The Portuguese and the Spanish empires can be considered the Celtic Empires historically if you read the other comments, as someone else mentioned correctly. That is because those people were the only ones to have called themselves Celtici, Celti, Celtiati, etc, in their own proper names, in their own tribal names, and in their personal items like votive altars, combs and pans, ceramic items, and tombstones and other stelae, unlike every other so-called "Celtic-speaking tribe" in ancient times. Also, please read my other comments under your video as this video of yours continues to propagate old, outdated pseudo-scientific theories about the Celts, and those theories have very bad roots, mostly related to Nordicism and Biblicism.
I can sort of read Irish and know a couple of words and phrases. I know a few differences between Ulster and Munster dialects. But I don't actually speak the language.
1:05 To be nitpicky, the equivalent level branch as a "daughter" of PIE should be Italic, not Romance. "Romance" properly refers to the descendants of Latin, whereas Italic refers to a family of languages (including Oscan, Umbrian, and Faliscan) that existed in the Italian peninsula BC. For practical intents and purposes, Italic and Romance now exactly correspond to each other, since no surviving or recently-extinct languages descend from any other Italic languages besides Latin. But still, Italic is the correct equivalent to Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic.
Thank you very much for making this argument, because that exact same argument can be used to defend the position I defended in my extensive and comprehensive direct response to this video, namely that "Gallaecian" should be simply called "Celtic" for the same reason as "Romance" should be called "Italic" - "Gallaecian" refers not just to the language that the Gallaeci spoke but that all Gallaico-Lusitanian tribes spoke, and they were collectively known as Celtici as per many of their tribes and the majority of their proper names in their votive altars, tombstones and personal items. As as you said, Italic is the correct equivalent to Germanic, Slavic, and likewise Celtic instead of Gallaecians is the correct equivalent to Celtiberian and Gaulish.
There’s a great little documentary I think on yt about Welsh in Patagonia . Not sure if it’s still up tho as it’s presented by a certain Welsh newsreader who was recently exposed
Yeah Nova Scotia was actually a Scottish colony. There was (or maybe still is) a pidgin language of Scottish Gaelic and Indian languages, spoken by the Metis in canada
@@FrithonaHrududu02127colony is not a good word because of the connotations, migration is the better word, if they went there showing respect and not with the purpose of dominating and taking advantage of the local people.
Not many people know that, outside of Cornwall, the other last survivng stronghold of Celtic culture/language in England was in what's now south Lincolnshire and north-west Norfolk, aroud the Wash. These people were called the Gyrwii (Marsh-men) and the territory escaped Roman occupation because it was just too wet and marshy for the Romans to bother with, and it was only later Viking invasions that finally led to their dispersal.
The Swiss Folk/Death Metal band Eluviete (el-VAY-tee) performs in a reconstructed version of the Gaulish language. The name is the Etruscan form of "Helvetios", from the Helvetii tribe of the Swiss plateau and later forming the official Latin name of the Swiss Confederation - Confoederatio Helvetica, often shortened to "Helvetia" on coins, stamps etc. They use traditional Celtic instruments as well as standard rock instrumentation - so if you've ever thought it would be cool to hear Death Metal vocals in a dead language on top of bagpipes and hurdygurdies, look not to Scotland or Ireland - the Swiss have got you covered!
Celtiberian and Gallaecian are Q-Celtic Languages, same or related branch as the Gaelic/Goidelic languages. Gallaecian was in fact the last continental spoken Celtic languages, spoken by the Gallaeci and Asturi until the 9th century, the start of the viking age
Tapadh liebh a caraid! Tha mi Albannach agus tha beagan Gàidhlig agam. My great grandmother didnt speak a word of english until she went to school, and was actually belted and caned for speaking gaelic in class. Thanks for the historical insight into how our languages developed. Very few folk in Scotland are fluent these days, but many of us are trying to rediscover our mother tongue. Mòran taing!
Here in Germany one can sometimes see the remnants of celtic influence in place names. In the north east, they usually be of slavic origin, in the south of latin origin and in the south west of celtic influence (at least sometimes). Place names of germanic origin are everywhere, but it is a rule of thumb that, if you see some place name and that name doesn't make any sense to you as a native speaker, it is either latin (e.g. Regensburg), slavic (Berlin) or celtic (Mainz). Also, one may notice slightly cultural differences, even if I don't certainly know how much they are related to celtic culture in particular.
Oh, interesting. I've noticed a lot of the Slavic ones, being Slavic myself (once I even browsed through the map of Germany looking for Slavic-looking names :D), I knew about some Latin ones, but never heard of the Celtic part before.
@@8Hshan The German city Trier is named after the Gallic speaking Treveri tribe. I read somewhere that they were still speaking Gallic close to the fall of the West-Roman Empire.
The football club is also pronounced "seltic". I think in the early modern times we pronounced it with a soft "c" in borrowing from French. But later on linguists determined it would have been pronounced with a hard "c" but the clubs was already established with the old pronunciation.
It was Celtic nationalists, not linguists who advocated for the /k/ pronunciation (because all Cs are "hard" in Welsh, and the "soft" Cs of Irish and Scottish G. are /c/, still more K-like than S-like). They were pretty successful in their pronunciation revolution and the /k/ version of the word caught on in standard English (except in sports).
it was /s/ up until the early 1900's when it was borrowed from the German pronunciation of the word. they in turn took it directly from the Latin pronunciation of the word (who took it from the Greeks). but when Late Latin became Old French, the 'hard' /k/ slowly morphed into the /s/ that's still used in Modern French today. so, use whichever. Celtic nationalists would declaim the /s/, but we don't even know what the original word was in Celtic languages, some even speculating that it was a label the Greeks invented when they warred with the Celts in their region. all in all, a rather academic difference that is pointlessly the cause of unneeded aggravation by people who don't even stop for a moment before getting mad about history.
I love how the conclusion is "they don't speak it because they didn't have an empire...I sometimes daydream of empires" lol most English thing I've ever heard in my life. Irish is no longer dominant because it has been actively discouraged and prosecuted at various times throughout the 854 years of English rule in Ireland.
What still struck me is that many of those Celtic identities vanished over a time span that lasted over a millennium. This stands in stark contrast to modern institutions, nation states and technology that enable governments to erase identities within one generation.
The Spanish region of Galicia is of Celtic culture, though their Galician language was replaced with a Romance Galician as opposed to their original Celtic Galician.
@@jboss1073 Not directly related to my comment but thank you for the input. I was under the impression that the three theories on the origins of Celtic cultures were still debated, but I don't know much about the academics surrounding the issue. Is it one of those where it technically is still debated but academia is very much trending towards the third theory?
He mentioned that the reason for the decline was the British empire.. its not an in depth video about Irish history. Most people know enough about the British empire to infer what may have happened. Did you actually watch until the end of the video?
@@jboss1073 Excellent paper. One of the problems with both Cunliffe and Gray and Atkinson is that they're not linguists. Dates prior to 6th century BCE are entirely hypothetical, with the additional problem that the corpus is very small and the inscriptions fragmentary and like Tartessian, often impossible to decipher. He mentions some of the problems with reconstructed proto-languages. While I don't agree with all of his points, it's a better model.
8:28 actually you were correct in this context. The Romans referred to the south as Britain and the north (of the river Forth) as Caledonia. / And no idea why you randomly mentioned Boston Celtics in the USA and not Celtic FC in Scotland.
6:07 The Celtic language didn't come to Ireland until 400AD? That doesn't sound right at all. I'm pretty sure Ireland was under a Celtic influence by at least 300BC
It seems the earliest *written* evidence is from around 400AD. So I think he mistakenly assumed that's when Celtic languages started being spoken there. But it's more likely it had already been spoken for centuries, they just didn't start writing until much later.
Also Celtic didn't spread to Ireland from Britain, as this frustratingly Anglocentric narrator assumes. It, and other Celtic cultural influences, spread to both islands from the mainland at the same time.
It wasn't just the Romans: many Germanic peoples also displaced the Celts in ancient times, from Central Europe to England. Gaulish naturally had a big influence on the French language...
@@Fatasha776 is that why saxon catholics use irish art ? Is that why welsh coastal settlements are gaelic ? Is that why Scotland exists? Isle of man? All named after irish during the gaelic expansion after the fall of the roman empire
The language is like a link between Portuguese and Spanish 2 languages that are already very similar its hard to tell Galician apart .even Catalan sounds more unique and has more unique words.
@@jboss1073I have Irish, Scottish, and English (average Englishman is genetically 2/3 Brythonic) ancestry. Yet I was born and raised in America, never left the country, and (currently) speak only English. Am I still a Celt?
@@jboss1073 Irish, Scottish, and Brythonic peoples ARE Celts and therefore I am a Celt. We ARE descended from the ancient Celts of central western Europe. Also, Gaels are not Brythonic but Goidelic (they came to Ireland from Iberia, not Britain).
