CELTIC LANGUAGES. The Celtic lan guages are the most westerly representatives of the Indo-European (better called, as more clearly indicating their territorial limits, the Indo-Celtic) family of languages, all of which descend from a common origin, with a general system of sounds, roots, and construction; they have been spoken by different branches of the Celtic peoples (q.v..) from prehistoric times to the present day. the Celtic languages are more closely related to the so-called centum, or western, group (Italic, Greek, Germanic) than to the scam group (Armenian, Albanian, Balto Slavic, Indian, Persian). This classification may be ignored, however, as may the one which, though correct in a purely linguistic sense, divides the Celtic languages into a K group (Goidelic) and a P group (Gaulish and Brythonic), because this criterion, besides at taching overmuch importance to a single fact of consonantism, collocates two languages, one of which (Gaulish) is practically unknown, and separates two others (Goidelic and Bry thonic), both of which are well known and pos sess many features in common. The most notable characteristics which set off the Celtic languages from the other members of the Indo Celtic family are: (1) The fall of initial and intervocalic p: cf. Lat. pater, Old Irish, othir. This change, which is common to both branches of Celtic, took place before 1000 p.c. and before the Goidelic Celts separated from the Brythonic Celts and the invasion of Britain; (2) the change already referred to (viz. of qu to k and p), which took place after the separation and the invasion: cf. Old Irish chic, Old Welsh pimp, (3) the change of Indo-Celtic to Celtic 1: cf. Lat. virus, Old Irish fir, °true; (4) the change of vocalic r and I to ri and li: cf. Gk. Kapdia, Old Irish cride, Within the Indo-Celtic family Celtic is most closely related to the Italic dialects (including Latin), so much so as to form an Italo-Celtic linguistic unity, because of their having, inter alia, similar deponents and passives in -r, a b future and other tense formations in common, the suffix -tio- to form abstract nouns, the genitive singular of masculine and neuter o stems in i, and many words closely related etymologically. These two branches are there fore more closely related' linguistically than, for example, the two classical languages, Latin and Greek, and must have been spoken by a people who remained united and shared the same development for a long time after they had parted from the rest. The outstanding
characteristics of Celtic (besides an extreme irregularity of verbal forms and the order of words in the sentence) are (1) the variability of initial and medial consonants. Though traces of similar initial mutation are found in the most various branches of the Indo-Celtic family, it is only in Celtic that the principle developed and became a regular system. The phenomenon is to be explained by the fact that here more than in any other language closely related words are grouped into a unity which dominates the entire mechanism of the lan guage. In fact, without these changes and the after-effects of vowels and consonants, which largely take the place of inflection, there would be no such thing as syntax in Celtic. Un schooled Irishmen, Welshmen and Bretons operate these initial mutations to express often a very delicate shade of meaning with the same sureness as their ancestors 1,500 years ago. It is most convenient to classify the Celtic lan guages geographically as (1) Continental (or ancient) Celtic, and (2) Insular (or mediaeval and modern) Celtic. By Continental Celtic is meant the Gaulish spoken, e.g., in Gaul in Caesar's time, in Spain and northern Italy. All we have left of it are a few inscriptions, some in the North Etruscan alphabet of the 2d cen tury s.c., some in the Greek alphabet or in the Latin alphabet of Roman Imperial times, names of men and places in classical texts and on coins, and glosses of foreign writers. But no Gaulish literature, not even a fragment of a written text, has been preserved. From the material at hand, however, we may conclude that Celtic speech was pretty uniform in the vast territory over which the Celts held sway. Celtic survived in Gaul alongside Latin, and also among the Galatian Celts in Asia Minor, at least until the fall of the Roman empire. It was quite forgotten by the 6th century and has left only a few traces in the Romance and Germanic languages. Consequently the Celtic idiom spoken in the Armorican Peninsula (Brittany) is not a survival of the Gaulish nor, in spite of its geographical position, does it belong to Continental Celtic, but is the lan guage carried thither by Britons who had been driven from their homes in Cornwall by the Saxons in the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries.