An Introduction to the Celtic LanguagesSpeakers of the modern Celtic languages, Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, Manx, Welsh and Breton, are today only to be found on the western seaboards of the British Isles and France. However, they are inheritors of languages which some two thousand years ago were spoken throughout Europe and even in Asia Minor. The first half of the book considers the historical background of the language group as a whole. There follows a discussion of the two main sub-groups of Celtic, Goidelic (comprising Irish, Scottish, Gaelic and Manx) and Brittonic (Welsh, Cornish and Breton) together with a detailed survey of one representative from each group, Irish and Welsh. The second half considers a range of linguistic features which are often regarded as characteristic of Celtic: spelling systems, mutations, verbal nouns and word order. |
Contents
The Goidelic languages | 25 |
Irish | 69 |
The Brittonic languages | 111 |
Copyright | |
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3rd singular accent adjectives Archaic argued Awbery b d g British Brittonic languages Celtic languages century clusters Connacht consonant copula Cornish and Breton D. S. Evans dialects diphthongs discussion distinction Donegal e.g. OIr evidence example final syllables forms Gaul Gaulish Goidelic Goidelic languages grammatical Hemon Ieuan Indo-European Indo-European languages initial inscriptions Insular Celtic languages intervocalic Jackson Koch Latin Lejeune lenition Lepontic linguistic loanwords long vowels loss of final Manx marked marker McCone Middle Irish Middle Welsh Modern Irish Modern Welsh mutation nasal negative Ó Siadhail 1989 occur Ogam Old Irish Old Welsh orthography palatal particle passive pattern periphrastic phonemes phonology plural preposition preterite preverb pronoun Proto-Celtic relative clause Russell Scottish Gaelic script sentence Sims-Williams southern Welsh spirantization substantive verb suffix Table tense Thurneysen 1946 tion Tmesis unaccented univerbation variation verbal noun Watkins word order