@@nifelheirn The point is twofold: many like include Galicia among the seven culturally Celtic nations regardless of language, due to the style of architecture found at ancient settlements and even much shared DNA; and that the few remaining bits of Celtic vocabulary are more like 'leftover words' than strictly loanwords.
The Romans had little to nothing to do with the decline of the Celtic languages It was primarily the Germanic people (such as the Franks), and other "barbarians" who invaded Celtic lands after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, that are responsible. In addition, Scottish Gaelic (pronounced Gah-lick, btw) & Manx didn't exist in Roman times, they only diverged from Old Irish centuries after Rome fell.
@@PiousMoltarGaul is actually a Germanic name which was only applied to the area after Rome fell, and is not etymologically related to Gallia, its name during antiquity. Gaul comes from *Walhaz, like Wales, Wallonia, Wallachia etc. Old French had a tendency to replace the initial W- in Frankish loan words with an initial Gu-: hence guerre / war, garde / ward, Pays de Galles / Wales. Gael supposedly comes from Brythonic *Guoidel, meaning wild man, pirate, something along those lines. Maybe it is also related to Gallia?
This. The Romans let Gauls continue to speak their native language for as long as they occupied the land, it's the just the administration was done in Latin.
ironically, 2100 years earlier, the Italians were the opressed people. they almost got wiped out by the Gallic Celts. It's your people's ability to rise up after a disastrous defeat that helped a lot, Romans just refused to give up. it's also the reason Rome defeated Carthage. History is a funny thing.
Hello I was wondering if you could make a video on Doric as I have lots of family from that region from Scotland (Aberdeenshire) and I never actually ever hear anything about it
I do find it fascinating that the Celtic people replaced just about every other European people during their arrival, then were just widely replaced themselves. It makes me wonder how many European waves there have been, how many different groups of people before the modern Indo-Europeans have lived across the continent, lost to time other than the few pottery shards and tools they left behind.
Irish was definitely in Ireland for centuries before the Romans. How else would St. Patrick have learned to speak it? It just wasn't written down until he got there. Because of the druids.
Q-Celtic was likely the language of the Indo-Europeans who settled in Britain and Ireland around 2500 BC. Modern Irish people are largely descended from those Indo-Europeans. It’s very likely the Modern Irish language is descended from an Indo-European Q-Celtic language spoken by those settlers.
Sir... you just managed to remind me though that top of the local plattdütsch (a low german dialect, far softer than regular high german) here (around hamburg) and made me wonder if some of the english or insular celtic influences could be traced within it there? I mean a few things here like the park "planten un blomen" have their names rooted in plattdütsch (translated to german it is "Pflanzen und Blumen" while literally translated to english it means "plants and flowers") and I am actually curious where all its influences come from, but I myself am not enough of a language expert to really know what I am doing whenever I research that topic on my own. As in, I am pretty sure that dialekt was far more commonly spoken in northern germany before the 1500-1600s, with Luther and his bible translation high german becoming the norm, but I cannot tell for sure. Aaaaand I wanted to hear your opinion on plattdütsch specifically if you don't mind
In the Ibeian peninsula the only non romance language spoken is Euskera. No celtic language survived the Roman Empire in the region. Despite that, celtic is present in the toponomy of north western Spain. Additionally strong traces of celtic culture are present in those areas.
@@peterjungmann6057 And the names Wales (Galles in French/Italian) Wallonia (in Belgium) and Gallia/Gaul/Gaule (the name of Celtic France) are related and comes from the same root apparently
Its present in North eastern Spain too. Not just in the North West. Places like Deba, Nervión etc in the basque country are Celtic Etymologically. And there are plenty of examples in Burgos, Soria, Navarre etc...
@@IZANtheMASTER The Bagpipe is not Celtic culture. Just because they play bagpipes doesnt mean they are/were celtic. There's a lot of so called "Celtic Culture" element that we associate today that arent celtic but a romantization of them. So what you see as "Celtic" in Galicia might not at all be so. Galicians in fact were pre-celtic peoples ruled by a celtic elite. And Galicia is the region in Spain with the highest Arabic/berber DNA.
Hello, big fan of the channel could it be possible for you to make a video on the evolution of the word gabagool it is a topic very close to my heart.❤
I might say it's actually Lepontic and I'm originally from the region of southern Switzerland where it originated and was spoken. I'm wondering if there are any traces of how it sounded, as today people speak Italian there.
Arabic sources continued to mention France as Gaul's country until the ninth century AD for unknown reason, even the Umayyad campaigns that preceded the court of the martyrs were called the Arab-Gallic wars
With the die out of the language, it makes me wonder how much more efficient Latin was for trade than the Celtic languages. Or at least friendlier to non-native speakers to become proficient. It's the idea that it was like English is now, where it's not easy but there are tons of materials to teach people how to read and speak the language.
It's not about being easy, a language can usually be simplified in use to still be perfectly communicative in an utilitarian sense, yet much easier to speak. It's about popularity and importance. If all the administration around is done in a language X, then even if the vast majority of population natively speaks language Y, all those who deal with the administration more often will learn X. All the ambitious ones, who'd like to participate in the administration, will learn X. Scholars, traders will learn X. Some royal court and a bunch of nobles speaking a different language is not enough to undermine the position of another, native language, but if basically every organised part of civilisation one lives in uses a different language, then that might just be enough to start the process.
The native people left in Britannia, which today takes in England ( including Cornwall ) and Wales. still spoken a Brythonic Celtic language, after the Romans left in AD 410. Though their language would have incorporated many Latin words and influences. The people north of Hadrian's wall would have spoken a Brythonic language too, but with much less or no Latin influence. The reason their Celtic language (of the area that had been Roman occupied Britannia ) died out completely, was the invasion of the Angles and Saxons. The Celts were pushed back by the Angle and Saxons invasion from the east, and so moved further West into Wales and Cornwall. Where their Celtic languages held on. This was not caused by the Romans. Also Goidelic language of Scottish Gaelic didnt become established in what is today Scotland, until around the late 5th Century, when the Gaels from Ireland arrived there. This was after the Romans left.
Roman influence didn’t cause common brythonic to disappear from England. The downfall of Brythonic in England came with the Anglo Saxons. Yes, there is coincidental overlap between Romanized Britain (England 0-400AD) and Anglo Saxon England (500-1000AD), but Romans are not really to blame for the extinction of Brythonic in England. (And a smaller correction: Pictish was spoken in Scotland until about 800AD when it was replaced by Scot Gaelic. So the figure at 0BC should say Pictish, which was likely Brythonic).
Wait, Ireland didn't start speaking Celtic until the 4th century AD!? Wow. That's only a century or so before the Romans left Britain and the Anglo Saxons began the process of replacing Celtic (and Latin) from Britain. That is honestly mindblowing to me. Surely then, there are a lot of influences, loan-words etc in Irish from their pre-Celtic days? Whatever langauge they even spoke before that. I have no idea what language group that would even be.
I suspect that he is referring to the oldest EVIDENCE, as in documentation to the outside world, of a Celtic language being spoken in Ireland. There was almost no peaceful contact between Ireland and the other British Isles, with the Irish regarded as pirates and slavers by their neighbors, until the 4th-5th century AD. What happened then? A young man, a Romanized Celtic Briton (NOT AN ENGLISHMAN), was captured by Irish pirates and enslaved by the Irish. A few years later, he escaped, came home, and decided to become a priest (Rome was predominantly Christian at this time). After graduating and being ordained, he went back to Ireland and converted the Irish, and when he died there of old age, after many successful years as a bishop, he was made a saint. Many people in the centuries since, including our TH-cam presenter, have been named after him: Patrick (or Patricia, for girls). So obviously, the Irish had been SPEAKING Gaelic for a long time, most likely as long as the Britons were speaking Common Britannic, but before Patrick, nobody outside Ireland CARED what language they spoke.
@@allanrichardson1468 absolutely, Patrick cannot possibly have been English, because England hadn't been invented. King Arthur, despite being a fictitious character also could not have been English. He was notably not keen on Saxons. Linguists tend to think Irish was the more archaic of the two, that doesn't necessarily mean older, but almost certainly contemporary with Brythonic. The earliest attested Welsh is 8th century - all we really know about Iron Age Britons comes from archaeology. Caesar is unreliable.
Shetland has not had any recent Celtic language spoken, nor Orkney, but the Western Isles and Highlands of Scotland still do as (Scottish) Gaelic. Shetland had Norn which was close to the west Norwegian dialects and Faroese. Although not spoke today, the Norn language which was spoken in Shetland, Orkney and parts of Caithness has significantly affected the Shetland and Orkney dialects of Scots English spoken in the isles today
Celt is the French way of saying it while Kelt is the Greek version. The Book of Kells though is a book of concealments, just as a kilt is a word of Scandinavian origin that means ‘to tuck’. A cell is a chamber. The earliest is Sanskrit cala meaning ‘hut’.
After centuries of being maligned portrayed as monstrous creatures(by the british colonials)the 'celts" are now cool because of a few Netflix series ..we've always been cool, go raibh maith agat agus slan
The late poet Jack Kerouac always regarded himself as identifying himself with the Bretons...tho he never was able to completely track a rogue Breton prince to see if he was related.
Lebor Gabala Erenn ( the book if invasions) covers irish early inhabitants & settlers,evidence of human activity in Ireland dates back to the palaeolithic over 33,000..beannachtai
If I were an ancient Greek traveller in the 8th-5th century BC, I would never in my life imagine a future where the continental Celtic language goes extinct to be replaced by some minor petty kingdom that speaks Latin, as well as many of its people assimilating into Roman culture or developing new cultures that have little to no continental Celtic influence
A good question is what languages and people did the Celts replace in all those places and why it imposed itself so easily on so many places too, being Basque a pre-Celtic, pre-Latin survivor. If the times provided are correct, it wasn't that far enough that the Celts took hold of so many places, so possibly even if no written record seems to have survived, other minority language-peoples like the Basques today must've survived on Roman times that were pre-Celts.
I don’t think Rome should be blamed so much for the disappearance of continental Celtic. In Gaul, at the very least, we became bilingual and stayed so until the fall of Rome. It was when the Franks (and some other barbarians) came that they repressed Celtic (and Vasconic) culture. They wanted to unify the peoples of their new lands under Christianity, and Latin was seen as the language of Christians, in opposition to the native ‘pagan languages (and cultures more broadly)’. The incoming Germanic dialects spoken natively by the conquerors were of course the exceptions. This is why places which were subjected to large migrations of non-elite Teutons (such as Flanders and Luxembourg) started speaking Germanic. They quickly became majorities in these areas, leading to the natives intermixing and assimilating. The ruling elite spoke the same languages and practiced the same culture, they were not about to repress it, only those of other ethnicities had to conform to the unifying Christianized Latin culture
It was mainly the Highland clearances that caused Scottish Gaelic where in the 1700's the English banned the Gaelic language, banned the kilt and several other branches of our culture and sent us to their colonies. 100's of thousands of people lost their lives and identity.
When I was in Ireland, they did all the public transit announcements in English and Irish, but some of the people were telling us that it’s a dying language, they said it’s an elective in school these days.
As Historian here in Germany i mostly focus everything Germanic but Keltic Influences are indeed everywhere and most People only think of Ireland, specifically in the US. Here in Southern Germany, especially in the South West there were lots of Celtic Finds in Archeology (and still are) and of course the River of "Donau" or "Danube" in English got it's Name from the Keltic Goddess of "Danu" and of course also the Isar River, the Rhein/Rhine and Rhön. Isn't the Romansch Language in Switzerland also partly Keltic or influenced by it? I could swear i read about that Oh and Halstatt is a great Place to visit in general, it's close to where i live, which is Berchtesgaden Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps
Unfortunately that is all outdated and no longer considered true in academia. Please read the pivotal paper by Patrick Sims-Williams entitled "An alternative to Celtic from the West and Celtic from the East" - it goes through the entire review of why "Celtic" is not associated with Hallstatt and La Tene. Hence, to answer your question, no, Romansch is not partly Celtic nor influenced by it. However, the Rhaetians who are some of the ancestors of the Romansch did speak a language that we nowadays call "Celtic". However, they would not have called their language "Celtic" but simply "Rhaetic" as languages before the 19th century concept of kulturgruppe were named after their people, and not the other way around.
@@jboss1073 Thanks for the great Answer, i will definitely read that Paper. It's always interesting when certain Theories change with new Insights no matter the Topic!
Táim abálta chun gaeilge a labhairt ach nílim líofa as gaeilge.Ceapaim go raibh sé an teanga álainn agus stairiúl agus is maith liom ag chleachtaigh mo gaeilge gach lá.Labhraíonn an fórmhór daoine sa tír seo bearla áfach tá go leor gaeltachtaí ar fud an tír seo.”Is fearr gaeilge briste ná bearla cliste!” Ghabh mo leithscéil ar mo gramadach níl sé foirfe.
Actually, the Galatian language was related to Gaulish. It ended up in Asia Minor (Turkey) after Celtic tribes migrated from the Balkans. Continental Celtic languages had similarities with Latin and Julius Caesar noted this. That might explain the quick adoption of Latin which made Celtic languages obsolete.
9:38 New research by Exeter University and their Team seems to indicate significant Roman activity in Cornwall. th-cam.com/video/qtZfzgwqUzM/w-d-xo.html
I think Breton was not yet the language of Brittany on the 1AD (Armorica at that time); The Bretons mixed with the Gallic tribes of Armorica between the 3rd and 6th centuries.
"Lepontic" has a "t" in it. The fact that the earliest attested Irish (Ogham inscriptions) is 4th century CE, doesn't mean Irish is any younger than Brythonic, that's simply the oldest written evidence. IE language could have reached Ireland as early as 2000 BCE. According to Gray and Atkinson Brythonic and Irish probably diverged around 900 BCE.
I find it interesting that we call it "The British Empire" even though the word "British" comes from the celtic Brithonic people but that the language spoken in it was the germanic English. It should be called the Anglic Empire.
Do you know how Latin managed to replace all the celtic languages? If I look at more modern countries that have recently been part of colonial empires, the colonial language is the main language mostly in places where the original population has largely been replaced by colonizers like in the Americas, while places like Africa or Southeast Asia still have large majoroties speaking indigenous languages with the colonial language serving as a lingua franca
It might be due to a different way of interaction. The colonial empires usually strictly divided the colonising from the colonised people, and most of the colonised people might have had little reason and possibilities to learn the language of the colonial administration - they'd likely have to stay in the colony anyway, and wouldn't become part of the colonial administration. In the Roman Empire this was different, I think - the conquered nations weren't as much of "naturally lesser" people, more like just Roman subject of a lower, but upgradable, status (note that I'm not saying if that resulted in better or worse treatment or conditions for them). And to upgrade that status one had to become a full Roman citizen, which, I guess, necessitated learning Latin anyway. So anyone COULD theoretically aspire to the higher status of the overlord empire's citizen, so there was a reason to learn Latin, look Latin, behave Latin. Also being more or less free people (in an antique sense at least), not slaves, those people in the Roman Empire could have had more reasons to interact with the Roman officials than people in the colonial empires with their colonial officials, and so, again, reasons to know Latin. Those people could have been traders, trading with land far enough that they'd use a different language, except... both were under the Roman rule, so Latin was an obvious choice again. Let that work for some 4 to 6 centuries, and you have the effect. Although I expect that some remnants of the Celtic languages might have still been in use by the time the Western Roman Empire fell, but already as insignificant minority languages, and so they died out too.
Old Latin was very similar to Celtic languages, they seperated around 10BC (Proto Italo-Celtic), so it would be quite easy for Celtic speakers in 1AD to learn Latin
Portuguese still have many celtiberian words and place names. Continental Celtiberian language may have died but it left some of its legacy in portuguese dictionary.
Romance is not a direct subfamily of Indo-European, it is multiple levels deep. it is interesting to mention that the celtic and italic branches were one at some point, Italo-celtic branched from European, after Indo-Iranian branched from Indo-European. So the Romans and the Celts were distant cousins. Now, Latin is a pretty cool language, so cool that Goths adopted the language after they conquered Hispania & Italy
You cite the Roman invasion as a reason for Celtic languages to recede to areas outside of Roman domination, but is there much evidence that the people living in Roman controlled lands stopped speaking Celtic languages? I don't really know anything about Romano-British culture beyond what I leant at school, but I never got the impression that there was a significant shift towards a romance language. I always got the impression that it was the Anglo Saxons that supplanted the celtic languages. Out of interest, why did you choose to use the "Boadicea" pronunciation? It seems as though Boudicca is the preferred pronunciation within communities of celtic origin. Edit: I'm not trying to call you out. this video just went against a lot of what I thought I knew.
Agree. While British Latin may have been more dominant in certain parts of the Roman province than others, it is certainly not the case that Brythonic was pushed out of what would become England during Roman times. There were numerous Brythonic kingdoms in the area after the Roman withdrawal, such as Elmet in what's now West Yorkshire, Dumnonia in Devon and Somerset, and Rheged in (probably) Cumbria. The Wessex king list begins with a bunch of decidedly Brythonic names like Cerdic and Cynric, and there were British speakers in places like the Wash and Cumbria well into the Middle Ages. I think it's much more likely that Brythonic was still the main language in most places when the Romans left, except possibly around East Anglia and Kent, where few Brythonic place names still survive.
Yeah Roman Latin didn’t take over in Celtic speaking areas Our Irish even carries roman words like Druid Irish draoi is Roman druida all meaning oak wood. A lot of our mythology and old Gaelic history uses Irish words that come from Latin due to the history being written by others and not us who did not write. Even a lot of continental Celtic gods are Roman inspired and make no sense in the old Celtic alphabets but have stems to Latin. So there was just mixing no form of replacement If the maker of the video wants to see what replacement looks like start with the British attack on Celtic language and culture
The easiest explanation for the disappearance of Celtic languages is Roman expansion and similarity between Latin and Celtic languges. Since its founding, romans fought and conquered every single Celtic peoples (Gauls, Celtoberians, Galatians, Bretons and so on). And their native languages were replaced because at that time they were very similar. When Caesar campaigned in Gaul, he had to communicate in greek because gauls could read and understand latin. After roman conquest, it was important to learn Latin because it was prestige language and was needed in order to rise through ranks.
Long ago, the world of the Celtic languages lived together in harmony (and occasional rivalry and bloodshed). But then, everything changed when the Romans attacked.
Lol. Using the word harmony here is really stretching it far from most meaning that we would usually recognize. They were tribes that had a culture that had little to no similarity with what we value as "harmony" now. Just the warrior culture, bloodthirsty aggressivity and human sacrifices should give some clues about that "harmony".
So what language were the people of south eastern Britain speaking after the romans left? I thought the population more or less reverted back to celtic and it was only the coming of the English(anglo-saxons) that made wales, cornwal,cumbria and scotland last havens of celtic.
Breton is an insular Brittonic language, because it was brought to Armorica (now called Brittany in France) by massive migrations of Britons as a result of the the Angle and Saxon invasion of Britain. Breton most resembles Cornish and Welsh.
The Irish language is understood not to have come through Britain at all but had a more circuituous route from the West and could be far older than previously thought..
Classical Latin weren't that different from Celtic languages in 1BC-1AD, those languages had just seperated for 1000 years by that time, so those celtic people can easily learn Latin and replace their language. The difference between those languages might even be smaller than German and Dutch
Nobody is sure whether the P/Q division is even useful to describe Pictish. Or whether it was a dialect of common Brittonic just continuing to develop without a lot of interference from Roman or Germanic invaders. (In London people say “Oi noo ya fawva” and in Aberdeen, “A kent yer faither”, but it’s all classed as English.) Linguists are not even prepared to say with any certainty whether the Goidelic / Brittonic distinction arrived readymade or developed in the islands. There are clearly Celtic place and river names in much of England - including on the other side of England from Wales -many that don’t seem particularly P-Celtic. How many centuries after the Roman invasion did the people of the now-English countryside continue to speak whatever Celtic languages they spoke? Were some still speaking it when the Anglo-Saxons arrived to seize control? Most English people, paradoxically, seem less interested in this than they are in Pictish fragments that postdate Roman withdrawal from what’s now England. Is there any evidence to say it was different from Pictish, other than that it went extinct in England and got intensively Romanised in Wales, while Pictish survived and developed longer? How different was “Cymbric” from “Brythonic”? Aren’t these just two words for the same thing? Where is any contemporaneous written evidence for the distinction?
There are still Turks in Galatia (the region around Ankara) today with some genetic heritage from the Galatians. I once met a young lady from Ankara here in America (she was married to a Black American; I’m sure their children are beautiful) who could pass for Irish, with the fair, freckled skin and bright red hair. But she was undoubtedly Turkish; she had met her husband when he was sent to Turkey with the Peace Corps. [For the benefit of people who are not familiar with the Peace Corps, it is (was? I heard that Trump abolished it, or tried to) a U S government agency founded during the Kennedy administration, which sent American volunteers to live among people in developing countries and help them develop their economies. President Carter’s mother had previously been a nurse in the Peace Corps.]
8:34 You are incorrect in saying that Latin supplanted Brittonic in what would become England. There is no evidence for this. It is more likely that the ordinary people throughout the whole island retained their Brittonic languages, with Latin being spoken by the Roman elite. Perhaps some of the upper class Celts living in England would have become bilingual but there is no evidence that they comprehensively adopted Latin as a 1st language.
Interesting... but you don't explain why continental celtic languages disappeared. Why kind of language was spoken by romans? How did it appeared? And why there is no writing, no testiny of continental celtic languages?
No soft C in Celtic, Latin, or Greek, so k sound in Boudica. Also, while I constantly argue that it is Keltic FC and the Boston Keltics, I will point out that until the early 1900s it was acceptable to pronounce Celtic with a soft or hard c. They were wrong, based on traditional pronunciation of the languages, but that's where it comes from.
But actually there was a Gallic Empire that split from Rome. And I think that in Galicia in Spain is still alive a minor celtic identity, but of course nowadays they are clearly identified as latinos.
No, there is some intelligibility especially in reading between Irish, Gaelic and Manx, and limited intelligibility between Welsh and Cornish and Breton.
I agree! I do not get the American need to say it as Cell-tic instead of Kell-tic. It confuses the masses here into saying things wrong. Celtic rolls off the tongue and brain much better to me.
Can you speak any Celtic languages? I feel like I should know some Manx as I have family who live there, but none is coming to mind.
I speak irish with my father and friends. Go raibh maith agat!
I am probably going to try to learn some of Cornish and Irish in the future, for heritage reasons.
maybe its just our Canadian mythology, but we like to think a lot of the Celtic languages and culture was exported to eastern Canada
The Portuguese and the Spanish empires can be considered the Celtic Empires historically if you read the other comments, as someone else mentioned correctly. That is because those people were the only ones to have called themselves Celtici, Celti, Celtiati, etc, in their own proper names, in their own tribal names, and in their personal items like votive altars, combs and pans, ceramic items, and tombstones and other stelae, unlike every other so-called "Celtic-speaking tribe" in ancient times.
Also, please read my other comments under your video as this video of yours continues to propagate old, outdated pseudo-scientific theories about the Celts, and those theories have very bad roots, mostly related to Nordicism and Biblicism.
I can sort of read Irish and know a couple of words and phrases. I know a few differences between Ulster and Munster dialects. But I don't actually speak the language.
1:05 To be nitpicky, the equivalent level branch as a "daughter" of PIE should be Italic, not Romance. "Romance" properly refers to the descendants of Latin, whereas Italic refers to a family of languages (including Oscan, Umbrian, and Faliscan) that existed in the Italian peninsula BC. For practical intents and purposes, Italic and Romance now exactly correspond to each other, since no surviving or recently-extinct languages descend from any other Italic languages besides Latin. But still, Italic is the correct equivalent to Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic.
Thank you very much for making this argument, because that exact same argument can be used to defend the position I defended in my extensive and comprehensive direct response to this video, namely that "Gallaecian" should be simply called "Celtic" for the same reason as "Romance" should be called "Italic" - "Gallaecian" refers not just to the language that the Gallaeci spoke but that all Gallaico-Lusitanian tribes spoke, and they were collectively known as Celtici as per many of their tribes and the majority of their proper names in their votive altars, tombstones and personal items.
As as you said, Italic is the correct equivalent to Germanic, Slavic, and likewise Celtic instead of Gallaecians is the correct equivalent to Celtiberian and Gaulish.
Two other places were a Celtic language is spoken; Nova Scotia Canada (Scottish Gaelic), Patagonia Argentina (Welsh).
There’s a great little documentary I think on yt about Welsh in Patagonia . Not sure if it’s still up tho as it’s presented by a certain Welsh newsreader who was recently exposed
I forgot about South America. Thank you.
Yeah Nova Scotia was actually a Scottish colony. There was (or maybe still is) a pidgin language of Scottish Gaelic and Indian languages, spoken by the Metis in canada
@@FrithonaHrududu02127colony is not a good word because of the connotations, migration is the better word, if they went there showing respect and not with the purpose of dominating and taking advantage of the local people.
@@ashton1952 but it WAS a colony, why would I use a different word?
I love songs in celtic languages! So sad that frances celtic song last year didn't get a lot of points
I love even here I see Eurovision references!
it was my favourite from eurovision! i don't understand why it was one of the lowest voted songs :( it was so creative and mesmerising
I like listening to "Men of Harlech" in Welsh.
@@SantaFe19484 I spent a week in Harlech, I love north Wales, such a beautiful part of the world.
@@SantaFe19484 "Wait, Harlech actually exists?" - Me, two minutes ago.
Not many people know that, outside of Cornwall, the other last survivng stronghold of Celtic culture/language in England was in what's now south Lincolnshire and north-west Norfolk, aroud the Wash. These people were called the Gyrwii (Marsh-men) and the territory escaped Roman occupation because it was just too wet and marshy for the Romans to bother with, and it was only later Viking invasions that finally led to their dispersal.
In Cumberland (Northern Cumbria) they spoke a Brythonic language called Cumbric that didnt go extinct until the 12th century
They were most probably Norse not Celtic. No Celtic place names exist in that area.
The Swiss Folk/Death Metal band Eluviete (el-VAY-tee) performs in a reconstructed version of the Gaulish language. The name is the Etruscan form of "Helvetios", from the Helvetii tribe of the Swiss plateau and later forming the official Latin name of the Swiss Confederation - Confoederatio Helvetica, often shortened to "Helvetia" on coins, stamps etc. They use traditional Celtic instruments as well as standard rock instrumentation - so if you've ever thought it would be cool to hear Death Metal vocals in a dead language on top of bagpipes and hurdygurdies, look not to Scotland or Ireland - the Swiss have got you covered!
Didn't expect to get music recommendations on a language video, but I ain't complaining, lol. Cheers!
Celtiberian and Gallaecian are Q-Celtic Languages, same or related branch as the Gaelic/Goidelic languages.
Gallaecian was in fact the last continental spoken Celtic languages, spoken by the Gallaeci and Asturi until the 9th century, the start of the viking age
Not sure it's the right niche but if anyone's interested in Celitc history and warfare I strongly recommend Schwerpunkt's videos series
just found his channel a few days ago. it's a great channel
Love this dudes channel, been a fun time watching them steadily grow! Many to many more.
Tapadh liebh a caraid! Tha mi Albannach agus tha beagan Gàidhlig agam.
My great grandmother didnt speak a word of english until she went to school, and was actually belted and caned for speaking gaelic in class.
Thanks for the historical insight into how our languages developed. Very few folk in Scotland are fluent these days, but many of us are trying to rediscover our mother tongue.
Mòran taing!
Tha mi Aimearaganach, is tha beagan Gàidhlig agam cuideachd
Is Éireannach mé agus Gaeilge Éireann tosaitheoir agam
Moron thanks to you also
Tha mi ga bruidhinn beagan a cuideachd. I'm from Nova Scotia and am learning as an adult
@@thermn8r Bualadh bos
Here in Germany one can sometimes see the remnants of celtic influence in place names. In the north east, they usually be of slavic origin, in the south of latin origin and in the south west of celtic influence (at least sometimes). Place names of germanic origin are everywhere, but it is a rule of thumb that, if you see some place name and that name doesn't make any sense to you as a native speaker, it is either latin (e.g. Regensburg), slavic (Berlin) or celtic (Mainz).
Also, one may notice slightly cultural differences, even if I don't certainly know how much they are related to celtic culture in particular.
Oh, interesting. I've noticed a lot of the Slavic ones, being Slavic myself (once I even browsed through the map of Germany looking for Slavic-looking names :D), I knew about some Latin ones, but never heard of the Celtic part before.
@@8Hshan The German city Trier is named after the Gallic speaking Treveri tribe. I read somewhere that they were still speaking Gallic close to the fall of the West-Roman Empire.
The football club is also pronounced "seltic". I think in the early modern times we pronounced it with a soft "c" in borrowing from French. But later on linguists determined it would have been pronounced with a hard "c" but the clubs was already established with the old pronunciation.
So proud of their Celtishness they can't even pronounce it right. Well that's Scots for ya. Or football fans. Or Scottish football fans.
It was Celtic nationalists, not linguists who advocated for the /k/ pronunciation (because all Cs are "hard" in Welsh, and the "soft" Cs of Irish and Scottish G. are /c/, still more K-like than S-like).
They were pretty successful in their pronunciation revolution and the /k/ version of the word caught on in standard English (except in sports).
And of course it's 's'lubs rather than 'k'lubs
it was /s/ up until the early 1900's when it was borrowed from the German pronunciation of the word. they in turn took it directly from the Latin pronunciation of the word (who took it from the Greeks). but when Late Latin became Old French, the 'hard' /k/ slowly morphed into the /s/ that's still used in Modern French today. so, use whichever. Celtic nationalists would declaim the /s/, but we don't even know what the original word was in Celtic languages, some even speculating that it was a label the Greeks invented when they warred with the Celts in their region. all in all, a rather academic difference that is pointlessly the cause of unneeded aggravation by people who don't even stop for a moment before getting mad about history.
@@HBon111 I'm just mad about the letter 'c' if you sound like s then look like s, if you sound like k look like k (C can stay for 'ch')
I love how the conclusion is "they don't speak it because they didn't have an empire...I sometimes daydream of empires" lol most English thing I've ever heard in my life. Irish is no longer dominant because it has been actively discouraged and prosecuted at various times throughout the 854 years of English rule in Ireland.
Same as Welsh. The (Welsh not) was practiced until 1940's. People were beaten for speaking the language until then
Yaaaaawn. Its always the fault of the English. Blah blah blah
@@DwarpheousAs it is often said, the Cornish language did not die, it was murdered.
@@Dwarpheoussimilar thing happened with Scottish gaelic
What still struck me is that many of those Celtic identities vanished over a time span that lasted over a millennium.
This stands in stark contrast to modern institutions, nation states and technology that enable governments to erase identities within one generation.
If they had been able to they would have, but the Celtic spirit has never died.
The Spanish region of Galicia is of Celtic culture, though their Galician language was replaced with a Romance Galician as opposed to their original Celtic Galician.
12:35 the Irish language was dominant in Ireland until the English administration deliberately suppressed it, why no mention of that?
@@jboss1073 Not directly related to my comment but thank you for the input. I was under the impression that the three theories on the origins of Celtic cultures were still debated, but I don't know much about the academics surrounding the issue. Is it one of those where it technically is still debated but academia is very much trending towards the third theory?
He mentioned that the reason for the decline was the British empire.. its not an in depth video about Irish history. Most people know enough about the British empire to infer what may have happened. Did you actually watch until the end of the video?
@@marcuskennedy709they just wanted to screech about something tbh
@@jboss1073 Excellent paper. One of the problems with both Cunliffe and Gray and Atkinson is that they're not linguists. Dates prior to 6th century BCE are entirely hypothetical, with the additional problem that the corpus is very small and the inscriptions fragmentary and like Tartessian, often impossible to decipher. He mentions some of the problems with reconstructed proto-languages. While I don't agree with all of his points, it's a better model.
@@saracellucci176 nope. All theories are still being hotly debated. Without evidence it's nigh on impossible to put anything to bed.
8:28 actually you were correct in this context. The Romans referred to the south as Britain and the north (of the river Forth) as Caledonia. / And no idea why you randomly mentioned Boston Celtics in the USA and not Celtic FC in Scotland.
6:07 The Celtic language didn't come to Ireland until 400AD? That doesn't sound right at all. I'm pretty sure Ireland was under a Celtic influence by at least 300BC
It seems the earliest *written* evidence is from around 400AD. So I think he mistakenly assumed that's when Celtic languages started being spoken there. But it's more likely it had already been spoken for centuries, they just didn't start writing until much later.
Also Celtic didn't spread to Ireland from Britain, as this frustratingly Anglocentric narrator assumes. It, and other Celtic cultural influences, spread to both islands from the mainland at the same time.
Celts arrived in Ireland in about 700-900bc. They have been there for close to 3000 years.
It wasn't just the Romans: many Germanic peoples also displaced the Celts in ancient times, from Central Europe to England.
Gaulish naturally had a big influence on the French language...
The Saxon invasions into Romano Briton land was backed by Gaels from Ireland who invaded from the other side
@@user-ze8yy8jg1fNo, it wasnt lol
@@Fatasha776 yes it was I'm irish ill tell you our history not a foreigner telling me
@@Fatasha776 is that why saxon catholics use irish art ?
Is that why welsh coastal settlements are gaelic ?
Is that why Scotland exists? Isle of man? All named after irish during the gaelic expansion after the fall of the roman empire
Some claim Galician still has a few words of Celtic origin, though its grammar and most of its vocab inarguably mark it out as a Romance language.
A few words do not a Celtic language make. Those people need to get over themselves.
The language is like a link between Portuguese and Spanish 2 languages that are already very similar its hard to tell Galician apart .even Catalan sounds more unique and has more unique words.
@@jboss1073I have Irish, Scottish, and English (average Englishman is genetically 2/3 Brythonic) ancestry. Yet I was born and raised in America, never left the country, and (currently) speak only English. Am I still a Celt?
@@jboss1073 Irish, Scottish, and Brythonic peoples ARE Celts and therefore I am a Celt. We ARE descended from the ancient Celts of central western Europe. Also, Gaels are not Brythonic but Goidelic (they came to Ireland from Iberia, not Britain).
@@nifelheirn The point is twofold: many like include Galicia among the seven culturally Celtic nations regardless of language, due to the style of architecture found at ancient settlements and even much shared DNA; and that the few remaining bits of Celtic vocabulary are more like 'leftover words' than strictly loanwords.
The Romans had little to nothing to do with the decline of the Celtic languages It was primarily the Germanic people (such as the Franks), and other "barbarians" who invaded Celtic lands after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, that are responsible. In addition, Scottish Gaelic (pronounced Gah-lick, btw) & Manx didn't exist in Roman times, they only diverged from Old Irish centuries after Rome fell.
It's prounced "gal-ick" not "gah-lick" which is just how the word "garlic" is pronounced (in a non rhotic accent of course)
Also, would I be wrong to assume that the term "Gaelic" or "Gallic" has a direct connection to "Gaul" or "Gaulish" or should I say "Gaulic"?
@@PiousMoltarGaul is actually a Germanic name which was only applied to the area after Rome fell, and is not etymologically related to Gallia, its name during antiquity.
Gaul comes from *Walhaz, like Wales, Wallonia, Wallachia etc. Old French had a tendency to replace the initial W- in Frankish loan words with an initial Gu-: hence guerre / war, garde / ward, Pays de Galles / Wales.
Gael supposedly comes from Brythonic *Guoidel, meaning wild man, pirate, something along those lines. Maybe it is also related to Gallia?
This. The Romans let Gauls continue to speak their native language for as long as they occupied the land, it's the just the administration was done in Latin.
Interesting how the they ended up Latin or Romance speaking if the Romans didnt push their language/ culture
As an Italian, i formally apologize for what my 2000 year old ancestors were doing.
ironically, 2100 years earlier, the Italians were the opressed people. they almost got wiped out by the Gallic Celts. It's your people's ability to rise up after a disastrous defeat that helped a lot, Romans just refused to give up. it's also the reason Rome defeated Carthage. History is a funny thing.
Honestly, I don't blame the Romans. That's like blaming a teething puppy for chewing your slippers. I blame the druids.
we blame the english not the italians. this is a very anglo-washed video
@@OwzFTW You do realize the majority of Celtic languages were extinct before the Anglos arrived in Britain, right?
I mean you probably also have some Celtic ancestors
Hello I was wondering if you could make a video on Doric as I have lots of family from that region from Scotland (Aberdeenshire) and I never actually ever hear anything about it
I do find it fascinating that the Celtic people replaced just about every other European people during their arrival, then were just widely replaced themselves. It makes me wonder how many European waves there have been, how many different groups of people before the modern Indo-Europeans have lived across the continent, lost to time other than the few pottery shards and tools they left behind.
There are hundreds of thousands of fluent welsh speakers in wales and the aim of the welsh government is to get that number up to 1 million.
Irish was definitely in Ireland for centuries before the Romans. How else would St. Patrick have learned to speak it? It just wasn't written down until he got there. Because of the druids.
Q-Celtic was likely the language of the Indo-Europeans who settled in Britain and Ireland around 2500 BC. Modern Irish people are largely descended from those Indo-Europeans. It’s very likely the Modern Irish language is descended from an Indo-European Q-Celtic language spoken by those settlers.
Sir... you just managed to remind me though that top of the local plattdütsch (a low german dialect, far softer than regular high german) here (around hamburg) and made me wonder if some of the english or insular celtic influences could be traced within it there? I mean a few things here like the park "planten un blomen" have their names rooted in plattdütsch (translated to german it is "Pflanzen und Blumen" while literally translated to english it means "plants and flowers") and I am actually curious where all its influences come from, but I myself am not enough of a language expert to really know what I am doing whenever I research that topic on my own.
As in, I am pretty sure that dialekt was far more commonly spoken in northern germany before the 1500-1600s, with Luther and his bible translation high german becoming the norm, but I cannot tell for sure. Aaaaand I wanted to hear your opinion on plattdütsch specifically if you don't mind
In the Ibeian peninsula the only non romance language spoken is Euskera. No celtic language survived the Roman Empire in the region.
Despite that, celtic is present in the toponomy of north western Spain. Additionally strong traces of celtic culture are present in those areas.
@@jboss1073 @jboss1073 "no celtic languages survived in the region long term into the present day after the Roman empire" is more specific indeed.
I'm from Galicia, and the Celtic cultura is more than prominent
@@peterjungmann6057 And the names Wales (Galles in French/Italian) Wallonia (in Belgium) and Gallia/Gaul/Gaule (the name of Celtic France) are related and comes from the same root apparently
Its present in North eastern Spain too. Not just in the North West. Places like Deba, Nervión etc in the basque country are Celtic Etymologically. And there are plenty of examples in Burgos, Soria, Navarre etc...
@@IZANtheMASTER The Bagpipe is not Celtic culture. Just because they play bagpipes doesnt mean they are/were celtic. There's a lot of so called "Celtic Culture" element that we associate today that arent celtic but a romantization of them. So what you see as "Celtic" in Galicia might not at all be so. Galicians in fact were pre-celtic peoples ruled by a celtic elite. And Galicia is the region in Spain with the highest Arabic/berber DNA.
Hello, big fan of the channel could it be possible for you to make a video on the evolution of the word gabagool it is a topic very close to my heart.❤
I might say it's actually Lepontic and I'm originally from the region of southern Switzerland where it originated and was spoken. I'm wondering if there are any traces of how it sounded, as today people speak Italian there.
@@jboss1073 yeah I read some thought it was. Well I love Astérix et Obélix! Just kidding. 😅
Greetings. How do you do. Thank you very much for sharing this informational part of history. Highly appreciated.
Arabic sources continued to mention France as Gaul's country until the ninth century AD for unknown reason, even the Umayyad campaigns that preceded the court of the martyrs were called the Arab-Gallic wars
Gallic is still a term used to describe frenchness. Probably because genetics prove that France still has huge Gaulish DNA
The word for France in Greek remains γαλλια 😊
With the die out of the language, it makes me wonder how much more efficient Latin was for trade than the Celtic languages. Or at least friendlier to non-native speakers to become proficient. It's the idea that it was like English is now, where it's not easy but there are tons of materials to teach people how to read and speak the language.
It's not about being easy, a language can usually be simplified in use to still be perfectly communicative in an utilitarian sense, yet much easier to speak. It's about popularity and importance. If all the administration around is done in a language X, then even if the vast majority of population natively speaks language Y, all those who deal with the administration more often will learn X. All the ambitious ones, who'd like to participate in the administration, will learn X. Scholars, traders will learn X. Some royal court and a bunch of nobles speaking a different language is not enough to undermine the position of another, native language, but if basically every organised part of civilisation one lives in uses a different language, then that might just be enough to start the process.
The native people left in Britannia, which today takes in England ( including Cornwall ) and Wales. still spoken a Brythonic Celtic language, after the Romans left in AD 410. Though their language would have incorporated many Latin words and influences. The people north of Hadrian's wall would have spoken a Brythonic language too, but with much less or no Latin influence. The reason their Celtic language (of the area that had been Roman occupied Britannia ) died out completely, was the invasion of the Angles and Saxons. The Celts were pushed back by the Angle and Saxons invasion from the east, and so moved further West into Wales and Cornwall. Where their Celtic languages held on. This was not caused by the Romans.
Also Goidelic language of Scottish Gaelic didnt become established in what is today Scotland, until around the late 5th Century, when the Gaels from Ireland arrived there. This was after the Romans left.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Scottish Gaelic spoken in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Roman influence didn’t cause common brythonic to disappear from England. The downfall of Brythonic in England came with the Anglo Saxons. Yes, there is coincidental overlap between Romanized Britain (England 0-400AD) and Anglo Saxon England (500-1000AD), but Romans are not really to blame for the extinction of Brythonic in England.
(And a smaller correction: Pictish was spoken in Scotland until about 800AD when it was replaced by Scot Gaelic. So the figure at 0BC should say Pictish, which was likely Brythonic).
Wait, Ireland didn't start speaking Celtic until the 4th century AD!? Wow. That's only a century or so before the Romans left Britain and the Anglo Saxons began the process of replacing Celtic (and Latin) from Britain. That is honestly mindblowing to me. Surely then, there are a lot of influences, loan-words etc in Irish from their pre-Celtic days? Whatever langauge they even spoke before that. I have no idea what language group that would even be.
I suspect that he is referring to the oldest EVIDENCE, as in documentation to the outside world, of a Celtic language being spoken in Ireland. There was almost no peaceful contact between Ireland and the other British Isles, with the Irish regarded as pirates and slavers by their neighbors, until the 4th-5th century AD.
What happened then? A young man, a Romanized Celtic Briton (NOT AN ENGLISHMAN), was captured by Irish pirates and enslaved by the Irish. A few years later, he escaped, came home, and decided to become a priest (Rome was predominantly Christian at this time). After graduating and being ordained, he went back to Ireland and converted the Irish, and when he died there of old age, after many successful years as a bishop, he was made a saint. Many people in the centuries since, including our TH-cam presenter, have been named after him: Patrick (or Patricia, for girls).
So obviously, the Irish had been SPEAKING Gaelic for a long time, most likely as long as the Britons were speaking Common Britannic, but before Patrick, nobody outside Ireland CARED what language they spoke.
@@allanrichardson1468 absolutely, Patrick cannot possibly have been English, because England hadn't been invented. King Arthur, despite being a fictitious character also could not have been English. He was notably not keen on Saxons.
Linguists tend to think Irish was the more archaic of the two, that doesn't necessarily mean older, but almost certainly contemporary with Brythonic. The earliest attested Welsh is 8th century - all we really know about Iron Age Britons comes from archaeology. Caesar is unreliable.
Shetland has not had any recent Celtic language spoken, nor Orkney, but the Western Isles and Highlands of Scotland still do as (Scottish) Gaelic. Shetland had Norn which was close to the west Norwegian dialects and Faroese. Although not spoke today, the Norn language which was spoken in Shetland, Orkney and parts of Caithness has significantly affected the Shetland and Orkney dialects of Scots English spoken in the isles today
Hey, Name Explain. Can you please talk about the Norn Language?
I really thought we'd get Ancient Belgian representation
Celt is the French way of saying it while Kelt is the Greek version. The Book of Kells though is a book of concealments, just as a kilt is a word of Scandinavian origin that means ‘to tuck’. A cell is a chamber. The earliest is Sanskrit cala meaning ‘hut’.
It’s pronunciation. Both are with a c Just one is soft one is not. We do not use the Greek spelling in this alphabet
After centuries of being maligned portrayed as monstrous creatures(by the british colonials)the 'celts" are now cool because of a few Netflix series ..we've always been cool, go raibh maith agat agus slan
The late poet Jack Kerouac always regarded himself as identifying himself with the Bretons...tho he never was able to completely track a rogue Breton prince to see if he was related.
His surname is Breton - 'ker' means homestead or village in Breton.
Thank you❤
Lebor Gabala Erenn ( the book if invasions) covers irish early inhabitants & settlers,evidence of human activity in Ireland dates back to the palaeolithic over 33,000..beannachtai
If I were an ancient Greek traveller in the 8th-5th century BC, I would never in my life imagine a future where the continental Celtic language goes extinct to be replaced by some minor petty kingdom that speaks Latin, as well as many of its people assimilating into Roman culture or developing new cultures that have little to no continental Celtic influence
A good question is what languages and people did the Celts replace in all those places and why it imposed itself so easily on so many places too, being Basque a pre-Celtic, pre-Latin survivor. If the times provided are correct, it wasn't that far enough that the Celts took hold of so many places, so possibly even if no written record seems to have survived, other minority language-peoples like the Basques today must've survived on Roman times that were pre-Celts.
I don’t think Rome should be blamed so much for the disappearance of continental Celtic. In Gaul, at the very least, we became bilingual and stayed so until the fall of Rome.
It was when the Franks (and some other barbarians) came that they repressed Celtic (and Vasconic) culture. They wanted to unify the peoples of their new lands under Christianity, and Latin was seen as the language of Christians, in opposition to the native ‘pagan languages (and cultures more broadly)’.
The incoming Germanic dialects spoken natively by the conquerors were of course the exceptions. This is why places which were subjected to large migrations of non-elite Teutons (such as Flanders and Luxembourg) started speaking Germanic. They quickly became majorities in these areas, leading to the natives intermixing and assimilating. The ruling elite spoke the same languages and practiced the same culture, they were not about to repress it, only those of other ethnicities had to conform to the unifying Christianized Latin culture
It was mainly the Highland clearances that caused Scottish Gaelic where in the 1700's the English banned the Gaelic language, banned the kilt and several other branches of our culture and sent us to their colonies. 100's of thousands of people lost their lives and identity.
I am From Bretagne and I love this Video thank you 🫶🏻 🏴🇮🇪🏴🏴🇮🇲
When I was in Ireland, they did all the public transit announcements in English and Irish, but some of the people were telling us that it’s a dying language, they said it’s an elective in school these days.
No it's mandatory in primary and secondary school
As Historian here in Germany i mostly focus everything Germanic but Keltic Influences are indeed everywhere and most People only think of Ireland, specifically in the US.
Here in Southern Germany, especially in the South West there were lots of Celtic Finds in Archeology (and still are) and of course the River of "Donau" or "Danube" in English got it's Name from the Keltic Goddess of "Danu" and of course also the Isar River, the Rhein/Rhine and Rhön.
Isn't the Romansch Language in Switzerland also partly Keltic or influenced by it? I could swear i read about that
Oh and Halstatt is a great Place to visit in general, it's close to where i live, which is Berchtesgaden
Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps
Unfortunately that is all outdated and no longer considered true in academia.
Please read the pivotal paper by Patrick Sims-Williams entitled "An alternative to Celtic from the West and Celtic from the East" - it goes through the entire review of why "Celtic" is not associated with Hallstatt and La Tene.
Hence, to answer your question, no, Romansch is not partly Celtic nor influenced by it.
However, the Rhaetians who are some of the ancestors of the Romansch did speak a language that we nowadays call "Celtic". However, they would not have called their language "Celtic" but simply "Rhaetic" as languages before the 19th century concept of kulturgruppe were named after their people, and not the other way around.
@@jboss1073
Thanks for the great Answer, i will definitely read that Paper. It's always interesting when certain Theories change with new Insights no matter the Topic!
Táim abálta chun gaeilge a labhairt ach nílim líofa as gaeilge.Ceapaim go raibh sé an teanga álainn agus stairiúl agus is maith liom ag chleachtaigh mo gaeilge gach lá.Labhraíonn an fórmhór daoine sa tír seo bearla áfach tá go leor gaeltachtaí ar fud an tír seo.”Is fearr gaeilge briste ná bearla cliste!”
Ghabh mo leithscéil ar mo gramadach níl sé foirfe.
Just wondering , what about the Picts?
They're were brythons no different from the welsh. They were assimilated by the Scotti when they colonised
the basketball team AND the football team from Glasgow
Actually, the Galatian language was related to Gaulish. It ended up in Asia Minor (Turkey) after Celtic tribes migrated from the Balkans. Continental Celtic languages had similarities with Latin and Julius Caesar noted this. That might explain the quick adoption of Latin which made Celtic languages obsolete.
Scottish Gaelic (spelled Gàidhlig in the language) is pronounced with a long a (gah-lik) not a short a (gay-lik)
I get tired of explaining that.
9:38 New research by Exeter University and their Team seems to indicate significant Roman activity in Cornwall. th-cam.com/video/qtZfzgwqUzM/w-d-xo.html
I think Breton was not yet the language of Brittany on the 1AD (Armorica at that time); The Bretons mixed with the Gallic tribes of Armorica between the 3rd and 6th centuries.
"Lepontic" has a "t" in it. The fact that the earliest attested Irish (Ogham inscriptions) is 4th century CE, doesn't mean Irish is any younger than Brythonic, that's simply the oldest written evidence. IE language could have reached Ireland as early as 2000 BCE. According to Gray and Atkinson Brythonic and Irish probably diverged around 900 BCE.
Gallician still exists around Vigo/Spain, Iberoceltic exists still in more remote places in the Baleares Islands.
Yeah but they're Latin, they don't speak the original celtic tounge
Cumbrian was also a celtic language of the British Isles.
I find it interesting that we call it "The British Empire" even though the word "British" comes from the celtic Brithonic people but that the language spoken in it was the germanic English. It should be called the Anglic Empire.
Do you know how Latin managed to replace all the celtic languages? If I look at more modern countries that have recently been part of colonial empires, the colonial language is the main language mostly in places where the original population has largely been replaced by colonizers like in the Americas, while places like Africa or Southeast Asia still have large majoroties speaking indigenous languages with the colonial language serving as a lingua franca
It might be due to a different way of interaction. The colonial empires usually strictly divided the colonising from the colonised people, and most of the colonised people might have had little reason and possibilities to learn the language of the colonial administration - they'd likely have to stay in the colony anyway, and wouldn't become part of the colonial administration. In the Roman Empire this was different, I think - the conquered nations weren't as much of "naturally lesser" people, more like just Roman subject of a lower, but upgradable, status (note that I'm not saying if that resulted in better or worse treatment or conditions for them). And to upgrade that status one had to become a full Roman citizen, which, I guess, necessitated learning Latin anyway. So anyone COULD theoretically aspire to the higher status of the overlord empire's citizen, so there was a reason to learn Latin, look Latin, behave Latin. Also being more or less free people (in an antique sense at least), not slaves, those people in the Roman Empire could have had more reasons to interact with the Roman officials than people in the colonial empires with their colonial officials, and so, again, reasons to know Latin. Those people could have been traders, trading with land far enough that they'd use a different language, except... both were under the Roman rule, so Latin was an obvious choice again. Let that work for some 4 to 6 centuries, and you have the effect. Although I expect that some remnants of the Celtic languages might have still been in use by the time the Western Roman Empire fell, but already as insignificant minority languages, and so they died out too.
@@8Hshan thanks a lot,that is a good explanation
Old Latin was very similar to Celtic languages, they seperated around 10BC (Proto Italo-Celtic), so it would be quite easy for Celtic speakers in 1AD to learn Latin
Gaulish was a lot more similar to Latin than to any of the modern Celtic languages. That’s a clue.
@@kiyomiflash2513sorry, I didn’t notice your post.
3:25 not all of buddy
You should do a video on extinct languages like cuneiform or babylonian
Portuguese still have many celtiberian words and place names. Continental Celtiberian language may have died but it left some of its legacy in portuguese dictionary.
Romance is not a direct subfamily of Indo-European, it is multiple levels deep.
it is interesting to mention that the celtic and italic branches were one at some point, Italo-celtic branched from European, after Indo-Iranian branched from Indo-European.
So the Romans and the Celts were distant cousins.
Now, Latin is a pretty cool language, so cool that Goths adopted the language after they conquered Hispania & Italy
You cite the Roman invasion as a reason for Celtic languages to recede to areas outside of Roman domination, but is there much evidence that the people living in Roman controlled lands stopped speaking Celtic languages? I don't really know anything about Romano-British culture beyond what I leant at school, but I never got the impression that there was a significant shift towards a romance language. I always got the impression that it was the Anglo Saxons that supplanted the celtic languages.
Out of interest, why did you choose to use the "Boadicea" pronunciation? It seems as though Boudicca is the preferred pronunciation within communities of celtic origin.
Edit: I'm not trying to call you out. this video just went against a lot of what I thought I knew.
Agree. While British Latin may have been more dominant in certain parts of the Roman province than others, it is certainly not the case that Brythonic was pushed out of what would become England during Roman times.
There were numerous Brythonic kingdoms in the area after the Roman withdrawal, such as Elmet in what's now West Yorkshire, Dumnonia in Devon and Somerset, and Rheged in (probably) Cumbria. The Wessex king list begins with a bunch of decidedly Brythonic names like Cerdic and Cynric, and there were British speakers in places like the Wash and Cumbria well into the Middle Ages.
I think it's much more likely that Brythonic was still the main language in most places when the Romans left, except possibly around East Anglia and Kent, where few Brythonic place names still survive.
Yeah, that's what I've lerant. Common Breton would've been the common lamguage in Roman Britannia. The withdrawal happned because of the Anglo-Saxons.
You're absolutely correct, this is one badly researched video
Yeah Roman Latin didn’t take over in Celtic speaking areas
Our Irish even carries roman words like Druid Irish draoi is Roman druida all meaning oak wood.
A lot of our mythology and old Gaelic history uses Irish words that come from Latin due to the history being written by others and not us who did not write. Even a lot of continental Celtic gods are Roman inspired and make no sense in the old Celtic alphabets but have stems to Latin.
So there was just mixing no form of replacement
If the maker of the video wants to see what replacement looks like start with the British attack on Celtic language and culture
There was a big chunk of France that spoke Vasconic languages tho, not Gaulish
I always wondered why the basketball team's manager was mispronouncing the name.
The easiest explanation for the disappearance of Celtic languages is Roman expansion and similarity between Latin and Celtic languges. Since its founding, romans fought and conquered every single Celtic peoples (Gauls, Celtoberians, Galatians, Bretons and so on). And their native languages were replaced because at that time they were very similar. When Caesar campaigned in Gaul, he had to communicate in greek because gauls could read and understand latin. After roman conquest, it was important to learn Latin because it was prestige language and was needed in order to rise through ranks.
I hope they can someday revive Pictish And Cumbric too.
Proud Celtic, Cymraeg.
Your ancestors never called themselves Celts.
Long ago, the world of the Celtic languages lived together in harmony (and occasional rivalry and bloodshed). But then, everything changed when the Romans attacked.
Except in Britain where everyone pretty much kept speaking Celtic until the Anglo-Saxons turned up.
They were in a permanent state of war
Lol. Using the word harmony here is really stretching it far from most meaning that we would usually recognize.
They were tribes that had a culture that had little to no similarity with what we value as "harmony" now. Just the warrior culture, bloodthirsty aggressivity and human sacrifices should give some clues about that "harmony".
@@PiousMoltar yma o hyd
I'm pretty sure Celtic FC in Glasgow pronounces it with an s sound instead of a c sound
So what language were the people of south eastern Britain speaking after the romans left? I thought the population more or less reverted back to celtic and it was only the coming of the English(anglo-saxons) that made wales, cornwal,cumbria and scotland last havens of celtic.
Yes you are right. The video is incorrect.
They spoke a brethonic, when the Anglo-Saxons invaded the language was driven westwards to become Cornish and Welsh.
6:46-6:56 gotta conquer it all pokérome!
Why is Breton not counted as continental gaelic?
Because it's a Brythonic language, in the same group as Welsh and Cornish.
It came from cornish and other people's moving there during famine long after the natives died and it became France
Breton is an insular Brittonic language, because it was brought to Armorica (now called Brittany in France) by massive migrations of Britons as a result of the the Angle and Saxon invasion of Britain. Breton most resembles Cornish and Welsh.
I refuse to pronounce Boston's basketball team with a soft c. It's Keltics, and I won't change. You can't make me!!!
It's not just Latin who replaced it tho, it's also Germanic and Slavic etc
The Irish language is understood not to have come through Britain at all but had a more circuituous route from the West and could be far older than previously thought..
Yeah no, it's very understood that it came from Britain. It's similarities with the brythonic languages shows thayv
@@hadiisaboss5307
Send your source.
@@Dhdh-cf3mb wikipedia bro
@@hadiisaboss5307
Lad send your source copy and paste that exact sentence.
@Dhdh-cf3mb brevity slimesty you can't copy and paste a link in youtube they get removed for spam
Wait, you could hear me when I was screaming at the screen?
Glasgow has a soccer team called Celtic with the S sound.
Classical Latin weren't that different from Celtic languages in 1BC-1AD, those languages had just seperated for 1000 years by that time, so those celtic people can easily learn Latin and replace their language. The difference between those languages might even be smaller than German and Dutch
13:00 I imagine large amounts of Arabs speaking something that sounded like Irish and drinking stouts in that alternate universe today!
1:51 Ah yes, good to learn that Welsh and Manx are spoken in England, and Cornish and Scottish Gaelic are spoken in the sea.
Moghrey mie. Manxie here waking to the news that we have seemingly moved overnight 👀😂
Yeah, I think he wanted to center the words on where they're spoken, not thinking about the fact that the speech bubble shape is pointing elsewhere
Nobody is sure whether the P/Q division is even useful to describe Pictish. Or whether it was a dialect of common Brittonic just continuing to develop without a lot of interference from Roman or Germanic invaders. (In London people say “Oi noo ya fawva” and in Aberdeen, “A kent yer faither”, but it’s all classed as English.)
Linguists are not even prepared to say with any certainty whether the Goidelic / Brittonic distinction arrived readymade or developed in the islands.
There are clearly Celtic place and river names in much of England - including on the other side of England from Wales -many that don’t seem particularly P-Celtic. How many centuries after the Roman invasion did the people of the now-English countryside continue to speak whatever Celtic languages they spoke? Were some still speaking it when the Anglo-Saxons arrived to seize control?
Most English people, paradoxically, seem less interested in this than they are in Pictish fragments that postdate Roman withdrawal from what’s now England.
Is there any evidence to say it was different from Pictish, other than that it went extinct in England and got intensively Romanised in Wales, while Pictish survived and developed longer?
How different was “Cymbric” from “Brythonic”? Aren’t these just two words for the same thing? Where is any contemporaneous written evidence for the distinction?
Hard to believe that there is a Celtic people mentioned in the Bible; the Galatians.
There are still Turks in Galatia (the region around Ankara) today with some genetic heritage from the Galatians. I once met a young lady from Ankara here in America (she was married to a Black American; I’m sure their children are beautiful) who could pass for Irish, with the fair, freckled skin and bright red hair. But she was undoubtedly Turkish; she had met her husband when he was sent to Turkey with the Peace Corps.
[For the benefit of people who are not familiar with the Peace Corps, it is (was? I heard that Trump abolished it, or tried to) a U S government agency founded during the Kennedy administration, which sent American volunteers to live among people in developing countries and help them develop their economies. President Carter’s mother had previously been a nurse in the Peace Corps.]
8:34 You are incorrect in saying that Latin supplanted Brittonic in what would become England. There is no evidence for this.
It is more likely that the ordinary people throughout the whole island retained their Brittonic languages, with Latin being spoken by the Roman elite. Perhaps some of the upper class Celts living in England would have become bilingual but there is no evidence that they comprehensively adopted Latin as a 1st language.
I’m very proud of my multi-Celtic ancestry.
Interesting... but you don't explain why continental celtic languages disappeared. Why kind of language was spoken by romans? How did it appeared? And why there is no writing, no testiny of continental celtic languages?
anglish and saxon replaced brythonic, not latin
No soft C in Celtic, Latin, or Greek, so k sound in Boudica. Also, while I constantly argue that it is Keltic FC and the Boston Keltics, I will point out that until the early 1900s it was acceptable to pronounce Celtic with a soft or hard c. They were wrong, based on traditional pronunciation of the languages, but that's where it comes from.
Soft c comes from northern celts hard c comes from southern celts
It was the difference in alphabets and pronunciation
if most celtic languages just survive there would be more VSO languages.. only 15% of worlds languages are VSO
Portugal 🇵🇹👍💚❤️Portugael
But actually there was a Gallic Empire that split from Rome. And I think that in Galicia in Spain is still alive a minor celtic identity, but of course nowadays they are clearly identified as latinos.
Can Irish speakers understand Welch and vice versa or is it too unintelligible like German is to English?
No, there is some intelligibility especially in reading between Irish, Gaelic and Manx, and limited intelligibility between Welsh and Cornish and Breton.
No both are completely opposite languages.
I agree! I do not get the American need to say it as Cell-tic instead of Kell-tic. It confuses the masses here into saying things wrong. Celtic rolls off the tongue and brain much better to me.
Welsh is also spoken in Argentina
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagonian_Welsh