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Speaker 1:          00:00          Follow Lane, focus on facebook, twitter, and instagram.

Speaker 1:          00:08          Hello everyone. Welcome to the Lange Focus Channel and my name is Paul. Today's topic is the Celtic languages. Celtic languages are today spoken mainly in the British isles where they've existed alongside English since the Middle Ages. The numbers are not exactly clear because the Celtic languages have gone through declines and revivals and people have varying degrees of ability, so we'll take these numbers with a grain of salt, but there are around a million speakers of Celtic languages in total. That includes Welsh with around 508,000 speakers and around 310,000 fluent speakers mainly in Wales. Then there's Irish Gaelic which has around 80,000 proficient speakers who use it outside of school, but around 2 million people have at least some knowledge of it mainly in Ireland and to some extent in Northern Ireland. Then they're Scottish Gaelic which has around 57,000 native speakers and around 87,000 people with some knowledge of the language mainly in Scotland.

Speaker 1:          01:03          There is also a small Scottish Gaelic community of around 2,300 people in Cape Breton Nova Scotia in Canada. Then there's the Breton language spoken by around 226,000 people, mainly in the Brittany region of France, that figure of 226,000 include students in bilingual schools. Then there's the cornish language spoken in Cornwall, which came close to extinction in the 19th century, but has undergone a revival and now has a few thousand fluent speakers and then there's the manx language spoken on the Isle of Man, which has only around a hundred native speakers and a couple thousand people who can speak some makes today. They're not spoken by a very large number of people and they're mostly limited to the British isles and to Brittany in France, but historically the Celtic languages were spoken over a much larger area than they are today. During the first millennium bce. They were spoken across much of Europe from the Iberian Peninsula all the way over to the Black Sea and even in parts of Asia Minor.

Speaker 1:          02:00          One probable Prodo Celtic culture was the earned field culture of central Europe in the late Bronze Age. It was a flourishing culture from around 1200 bce. It's language was at least likely an early form of Celtic, if not protocol t, and we think so partly based on place name evidence, protal Celtic developed into various Celtic languages which were spoken over a wide area in Europe. The earliest attested tested Celtic languages. The pontic language, the language of the goal of culture that descended from the earned field culture. There are about 140 the pontic inscriptions that were discovered in northern Italy and southern Switzerland. These inscriptions date from around 550 bce to 100 bce. The gullah culture had strong connections with the neighboring house. That culture, the major celtic culture at that time, these languages on the European mainland and in Asia Minor, I'll refer to as the continental languages.

Speaker 1:          02:52          This is a geographic grouping, not a linguistic one, and there are no particular linguistic innovations that would make them a linguistic. Here are some continental Celtic languages that might ring a bell. There's the goldfish language spoken in dl within Presente de France and Galician spoken in Asia minor around present day, Ankara, Turkey. The continental Celtic languages are all extinct. Celtic speakers began to die out or become assimilated into the Roman culture by around 200 bce before the death and assimilation of Celtic speakers on the mainland, some Celtic speakers migrated to the British isles. The Celtic languages that developed in the British isles are known as the insular Celtic languages. The insular Celtic languages are still alive today. There are two groups of insular Celtic languages, Cute Celtic or Goy Delek languages which include Irish, Scottish, and makes Gaelic and the PA Celtic or nick languages which include Breton, cornish, and Welsh.

Speaker 1:          03:47          These two groups of insular Celtic languages are not intelligible with each other, but within each group there is some degree of intelligibility depending on the dialect being spoken. The two groups of insular Celtic languages evolved from a common ancestor. The oldest known insular Celtic language is a form of Archaic Irish, sometimes called Primitive Irish. It is found in the argument scriptions from the early fourth century CE organism, an alphabet that was used to write Irish as a group from primitive Irish into old Irish and was used until about the ninth century. Old Irish eventually developed into the modern Irish Gaelic up today. Speakers of old Irish also migrated to Scotland where it eventually developed into Scottish Gaelic and to the Isle of man where it evolved into banks. While primitive Irish, a rosen, Ireland common [inaudible] Rosen, Great Britain. Common Bottleneck is the ancestor of all the PA, Celtic or [inaudible] languages.

Speaker 1:          04:42          The pick dish language which went extinct by the twelfth century Ce may have been a sonic language, but it's possible that pick dish was related to sonic but not descended from it. Over the course of a few centuries, protonic dialects evolved into Welsh, cornish, Breton, and come brick, which is extinct. The Celtic languages were under great pressure during this time. Breton is in fact spoken in continental Europe in the Brittany region of France, even though it's an insular Celtic language. It has been spoken there since the sixth century CE, when some Celtic speakers fled during the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britain. Coexistence with English Britain was ruled by the Romans from 43 Ce to 410 seat, but after the departure of the Romans, the Anglo saxons began to invade Britain. In Britain, the Anglo saxons conquered the Celtic peoples and either eliminated them or intermarried with them, depending on the source, you consult eventually replacing the Celtic languages with old English, but not in Wales and Cornwall, which remained Celtic in Scotland.

Speaker 1:          05:43          Gaelic speakers from Ireland migrated to the west coast around the same time that Anglo saxons migrated to the east coast. Then Scottish Gaelic began to develop in Scotland, Gaelic coexisted with the old English dialects that would later develop into Scotts and Scotts English, and in the year 17 or seven, Scotland formed a union with England and Wales, the Kingdom of Great Britain. After that, Scottish Gaelic began to diminish and use partly because English was the language of universal education. Scottish Gaelic is today considered definitely endangered by UNESCO as World Language Project Wales came under the control of England in the year 12, 82. Welsh has continued to be spoken until the present day, but for a long time. English was given preference as the official language and in the 19th and 20th centuries, Welsh declined rapidly in favor of English, but efforts have been made to conserve the Welsh language and everybody learns at least some of it in school and some people take their entire public school education in Welsh, and as I mentioned before, it currently has hundreds of thousands of native speakers.

