Comments by "" (@jboss1073) on "Britain's Celtic languages explained" video.

  1. "It will be noted that only one of the four strong features in (14c) (viz. particles) is securely attested for Continental Celtic. Although VSO does appear, its status there is uncertain in view of the scanty data, and the less unusual (in Indo-European) order of SOV may be the unmarked order. Mutations and inflected prepositions are seemingly absent. By the same token, some of the weaker features in (14) (e.g., Ablaut, gender, copula, some tenses, infixed pronouns) are indeed seen in Gaulish or Celtiberian inscriptions. It is altogether curious that the features which, upon a synchronic typological comparison, are the least distinctive for neo-Celtic languages are the only features reasonably demonstrable as shared with the Continental varieties. Is this a result of evidentiary poverty, or have the Insular languages undergone a significant typological shift over the centuries? Certainly we can see that, compared with the early Celtic languages, the modern languages are far less synthetic and much more analytic in structure. But this is hardly a trend confined to Celtic. The fact that, on a typological level, the Insular languages seem to possess more traits with one another than they do with the ancient languages of the continent prompts much rumination concerning the interface of our synchronic analytical tools and our diachronic methods, about mechanisms of language contact which could account for the shift, and our understanding of linguistic evolution and processes of language change, which could also account for this development without appeal to outside influence. The discrepancies among the various models of what is a "Celtic" language point up nagging and complex questions on assumptions forming the foundations of our discipline. The study of these languages provokes us to find answers. So far, it appears that each of these three approaches to defining celticity has something to offer. Given the strong integrative trend of our age, it is perhaps not too daring to venture a prediction that the most satisfactory model will be one that partakes in proper measure of all three approaches. Maybe only then will we gain a more comprehensive and adequate picture of what it means to be a Celtic language." Source: The Celtic Languages, 2nd Edition, 2009, edited by Martin J. Ball and Nicole Mueller. Summary: Celtic languages are defined by four strong features and some weak features, but only one of the four strong features is shared between Britannic languages and Continental Celtic languages. Some of the weaker features are shared by Celtiberian and Gaulish, but the fact that Britannic languages and Continental Celtic languages share many more weak features than strong features (only one), calls into question the linguistic relationship of those two groups, and whether the Britannic languages fall under the label of "Celtic languages". This could be due to poor attestation of Celtiberian and Gaulish; however, the Britannic languages also have more typological traits common with each other than they do with the ancient Continental Celtic languages, which complicates the hypothesis that this is just a perception due to poor attestation. The discrepancies in properly defining "Celtic languages" needed to harmonize those contrasting features accuse foundational problems in our definitions. Therefore the label "Celtic languages" is currently ill-defined and it only brings together Continental Celtic languages and Britannic languages in an artificial way, not in a properly linguistically-justified manner. TL;DR: The pre-English languages of Britain and Ireland are too fundamentally different from the Continental Celtic languages to also deserve the label of Celtic; instead, they would be better named "Britannic languages", leaving the label "Celtic languages" to those strictly found in the continent.
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  2. The Britannic language phonologically closest to Continental Celtic languages would be Welsh, or any other Brittonic language: "But in later Gaulish and Hispano-Celtic, there are numerous traces of lenitions anticipating the Neo-Celtic (particularly the Brittonic) systems: Proto-Celtic *t between vowels written D-, intervocalic *-k written G-, and *-g lost. As Martinet (1952) showed, Western Romance (for example, Spanish) also has a system of strong and weak consonants similar in articulation and distribution to what we must reconstruct for Celtic before the Neo-Celtic syllable losses. Thus, the fortes occur in absolute initial position and the lenes between vowels, which is how it was in Celtic before the Early Middle Ages." Source: Koch, John T. Is Basque an Indo-European Language? University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth. The Journal of Indo-European Studies. Volume 41, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2013.
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