The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; ; ; and ) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages; the other is Goidelic. It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name ''Brythonic'' was derived by Welsh

Celticist Celtic studies or Celtology is the academic discipline occupied with the study of any sort of cultural output relating to the Celtic-speaking peoples (i.e. speakers of Celtic languages). This ranges from linguistics, literature and art history ...

John Rhys from the Welsh word , meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

or Gael. The Brittonic languages derive from the

Common Brittonic Common Brittonic (; ; ), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, is a Celtic language historically spoken in Britain and Brittany from which evolved the later and modern Brittonic languages. It is a form of Insular Cel ...

language, spoken throughout

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

during the

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

and Roman period. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in

Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...

and Britonia. During the next few centuries, in much of Britain the language was replaced by

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

and

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

, with the remaining Common Brittonic language splitting into regional dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh, Cornish, Breton,

Cumbric Cumbric is an extinct Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North", in Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the ot ...

, and probably Pictish. Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by Goidelic and Anglic speech. The

Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...

and

Orkney Orkney (), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plural name the Orkneys is also sometimes used, but locals now consider it outdated. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, ...

may also have originally spoken a Brittonic language, but this was later supplanted by Goidelic on the Isle of Man and Norse on Orkney. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in (the Welsh settlement in Patagonia).

Name

The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to the

Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yve ...

of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated

, in contrast to the

Goidelic languages The Goidelic ( ) or Gaelic languages (; ; ) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from Ireland through the Isle o ...

originating in Ireland. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as "British" and "Cymric". "Brythonic" was coined in 1879 by the Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word .Jackson, p. 3. "Brittonic", derived from "

Briton British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, w ...

" and also earlier spelled "Britonic" and "Britonnic", emerged later in the 19th century. "Brittonic" became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in Kenneth H. Jackson's highly influential 1953 work on the topic, ''Language and History in Early Britain''. Jackson noted by that time that "Brythonic" had become a dated term: "of late there has been an increasing tendency to use Brittonic instead." Today, "Brittonic" often replaces "Brythonic" in the literature. Rudolf Thurneysen used "Britannic" in his influential ''A Grammar of Old Irish'', although this never became popular among subsequent scholars. Comparable historical terms include the

Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...

and and the Welsh . Some writers use "British" for the language and its descendants, although, due to the risk of confusion, others avoid it or use it only in a restricted sense. Jackson, and later John T. Koch, use "British" only for the early phase of the Common Brittonic language. Before Jackson's work, "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" were often used for all the P-Celtic languages, including not just the varieties in Britain but those Continental Celtic languages that similarly experienced the evolution of the

Proto-Celtic language Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the hypothetical ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method. ...

element to . However, subsequent writers have tended to follow Jackson's scheme, rendering this use obsolete. The name "Britain" itself comes from , via

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th

, probably also from Latin , ultimately an adaptation of the native word for the island, . An early written reference to the British Isles may derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Marseille, Massalia; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas' use of variants such as (), "The Britannic [land, island]", and (), "Britannic islands", with being a Celtic word that might mean 'painted ones' or 'tattooed folk', referring to body decoration.

Evidence

Knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. The early language's information is obtained from coins, inscriptions, and comments by classical writers as well as place names and personal names recorded by them. For later languages, there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, together with place names. The names recorded in the Roman period are given in Rivet and Smith.

Characteristics

The Brittonic branch is also referred to as ''

P-Celtic The Gallo-Brittonic languages, also known as the P-Celtic languages, are a proposed subdivision of the Celtic languages containing the languages of Ancient Gaul (both ''Gallia Celtica, Celtica'' and ''Belgica'') and Celtic Britain, which share ce ...

