Continental Celtic languages: Difference between revisions

| acceptance = geographic

[[File:Celtic languages.png|thumb|280px|The tentative Celtic clade, consisting of the proto- language and all the known daughter languages. It is tentative because other languages might be found.]]

The '''Continental Celtic languages''' are the now-extinct group of the [[Celtic languages]] that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central [[Anatolia]], as distinguished from the [[Insular Celtic languages]] of the [[British Isles]] and [[Brittany]]. In the field of [[historical linguistics]], Continental and Insular Celtic are put forward as the main branches of the group, whichis itselfabranch of the [[Indo-European languages]]. As the word branch implies, this field primarily makes use of the [[family tree]] analogy. Indo-European is a tree with all the different groups as branches. No branches, no tree, and vice versa.

Not all the branches, however, are known. There are alternative hypotheses of the exact paths between known branches. For this reason, the late linguist, [[Calvert Watkins]], omits the upper branch lines between Proto-Indo-European and the various major daughter groups in his circular presentation of the tree on the rear fly leaves of the Fourth and other editions of the ''American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'', containing his essay "Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans" and his appendix on Indo-European roots. There are in that edition 15 major groups, some containing only one language. Theorists can connect these major branches according to their groupings.

== The insular and continental branches ==

The branch labelled Celtic is divided into Insular and Continental. As they are branches, and not random groups, it is important to understand what that terminology means.

Suppose that over time a population P speaking a language L varies its speech so that in place of one population speaking one language are now two populations, P1 and P2, speaking two languages, L1 and L1. The latter are called [[sister language]]s, while L is depending on the speaker's preference a mother language, a parent language, an ancestor language, or a [[proto-language]]. L1 and L2 are daughter languages. Obviously any daughter language can itself be a proto-language, so that over time the degree of branching can become very great, as in [[Ethnologue]]'s language trees.<ref>For example, their tree for Indo-European contains 454 languages as of this date of access: {{cite web | title=Indo-European | publisher=Ethnologue | url=https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroup/3/ | access-date=6 April 2024}}</ref> They might also be very ornate and artistic.<ref>{{cite web | title=Old World Language Families | publisher=TOPPAN | url=https://toppandigital.com/us/blog-us/the-best-language-infographics-interactive-tools-on-the-web/ | access-date=6 April 2006}}</ref>

== Questions and answers of classification ==

===The double classification of Celtic===

<!--''Continental Celtic'' is a geographic, rather than linguistic, grouping of the ancient Celtic languages.-->

The modern term ''Continental Celtic'' is used in contrast to ''[[Insular Celtic languages|Insular Celtic]]''. However, while many researchers agree with the ''Insular Celtic'' hypothesis that the Insular Celtic languages constitute a linguistically distinct branch of Celtic (Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; Schrijver 1995) that has undergone common [[linguistics|linguistic]] innovations, there is no evidence that the ''Continental Celtic'' languages can be similarly grouped. Instead, the group called ''Continental Celtic'' is [[paraphyletic]]; the term refers simply to non-Insular Celtic languages and not to any special linguistic relationship between them as a group other than they are Celtic. Since little material has been preserved of any of the Continental Celtic languages, [[historical linguistics|historical linguistic]] analysis based on the [[comparative method]] is difficult to perform. Meanwhile, under the P/Q hypothesis, other researchers see the Brittonic languages and Gaulish as forming part of a subgroup of the Celtic languages that is known as [[P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages|P-Celtic]].{{sfn|Lambert|1994|p=17}} Under this hypothesis, Continental languages are P-Celtic except for Celtiberian and Gallaecian, which are Q-Celtic. The Continental Celtic languages have had a definite influence on all of the [[Romance languages]].

===Eliminating the doubt with hearsay and conjecture===

== Hypothetical languages ==

These languages were spoken by the people known to Roman and Greek writers as the ''Keltoi'', ''Celtae'', ''Galli'', and ''Galatae''.{{citation needed|reason=evidence required for the Greek/Roman names for the peoples|date=June 2021}} They were spoken in an area arcing from the northern half of [[Iberian Peninsula|Iberia]] in the west to north of [[Belgium]], and east to the [[Carpathian basin]] and the [[Balkans]] as [[Noric language|Noric]], and in inner Anatolia (modern day Turkey) as [[Galatian language|Galatian]].

It is likely that [[Celts]] spoke dozens of different languages and [[dialects]] across Europe in pre-[[Roman Empire|Roman]] times, but only a small number are either [[attested language|attested]] or infered from circumstantial evidence. The exact list varies according to the theorist and the state of the evidence. Currently there is evidence (not necessarily from comparative linguistics) for these branches: