Where Did All The Celtic Languages Go?

support name explained on patreon for one dollar a month to enjoy ad free videos exclusive content your name at the end of each video as well as the chance to have your idea for name explaining video made into reality go to patreon.com forward slash name explain or click the link down below for many people if they think about the Celtic languages and the Celtic people it's most likely this part of the world that comes to mind the island of Great Britain the island of Ireland as well as many smaller islands around it like the Isle of Man the shetlands and so on have long been linked with the Celtic identity and language you would probably also Imagine Fierce looking Warrior people with bows dressed in green with flowing red locks this is definitely the modern image many people have of Celts to this day but there is so much more to these people and their languages first off there wasn't just one generic group of people named the celt with one Celtic language celt Celtic is an overarching term for a wide variety of peoples who spoke different languages that connected over one another as part of the Celtic language family which is part of the larger Indo-European language family which contains the Roman Germanic and Slavic languages as well as many others though perhaps the biggest misconception about the Celtic language and people is that while they are deeply linked with the islands of the North Atlantic ocean today they are not slash weren't exclusive to these islands and they didn't even originate from them the current situation of the Celtic languages is not representative of their entire history in modern times there are currently six Celtic languages that are spoken these six languages are split into two different kinds of Celtic delic and bryophonic the goddelic Celtic languages are Irish from Ireland monks from the Isle of Man and Scottish Gaelic from Scotland the brightonic Celtic languages on the other hand are Welsh spoken in Wales Cornish spoken in Cornwall and Breton spoken in Brittany diesel the only Celtic languages on our planet today that these are not the only Celtic languages that have ever existed throughout history they are actually only half of the full story the guy delic and bryophonic Celtic languages are actually bundled together and referred to as the insular Celtic languages they are called insular as they developed in isolated locations and islands and insula can mean coming from an island as well as meaning things like ignorance uninterest theater these insular Celtic languages are just one half of the wider Celtic family of languages the other half of this family are the Continental Celtic languages these as I'm sure you can tell by the name are the Celtic languages that were once spoken on the actual mainland of the continent of Europe yeah Europe had Celtic languages too were not just the islands of the North Atlantic despite how linked they are with that area today there were many continental Celtic languages in the past in fact we don't actually know of all of them because they've simply been lost to time the more noticeable ones that we do know about however are laponic which was spoken by Celts in the Southern Alps galatian which was spoken by Kelps in modern Central turkey norik which was spoken by Celts across Central and Eastern Europe Keller Tiberian which was spoken by Celts in the northeast of Iberia galassian which was spoken by Celts in the northwest of Iberia and perhaps the biggest and most well-known of Continental Celtic language gaulish which was spoken by Celts all across the greater Gaul area which encompassed all of or parts of modern day France Belgium the Netherlands Luxembourg Switzerland Germany and Italy the ghouls are remembered as adversaries to the Romans in their early days before Gaul itself became part of the Roman Empire more on that later what this shows us is that Celtic languages were spoken all across the continent of Europe ranging from Iberia in the west to Turkey in the East it was way more than just Britain Ireland and the smaller islands around them but what exactly happened to them all how did the Celtic language family go from being one of the most dominant families in Europe to only half a dozen or so languages that are spoken by minority of people in some of the furthest reaches of the continent well before we look into where they went let's figure out where exactly they came from all the Celtic languages both the insular and Continental are believed to derive from one common language one that has been dubbed in modern times as proto-celtic of course this language doesn't exist anymore but linguists have been able to reconstruct it to some degree by piecing together other Celtic languages protoceltic is believed to have immersion around three thousand years ago so somewhere in the ballpark of 1000 BC or so for context Rome was founded in 753 BC but only really decided to expand into a huge Empire a few centuries later so the Celtic languages predate the main notion of Rome they're pretty old to say the least protoceltic is blue to originated from somewhere in Central Europe not Scotland or Ireland or anywhere more linked with the Celtic identity today this area of Central Europe the Celts of blue to originated from is also known as The hallastat Zone culture named after the archaeological site close to Lake halestad in modern Austria this site was pivotal in collecting information on these early Celtic people their languages and how they lived this time period was also somewhere between the end of the Bronze Age and start of the Iron Age from here the proto-celtic language spread across Europe forming the aforementioned Continental Celtic languages in different parts of the land for example gaulish as a language is Pluto coming to being at some point in the 6th Century BC so the formation of these languages took centuries they didn't just stay on the mainland however these early Celts took to the waves crossed the channel and made themselves at home on the islands of Britain Ireland and the rest the Celtic languages able to arrived on the island of Great Britain in around 600 BC on the island it evolved into a language now referred to as common britonic it would take even more time to reach all corners of these islands however with the earliest evidence we have of Celtic languages in Ireland coming from the 4th Century A.D so around 1 000 years between first arriving in Britain and reaching Ireland what this all means is that towards the end of the BC years and the start of the 80 years the Celtic languages were in a fairly decent state so what happened well the Romans happened while founded as a kingdom in 753 BC it shifted to a republic in 509 BC with its first big expansion happening in 396 BC when they captured and claimed the Etruscan city of veil from here Rome started setting their eyes on even more land claiming overseas territories in North Africa and Islands across the Mediterranean they're of course huge expansion came to the Roman Republic under the rule of one Julius Caesar he was the one who claimed land all across Europe in many places that Celtic people called home ghoul for example became Roman in the 1st Century BC around that time Julius was doing his thing then of course Julius was killed his great nephew Augustus took over and Rome ditched being a republic in favor of being a flat-out Empire in 27 BC this Empire would reach its land area Peak about a century or so later in 117 A.D as we can see this Empire at the this point covered the majority of Europe including most of the places that were once home to Celtic speakers while the Empire didn't force their cultures too much on others there was enough influence and plenty of Bloodshed to slowly eradicate all of the Continental Celtic languages ghoulish was possibly the last Continental Celtic language standing before going extinct in the 6th Century A.D while that's how the Continental Celtic languages met their fate the insular Celtic languages face an entire different history Julius Caesar tried to claim the island of Britain for Rome in 55 and 54 BC but to no avail this is why the Celtic languages were able to flourish on these islands for a tad longer without Roman interference but of course Britain wouldn't stay roman-free forever in 43 A.D Rome had their eye on Britain and claimed it initially there were some Celtic revolts in the land most noticeably the Revolt led by Queen Boudicca of the iseni tribe in 60-61 idea yet eventually the Romans and their language took a stronghold in the land at least part of any way initially the rooms could only claim the part of the island we now refer to as Britain this claiming of England led to the demise of the aforementioned common britonic Celtic language that was spoken there yet Before Common britonic died it evolved into smaller Celtic languages those been the brightonic chaotic languages of Welsh Cornish and Britain something you'll notice about where the surviving Celtic languages are is that they are all in the further outposts of the island of Great Britain especially when considering that the Romans would have entered the island from the southeast this means that these further reaches of Britain would come under a less strong influence from the Romans meaning the Celtic languages could survive and at the same time many Celtic people who lived in parts of Britain the Romans claimed fled to these outposts too were this is why the fervor reaches of Britain have stronger Celtic identities to this day Wales for example didn't come under Roman rule until 48 A.D five years after their initial claim of England and Cornwall while under Roman rule was so far away from everything else Rome had less influence there too and of course while the brightonic Celtic languages came under a lesser Roman rule the guy delic Celtic languages of Irish monks and Scottish Gaelic came under minimal to no Roman influence as these places were never claimed by the Empire this is why the insular Celtic languages could flourish though it's worth highlighting that there were still insular Celtic languages in Britain that did die out like cumbrick which was spoken in modern Cumbria or piktish which was spoken in Scotland anyway while six of these insular Celtic languages survived it doesn't mean they're particularly thriving in this day and age it's not like everyone in Wales speaks just Welsh or everyone on the Isle of Man speaks just banks in most cases today these Celtic languages are minority languages spoken as a second language are only spoken partially though there are people out there who only speak a Celtic language in example in the 2021 UK census it was reported that over 7 000 people have Welsh as their first language with parts of Wales using Welsh over English speaking of English that is the main reason why so many of the insular Celtic languages are spoken only by minority after Romans left Britain in 4 10 A.D many Germanic tribes made the land their home and of course 1066 saw the Normans invade this led to the creation of the English language we know today and of course the English language went down a path of dominating not just Great Britain Ireland and the other islands around it but huge areas of the world started speaking it due to the impact of the British Empire this caused the number of Celtic speakers in Ireland Scotland Cornwall and the Isle of man to start dwindling for some time Cornish and Max were actually considered dead before thankfully being revived so these six insular Celtic languages were able to hold on and have speakers to this day which isn't the case for Continental Celtic languages this is how the Celtic language is got into the state there in today once spoken all across Europe now only spoken by a small group of people on some islands disconnected from the rest of the continent but I hear you screaming at your screen what about Breton this is the Celtic language found in Brittany in France meaning it's spoken on Continental Europe so does that mean that not all Continental Celtic languages are dead well not quite as mentioned Britain is considered an insular breathonic Celtic language this is because it comes from common britonic the Breton language would have developed by Celts from the island of Britain who spoke common protonic migrating overseas to this part of France where the commemorative they spoke evolved into Britain so technically it is an insular Celtic language despite being spoken on the continent the last thing I find interesting is the fact that there's no country that has a Celtic language as its dominant language in most cases it is a minority or second language I guess this comes down to the fact that there never really was a huge Celtic speaking Empire in the same vein as the Roman British Spanish or French Empire this means that Celtic languages were never able to achieve Global dominance in the same way English and Spanish of dhana maybe in some alternative timeline bodacia ousted the Romans from Britain and went on to claim huge swaths of Europe maybe many of us would be speaking some kind of Celtic language today this wasn't the case however instead the Celtic languages became something of the underdogs in the realm of European languages the languages that constantly survive total Annihilation when Doom seemed inevitable honestly the history of these languages helped strengthen the cultural identity of those who have the honor of considering themselves Celtic to this very yeah and yeah it's not pronounced Celtic I think a basketball team just decided to say like that one day or something I I don't know name explain depends on viewers like yourself supporting the channel financially on patreon so a huge thank you to everyone who does donating just one dollar a month helps the channel amazingly and gets you bonuses including ad-free videos exclusive content the power to request ideas to be made into actual name explaining videos and your name at the end of the video with all these awesome people visit patreon.com forward slash name explain or click the link down below to find out how you too can support the channel thank you thanks for reaching the end of the video why not watch another And subscribe to keep up to date on all things name explain you can find myself on Instagram while name explain YT and join the Facebook group of friends of name explained to talk with myself and other name nerds although that will be linked down below anyway I hope you enjoyed this video and once again thank you all so much

Channel: Name Explain

Views: 56,530

Keywords: Name Explain, Etymology, Language, Word Origins, Names, Words, Celt, Celtic, Celtic Languages

Id: S0Rn0bCPtAQ

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 01 2023