'' because

linguistic reconstruction Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: * Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language t ...

of the Brittonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme is ''p'' as opposed to Goidelic ''k''. Such nomenclature usually implies acceptance of the P-Celtic and Q-Celtic hypothesis rather than the Insular Celtic hypothesis because the term includes certain Continental Celtic languages as well. Other major characteristics include: * The retention of the Proto-Celtic sequences and , which mostly result from the Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasals. * Celtic (written ''u'' in Latin texts and ''ou'' in Greek) became ''gw-'' in initial position, ''-w-'' internally, whereas in Gaelic it is ''f-'' in initial position and disappears internally:

Initial ''s-''

* Initial ''s-'' followed by a vowel was changed to ''h-'': * Initial ''s-'' was lost before , and : * The initial clusters ''sp-, sr-, sw-'' became ''f-, fr-, chw-'':

Lenition

* Voiceless plosives become voiced plosives in intervocalic position. * Voiced plosives became soft spirants in intervocalic position and before liquids:

Voiceless spirants

* Geminated voiceless plosives transformed into spirants: *Voiceless stops become spirants after liquids:

Nasal assimilation

* Voiced stops were assimilated to a preceding nasal: * Brittonic retains original nasals before and :

Classification

The family tree of the Brittonic languages is as follows: *

** Western Brittonic ***

*** Welsh ** Southwestern Brittonic *** Cornish *** Breton Brittonic languages in use today are Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Welsh and Breton have been spoken continuously since they formed. For all practical purposes Cornish died out during the 18th or 19th century, but a revival movement has more recently created small numbers of new speakers. Also notable are the extinct language

, and possibly the extinct Pictish. One view, advanced in the 1950s and based on apparently unintelligible ogham inscriptions, was that the Picts may have also used a non-

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

language. This view, while attracting broad popular appeal, has virtually no following in contemporary linguistic scholarship.

History and origins

The modern Brittonic languages are generally considered to all derive from a common ancestral language termed ''Brittonic'', ''British'', ''Common Brittonic'', ''Old Brittonic'' or ''Proto-Brittonic'', which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic or early Insular Celtic by the 6th century BC. A major

archaeogenetics Archaeogenetics is the study of ancient DNA using various molecular genetic methods and DNA resources. This form of genetic analysis can be applied to human, animal, and plant specimens. Ancient DNA can be extracted from various fossilized spec ...

study uncovered a migration into southern Britain in the middle to late Bronze Age, during the 500-year period 1,300–800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from

Gaul Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Roman people, Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of . Ac ...

. During 1,000–875 BC, their genetic markers swiftly spread through southern Britain, but not northern Britain. The authors describe this as a "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain". There was much less inward migration during the Iron Age, so it is likely that Celtic reached Britain before then. Barry Cunliffe suggests that a Goidelic branch of Celtic may already have been spoken in Britain, but that this middle Bronze Age migration would have introduced the Brittonic branch. Brittonic languages were probably spoken before the Roman invasion throughout most of

, though the

later had a Goidelic language, Manx. During the period of the Roman occupation of what is now

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

and

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

(AD 43 to ), Common Brittonic borrowed a large stock of

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

words, both for concepts unfamiliar in the pre-urban society of Celtic Britain such as urbanization and new tactics of warfare, as well as for rather more mundane words which displaced native terms (most notably, the word for 'fish' in all the Brittonic languages derives from the Latin rather than the native – which may survive, however, in the Welsh name of the

River Usk The River Usk (; ) rises on the northern slopes of the Black Mountain (''y Mynydd Du''), Wales, in the westernmost part of the Brecon Beacons National Park. Initially forming the boundary between Carmarthenshire and Powys, it flows north int ...

, ). Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brittonic languages. Pictish may have resisted Latin influence to a greater extent than the other Brittonic languages. It is probable that at the start of the Post-Roman period, Common Brittonic was differentiated into at least two major dialect groups – Southwestern and Western. (Additional dialects have also been posited, but have left little or no evidence, such as an Eastern Brittonic spoken in what is now the

East of England East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sunrise, Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact ...

.) Between the end of the Roman occupation and the mid-6th century, the two dialects began to diverge into recognizably separate varieties, the Western into Cumbric and Welsh, and the Southwestern into Cornish and its closely related sister language Breton, which was carried to continental Armorica. Jackson showed that a few of the dialect distinctions between West and Southwest Brittonic go back a long way. New divergencies began around AD 500 but other changes that were shared occurred in the 6th century. Other common changes occurred in the 7th century onward and are possibly due to inherent tendencies. Thus the concept of a Common Brittonic language ends by AD 600. Substantial numbers of Britons certainly remained in the expanding area controlled by

Anglo-Saxons The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

, but over the fifth and sixth centuries they mostly adopted the

language and culture.

Decline

The Brittonic languages spoken in what are now

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, the

, and

began to be displaced in the 5th century through the settlement of Irish-speaking

Gaels The Gaels ( ; ; ; ) are an Insular Celts, Insular Celtic ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. They are associated with the Goidelic languages, Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic languages comprising ...

and

Germanic peoples The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who lived in Northern Europe in Classical antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In modern scholarship, they typically include not only the Roman-era ''Germani'' who lived in both ''Germania'' and parts of ...

. Henry of Huntingdon wrote that Pictish was "no longer spoken". The displacement of the languages of Brittonic descent was probably complete in all of Britain except

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

, and the English counties bordering these areas such as

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, by the 11th century. Western

Herefordshire Herefordshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England, bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh ...

continued to speak Welsh until the late nineteenth century, and isolated pockets of

Shropshire Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...

speak Welsh today.

Sound changes

The large array of Brittonic sound changes has been documented by Schrijver (1995), building upon Jackson (1953).

Changes to long vowels and diphthongs

Brittonic has undergone an extensive remodeling of Proto-Celtic diphthongs and long vowels. All original Proto-Celtic diphthongs turned into monophthongs, albeit a number of these re-diphthongized at later stages.

Changes to short vowels

The distribution of Proto-Celtic short vowels were reshuffled by various processes in Brittonic, such as the two i-affections, a-affection, raisings, and contact with lenited consonants like ''*g'' > and ''*s'' > ''*h''. The default outcomes of stressed short vowels in Brittonic are as follows:

=Raisings of ''e'' and ''o''

= Welsh exhibits raisings of ''*e'' to ''*i'' > ' > ' and ''*o'' > before a nasal followed by a stop. It is difficult to determine whether the raising from ''*o'' to ''*u'' also affected Cornish and Breton, since both of those languages generally merge ''*o'' with ''*u''. The raising of ''*e'' to ''*i'' occurred in all three major Brittonic languages: *Proto-Celtic ''*sentus'' "path" > ''*hɪnt'' > Middle Welsh ''hynt'', Middle Cornish ''hyns'', and Old Breton ''scoiu-hint'' "side-passage". Other raising environments identified by Schrijver include: * When the vowel is preceded by ''*m'' and followed by ''*n''. * When the vowel is in a pretonic syllable, preceded by an alveolar consonant and followed by a nasal. * When the vowel is followed by an ''*r'' which in turn is followed by either ''*n'' or a velar consonant. This raising preceded a-affection, since a-affection reverses this raising whenever it applied. All these raisings not only affected native vocabulary, but also affected Latin loanwords.

=Interactions of vowels followed by ''*g''

= Multiple special interactions of vowels occurred when followed by ''*g''. * ''*e'' in such environments can be raised to ''*ɪ'' or lowered to ''*a'' depending on the following sound. * ''*ig'' > ''*ɪɣ'' had a special Welsh development in which it would become ''e'' in any environment where internal i-affection would apply. This development affected not only ''*ig'' > ''*ɪɣ'', but also ''*eg'' > ''*ɪɣ''. * The ''-a-'' in Welsh ''Cymraeg'' "Welsh language" and ''Cymraes'' "Welshwoman" (both from a base ''*kom-mrog-'') has been explained from a special development of ''*-og-'' to ''*-ag-'' pre-apocope antepenultimate syllables.

=Assimilation of ''oRa'' to ''aRa''

= Closely paralleling the common Celtic change of ''*eRa'' > ''*aRa'' (Joseph's rule) is the change of ''*oRa'' to ''*aRa'' in Brittonic, with ''R'' standing for any lone

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels a ...

. Unlike Joseph's rule, ''*oRa'' to ''*aRa'' did not occur in Goidelic. Schrijver demonstrates this rule with the following examples: * Proto-Celtic ''*kolanV-'' "corpse": Welsh ''celain'', plural ''calanedd'' vs. Irish ''colainn'' * Proto-Celtic ''*toranos'' "thunder": ''taran'' in all three Brittonic languages vs. Irish ''torann'' Assuming that Welsh ''manach'' (borrowed from Latin ''monachus'' "monk") also underwent this assimilation, Schrijver concludes that this change must predate the raising of vowels in ''*mVn-'' sequences, which in turn predates a-affection (an early fifth-century process).

=/je/ > /ja/

= In Brittonic, Celtic ''*ye'' generally became /ja/. Some examples cited by Schrijver include: * Proto-Celtic ''*yegis'' > Brittonic ''*jaɣ'' > Welsh ''iâ'' "ice" vs. Old Irish ''aig'', genitive ''ega'' (the ''a'' in the Irish word arose via an unrelated development involving ''*g'') * Proto-Celtic ''*yestu'' "boiling" > Brittonic ''*jas'' > Welsh ''ias'' vs. early Irish ''ess'' "cataract" * Proto-Celtic ''*gyemos'' "winter" > Brittonic ' > Welsh ''gaeaf'' vs. Irish ''gaim, gem'' (''-a-'' analogical)

=''*wo''

= The sequence ''*wo'' was quite volatile in Brittonic. It originally manifested as ''*wo'' in unlenited position and ''*wa'' in lenited position. Word-initially, this allomorphy was gone in medieval times, leveled out in various ways. Whichever of ''*o'' or ''*a'' to be generalized in the reflexes of a word in a given Brittonic language is completely unpredictable, and occasionally both ''o'' and ''a'' reflexes have been attested within the same language. Southwest Brittonic languages like Breton and Cornish usually generalize the same variant of ''*wo'' in a given word while Welsh tends to have its own distribution of variants. The distribution of ''*wo/wa'' is also complicated by an Old Breton development where ''*wo'' that had not turned to ''*gwa'' would split into ''go(u)-'' (Old Breton ''gu-'') in penultimate post-apocope syllables and ''go-'' in monosyllables.

=Developments of ''*ub''

= The sequence ''*ub'' > ''*uβ'' remained as such when followed by a consonant, for instance in Proto-Celtic ''*dubros'' "water" > ''*duβr'' > Welsh ''dwfr'', ''dŵr'' and Breton ''dour''. However, if no consonant exists after a ''*ub'' sequence, the ''*u'' merges with whatever Proto-Celtic ''*ou'' and ''*oi'' became, the result of which is written in the Brittonic languages. The lenited ''*b'' > ''*β'' is lost word-finally after this happens. * ''*dubus'' "black" > Welsh ''du'', Cornish ''du'', Breton ''du'' * ''*lubV-'' "herb" > Old Breton ''tutlub'', ''tutlob'' > Breton ''tule'', ''tulo'' * Latin ''cubitus'' > Middle Welsh ''kufyt'', modern Welsh ''cufydd'' Schrijver dates this development between the 6th to 8th centuries, with subsequent loss of ''*β'' datable to the 9th century.

=a-affection

= In Brittonic, final a-affection was triggered by final-syllable ''*ā'' or ''*a'', which was later apocopated. This process lowered ''*i'' and ''*u'' in the preceding syllable to ''*e'' and ''*o'', respectively. A-affection, by affecting feminine forms of adjectives and not their masculine counterparts, created root vowel alternations by gender such as ''*windos'', feminine ''*windā'' > ''*gwɪnn'', feminine ''*gwenn'' > Welsh ''gwyn'', feminine ''gwen''.