Speaker 1:          06:44          Cornwall was under English control by the mid 19th century. Their language began to disappear after England passed the act of uniformity and 15, 58. This was a law that made English the sole language of church services. The cornish language almost became extinct and it was actually a temporarily declared extinct by UNESCO, but a revival movement in the 20th century has given new life to the language and it is now taught in some schools and there are now about 300 fluent cornish speakers on the isle of Man. The manx language is in a similar situation. It almost became extinct, but a revival movement has resulted in a few hundred fluent speakers of the language. There is also a manx language primary school. They're creating a new generation of make speakers. Ireland became an English colony from 1169 to 1949. Irish remained the majority language there until the 19th century when it was overtaken by English.

Speaker 1:          07:35          Despite strong intentions to support and revive the Irish language, it continues to decline in favor of English. It is taught in schools, but not many people use the language of their own volition outside of schools and similar to Scottish Gaelic, it is considered definitely endangered. The Brittany region became part of France in the 16th century. In France. There is no official recognition of any regional languages. The majority of Breton speakers today are in their sixties or older and the number of speakers could be dropping by $10,000 per year. It is considered severely endangered by UNESCO. Now let's look at some features of Celtic languages in general. Celtic languages feature vsl, word order. Actually Continental Celtic languages probably had freer word order, but let's focus on the Living Celtic languages. Here's an example of vsl word order. In Irish Gaelic. This sentence means I saw the man this morning, Honickman farrier margin word for word.

Speaker 1:          08:31          It's see past tense. I the man on morning. You can see that it's vs. Oh, another sentence. This one means the man was painting a chair yesterday. He and Ferric Pancho cohere in a word for word. It's be in past tense. The man, progressive paint chair yesterday. You can see that it's vsl with the auxiliary verb coming in first position and the main lexical verb coming after the subject, and then there's the object next Celtic languages feature inflected prepositions, which are basically a combination of a preposition and a personal pronoun. Let's look at an example from Welsh. The preposition meaning on his ad and the stem that comes before inflections is at, so we have on me out of notch on us, on you, singular on you, plural, on him, on her, out of in on them, out of a similar kind of inflected preposition exists in Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic.

Speaker 1:          09:39          Next Celtic languages feature initial consonant mutations. That is a change in the consonant at the beginning of a word, depending on its context. For example, if the word is preceded by a definite article in the genitive case, let's take a look at this in Irish, so we have the word for men fair, but if we want to say of the men, it becomes unfair and it's similar for the date of case. If we want to say to the men, it becomes to unfair, the unfair. It may be hard to hear a difference in that continent, but there is a sort of softening of the f sound in some dialects. That mutated consonant sounds something like a v sound in other dialects. It's silent not only continent mutations, but also vowel mutations occur in Celtic languages as a morphological device. Let's look at some examples from Welsh that will mutations can be used in forming different parts of speech, becomes a sold the noun hio meaning son becomes the adjective.

Speaker 1:          10:43          Hey, look, meaning Sunny Vale mutations can also be used in the formation of a plural who becomes a so the singular noun, cool meaning boat becomes God, meaning boats, Celtic languages, also feature and impersonal verb form, serving as a passive or in transitive. An example from Welsh discussion means I teach the scared means is taught or one teaches. This is an impersonal verb that is not conjugated for person. An example from Irish Munoz, I teach moon. Cer is taught, one teaches in English. There was no specific verb form dedicated to the passive. You need to use an auxiliary verb plus the past participle, which has some other functions as well. Differences between the PA Celtic languages and the q Celtic languages. These two groups of languages have had thousands of years to divert, so there are a lot more differences between the two branches than there are between the languages within them. There are a lot of cognate words shared between the two groups of languages, but you could say that they are distant cognates because sound changes and spelling changes have made the words unrecognizable.

Speaker 1:          11:52          In many cases, the labels, PA, Celtic and q Celtic reflect the way these two groups developed from Provo Celtic. If we look at the cognates that are shared between both branches in the PA Celtic branch, there are words that commonly begin with P or b. well, in the queue Celtic branch, they begin with C or k or q. for example. The word for what in Irish, it's Cain and in Welsh it's bad. There are some other common sound differences too. For example, words beginning with s followed by e or I, which make a shift sound. In the Delek languages often begin with h in the languages, so the word for old in Irish is Shan ended Welsh. It's and despite their coexistence with English over the centuries, the Celtic languages are very distinct from English and they're an important part of the history and the culture and identity of the United Kingdom and Ireland as well as Brittany in France, but today most of the Celtic languages are considered to be endangered with the English language and French dominating whether the Celtic languages survive or not, depends on the communities to which they are native and that brings me to the question of the day for people from a community where a Celtic language has traditionally been spoken to you speak a Celtic language.

Speaker 1:          13:06          Do you speak that language outside of school? How valuable do you think it is to be able to speak that language? Let us know in the comments down below. Be sure to follow Lang, focus on facebook, twitter, and Instagram, and once again I'd like to say thank you to my patrion supporters, especially these ones right here for their monthly pledges. Thank you for watching and have a nice day.