Briton]] as distinguished from [[Anglo-Saxons|Anglo-Saxon]]s or [[Gaels|Gael]]s.

The Brittonic languages derive from the [[Common Brittonic]] language, spoken throughout [[Great Britain]] during the [[British Iron Age|Iron Age]] and [[Roman Britain|Roman period]]. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in [[Brittany]] and [[Britonia]]. During the next few centuries, in [[Celtic language decline in England|much of Britain the language was replaced]] by [[Old English]] and [[Scottish Gaelic]], with the remaining Common Brittonic language splitting into regional dialects, eventually evolving into [[Welsh language|Welsh]], [[Cornish language|Cornish]], [[Breton language|Breton]], [[Cumbric]], and possibly [[Pictish]], which is often identified as a descendant of a related to Brittonic branch of Celtic, known as [[Pritenic]]. Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while [[Cornish language revival|a revival in Cornish]] has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by [[Goidelic languages|Goidelic]] and [[Anglo-Frisian languages#Anglic languages|Anglic]] speech. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in {{lang|cy|[[Y Wladfa]]}} (the Welsh settlement in [[Patagonia]]).

The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to the [[Celtic languages]] of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated [[Common Brittonic]], in contrast to the [[Goidelic languages]] originating in Ireland. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as "British" and "Cymric".<ref name="OEDBrythonic">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Brythonic, adj. and n. |encyclopedia=[[Oxford English Dictionary]] |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=June 2013 |url= http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/272106?redirectedFrom=Brythonic& |access-date=17 July 2013}}</ref> "Brythonic" was coined in 1879 by the Celticist [[John Rhys]] from the Welsh word {{lang|cy|Brython}}.<ref name="OEDBrythonic" /><ref name="Jackson">Jackson, p. 3.</ref> "Brittonic", derived from "[[Britons (Celtic people)|Briton]]" and also earlier spelled "Britonic" and "Britonnic", emerged later in the 19th century,<ref name="OEDBrittonic">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Brittonic, adj. and n. |encyclopedia=[[OED Online]] |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=June 2013 |url= http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/23485? |access-date=17 July 2013}} </ref> though being attested in French (as "brittonique") as early as in 1834.<ref>{{cite book|author=[[Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres]] |date=1834 |page=80 |publisher=Klincksieck |title=Comptes rendus des séances}}<!-- auto-translated from French by Module:CS1 translator --></ref> "Brittonic" became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in [[Kenneth H. Jackson]]'s highly influential 1953 work on the topic, ''Language and History in Early Britain''. Jackson noted by that time that  "Brythonic" had become a dated term: "of late there has been an increasing tendency to use Brittonic instead."<ref name="Jackson" /> Today, "Brittonic" often replaces "Brythonic" in the literature.<ref name="OEDBrittonic" /> [[Rudolf Thurneysen]] used "Britannic" in his influential ''A Grammar of Old Irish'', although this never became popular among subsequent scholars.<ref name="Koch305">{{cite book |last=Koch |first=John T. |author-link=John T. Koch |title=Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=f899xH_quaMC&pg=PA973 |access-date=18 July 2013 |date=2006 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=1851094407 |page=305}}</ref>

!{{lang|cel-x-proto|uɸor‑kʷenno}}<br/><span style="font-weight: normal">‘end’</span>

Brittonic languages in use today are [[Welsh language|Welsh]], [[Cornish language|Cornish]] and [[Breton language|Breton]]. Welsh and Breton have been spoken continuously since they formed. For all practical purposes Cornish died out during the 18th or 19th century, but a revival movement has more recently created small numbers of new speakers. Also notable are the extinct language [[Cumbric language|Cumbric]], and possibly the extinct [[Pictish language|Pictish]]. One view, advanced in the 1950s and based on apparently unintelligible [[ogham]] inscriptions, was that the Picts may have also used a non-[[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] language.<ref>Jackson, 1955</ref> This view, while attracting broad popular appeal, has virtually no following in contemporary linguistic scholarship.<ref>Driscoll, 2011</ref> Pictish is more often considered to be a member of its own branch known as Pritenic, which is closer to Brythonic than to [[Goidelic languages|Goidelic]], but distinct from both.<ref name="UGlas" />

A major [[archaeogenetics]] study uncovered a migration into southern Britain in the [[Bronze Age Britain|middle to late Bronze Age]], during the 500-year period 1,300–800 BC.<ref name="Patterson">{{cite journal |last1=Patterson |first1=N. |last2=Isakov |first2=M. |last3=Booth |first3=T. |title=Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age |journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |date=2021 |volume=601 |issue=7894 |pages=588–594 |doi=10.1038/s41586-021-04287-4 |pmid=34937049 |pmc=8889665 |bibcode=2022Natur.601..588P |s2cid=245509501}}</ref> The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from [[Gaul]].<ref name="Patterson" /> During 1,000–875 BC, their genetic markers swiftly spread through southern Britain,<ref name="YorkUni">{{cite news |title=Ancient DNA study reveals large scale migrations into Bronze Age Britain |url= https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/research/ancient-dna-study-migration-bronze-age/ |access-date=21 January 2022 |publisher=[[University of York]] |date=22 December 2021}}</ref> but not northern Britain.<ref name="Patterson" /> The authors describe this as a "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain".<ref name="Patterson" /> There was much less inward migration during the Iron Age, so it is likely that Celtic reached Britain before then.<ref name="Patterson" /> [[Barry Cunliffe]] suggests that a Goidelic branch of Celtic may already have been spoken in Britain, but that this middle Bronze Age migration would have introduced the Brittonic branch.<ref>{{cite news |title=Ancient mass migration transformed Britons' DNA |url= https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59741723 |access-date=21 January 2022 |work=[[BBC News]] |date=22 December 2021}}</ref>

Brittonic languages were probably spoken before the Roman invasion throughout most of [[Great Britain]]. It might have been spoken on the [[Isle of Man]],{{cn|date=August 2025}} although by the early Middle Ages it had a Goidelic language, [[Manx language|Manx]]. During the period of the Roman occupation of what is now [[England]] and [[Wales]] (AD 43 to {{circa|410}}), Common Brittonic borrowed a large stock of [[Latin]] words, both for concepts unfamiliar in the pre-urban society of Celtic Britain such as urbanization and new tactics of warfare, as well as for rather more mundane words which displaced native terms (most notably, the word for 'fish' in all the Brittonic languages derives from the Latin {{lang|la|piscis}} rather than the native {{lang|cel-x-proto|ēskos}} – which may survive, however, in the Welsh name of the [[River Usk]], {{lang|cy|Wysg}}). Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brittonic languages. Pictish might have resisted Latin influence to a greater extent than Brittonic languages, potentially splitting from Common Brythonic because of resistance, if wasn't separate from Brythonic before as Pritenic.<ref name="UGlas">{{cite web |last1=Rhys |first1=Guto |title=Approaching the Pictish language: historiography, early evidence and the question of Pritenic |url= http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6285/7/2015RhysPhD.pdf |archive-url= https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6285/7/2015RhysPhD.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live |website=University of Glasgow}}</ref>

 

The Brittonic languages spoken in what are now [[Scotland]] and [[England]] began to be displaced in the 5th century through the settlement of Irish-speaking [[Gaels]] and [[Germanic peoples]]. [[Henry of Huntingdon]] wrote {{circa|1129}} that Pictish was "no longer spoken", despite Pictish names appearing up to 14th century.<ref name="UGlas" />

|u/uy

|oue/oe/oa

|ue/u  

|ue/u  

| ''kyns''

| ''pymp''

| ''mongel''

| ''tewl/tewal''

| ''askorn''

| ''myghtern''

| ''yorgh''

| ''hedhel''

| ''dreyn''

| ''chi''

|''myghtern''

!Latin (''[[Segontium]]''){{sfn|Schrijver|1995|p=69}}

There were two separate processes of i-affection in Brittonic, both causing fronting of vowels: '''final i-affection''' and '''internal i-affection'''.{{sfn|Schrijver|1995|pp=257}}

 

'''Final i-affection''' occurred when the penultimate short vowels ''*a'', ''*e'', ''*o'', ''*u'' were followed by Proto-Celtic ''*i'', ''*ī'', and ''*ū'' in the very last syllable. The results are slightly different in three languages.{{sfn|Schrijver|1995|pp=257–258}}

==Remnants in England and Scotland==

The Brittonic influence on Scots Gaelic is often indicated by considering [[Irish language]] usage, which is not likely to have been influenced so much by Brittonic. In particular, the word {{lang|gd|srath}} ([[Anglicisation|anglicised]] as "strath") is a native Goidelic word, but its usage appears to have been modified by the Welsh cognate {{lang|cy|ystrad}} whose meaning is slightly different.