=i-affection

= There were two separate processes of i-affection in Brittonic: final i-affection and internal i-affection. Both processes caused the fronting of vowels.

Simplified summary of consonantal outcomes

The regular

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

sound change In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...

s from Proto-Celtic to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton are summarised in the following table. Where the graphemes have a different value from the corresponding IPA symbols, the IPA equivalent is indicated between slashes. V represents a vowel; C represents a consonant.

Remnants in England, Scotland and Ireland

Place names and river names

The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the Brittonic languages were displaced is that of toponyms (place names) and hydronyms (names of rivers and other bodies of water). There are many Brittonic place names in lowland Scotland and in the parts of England where it is agreed that substantial Brittonic speakers remained (Brittonic names, apart from those of the former Romano-British towns, are scarce over most of England). Names derived (sometimes indirectly) from Brittonic include

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, Penicuik,

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

Aberdeen Aberdeen ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, third most populous Cities of Scotland, Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeensh ...

York York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...

, Dorchester,

Dover Dover ( ) is a town and major ferry port in Kent, southeast England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies southeast of Canterbury and east of Maidstone. ...

, and

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in northeastern Essex, England. It is the second-largest settlement in the county, with a population of 130,245 at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 Census. The demonym is ''Colcestrian''. Colchester occupies the ...

. Brittonic elements found in England include and for 'hill', while some such as ''co b ' (from ) for 'small deep valley' and '' tor'' for 'hill, rocky headland' are examples of Brittonic words that were borrowed into English. Others reflect the presence of Britons such as Dumbarton – from the

meaning 'Fort of the Britons', and Walton meaning (in Anglo-Saxon) a 'settlement' where the 'Britons' still lived. The number of Celtic river names in England generally increases from east to west, a map showing these being given by Jackson. These include Avon, Chew, Frome, Axe, Brue and Exe, but also river names containing the elements ''der-/dar-/dur-'' and ''-went'' e.g. Derwent, Darwen, Deer, Adur, Dour, Darent, and Went. These names exhibit multiple different Celtic roots. One is * 'water' (Breton , Cumbric , Welsh ), also found in the place-name Dover (attested in the Roman period as ); this is the source of rivers named Dour. Another is 'oak' or 'true' (Bret. , Cumb. , W. ), coupled with two agent suffixes, and ; this is the origin of Derwent, Darent, and Darwen (attested in the Roman period as ). The final root to be examined is . In Roman Britain, there were three tribal capitals named (modern Winchester, Caerwent, and Caistor St Edmunds), whose meaning was 'place, town'.

Brittonicisms in English

Some, including

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson ...

, have argued that Celtic has acted as a substrate to English for both the lexicon and syntax. It is generally accepted that Brittonic effects on English are lexically few, aside from toponyms, consisting of a small number of domestic and geographical words, which "may" include ''bin'', ''brock'', ''carr'', ''comb'', ''crag'' and ''tor''. URL is to a 2004 prepress version. Another legacy may be the sheep-counting system '' yan tan tethera'' in the north, in the traditionally Celtic areas of England such as

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...

. Several words of Cornish origin are still in use in English as mining-related terms, including costean, gunnies, and vug. Those who argue against the theory of a more significant Brittonic influence than is widely accepted point out that many toponyms have no semantic continuation from the Brittonic language. A notable example is ''Avon'' which comes from the Celtic term for river or the Welsh term for river, , but was used by the English as a personal name. Likewise the River Ouse, Yorkshire, contains the Celtic word which merely means 'water' and the name of the river Trent simply comes from the Welsh word for a 'trespasser' (figuratively suggesting 'overflowing river'). Scholars supporting a Brittonic substrate in English argue that the use of periphrastic constructions (using

auxiliary verb An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or ...

s such as ''do'' and ''be'' in the continuous/progressive) of the English

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

, which is more widespread than in the other

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

, is traceable to Brittonic influence.. Others, however, find this unlikely since many of these forms are only attested in the later Middle English period; these scholars claim a native English development rather than Celtic influence. Ian G. Roberts postulates Northern Germanic influence, despite such constructions not existing in Norse. Literary Welsh has the simple present = 'I love' and the present stative (al. continuous/progressive) = 'I am loving', where the Brittonic syntax is partly mirrored in English. (However, English ''I am loving'' comes from older ''I am a-loving'', from still older 'I am in the process of loving'). In the Germanic sister languages of English, there is only one form, for example in German, though in ''colloquial'' usage in some German dialects, a progressive aspect form has evolved which is formally similar to those found in Celtic languages, and somewhat less similar to the Modern English form, e.g. 'I am working' is , literally: 'I am on the working'. The same structure is also found in modern Dutch (), alongside other structures (e.g. , lit. 'I sit to working'). These parallel developments suggest that the English progressive is not necessarily due to Celtic influence; moreover, the native English development of the structure can be traced over 1000 years and more of English literature. Some researchers (Filppula, et al., 2001) argue that other elements of English syntax reflect Brittonic influences. For instance, in English

tag question A tag question is a construction in which an interrogative element is added to a Sentence (linguistics)#Classification, declarative or an imperative mood, imperative clause. The resulting speech act comprises an assertion paired with a request for ...

s, the form of the tag depends on the verb form in the main statement (''aren't I?'', ''isn't he?'', ''won't we?'', etc.). The German and the French , by contrast, are fixed forms which can be used with almost any main statement. It has been claimed that the English system has been borrowed from Brittonic, since Welsh tag questions vary in almost exactly the same way.

Brittonic effect on the Goidelic languages

Far more notable, but less well known, are Brittonic influences on

, though Scottish and Irish Gaelic, with their wider range of preposition-based periphrastic constructions, suggest that such constructions descend from their common Celtic heritage. Scottish Gaelic contains several P-Celtic loanwords, but, as there is a far greater overlap in terms of Celtic vocabulary than with English, it is not always possible to disentangle P- and Q-Celtic words. However, some common words such as = Welsh , Cumbric are particularly evident. The Brittonic influence on Scots Gaelic is often indicated by considering

Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

usage, which is not likely to have been influenced so much by Brittonic. In particular, the word (

anglicised Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English place adopts the English language ...

as "strath") is a native Goidelic word, but its usage appears to have been modified by the Welsh cognate whose meaning is slightly different. The effect on Irish has been the loan from British of many Latin-derived words. This has been associated with the Christianisation of Ireland from Britain.

Name

Evidence

Characteristics

Initial ''s-''

Lenition

Voiceless spirants

Nasal assimilation

Classification

History and origins

Decline

Sound changes

Changes to long vowels and diphthongs

Changes to short vowels

=Raisings of ''e'' and ''o''

=Interactions of vowels followed by ''*g''

=Assimilation of ''oRa'' to ''aRa''

=/je/ > /ja/

=''*wo''

=Developments of ''*ub''

=a-affection

=i-affection

Simplified summary of consonantal outcomes

Remnants in England, Scotland and Ireland

Place names and river names

Brittonicisms in English

Brittonic effect on the Goidelic languages

References

Sources

External links

Name

Evidence

Characteristics

Initial ''s-''

Lenition

Voiceless spirants

Nasal assimilation

Classification

History and origins

Decline

Sound changes

Changes to long vowels and diphthongs

Changes to short vowels

=Raisings of ''*e'' and ''*o''

=Interactions of vowels followed by ''*g''

=Assimilation of ''*oRa'' to ''*aRa''

=/je/ > /ja/

=''*wo''

=Developments of ''*ub''

=a-affection

=i-affection

Simplified summary of consonantal outcomes

Remnants in England, Scotland and Ireland

Place names and river names

Brittonicisms in English

Brittonic effect on the Goidelic languages

References

Sources

External links

=Raisings of ''e'' and ''o''

=Assimilation of ''oRa'' to ''aRa''