The Continental Celtic languages are the now-extinct group of the
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central
Anatolia, as distinguished from the
Insular Celtic languages of the
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...
and
Brittany
Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period o ...
. ''Continental Celtic'' is a geographic, rather than linguistic, grouping of the ancient Celtic languages.
These languages were spoken by the people known to Roman and Greek writers as the ''Keltoi'', ''Celtae'', ''Galli'', and ''Galatae''. They were spoken in an area arcing from the northern half of
Iberia in the west to north of
Belgium, and east to the
Carpathian basin
The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large basin situated in south-east Central Europe. The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense, with only the ...
and the
Balkans as
Noric, and in inner Anatolia (modern day Turkey) as
Galatian.
Even though
Breton has been spoken in
Continental Europe
Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, b ...
since at least the 6th century AD, it is not considered one of the Continental Celtic languages, as it is a
Brittonic language
The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; cy, ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; kw, yethow brythonek/predennek; br, yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic. ...
, like
Cornish and
Welsh. A Gaulish substratum in Breton has been suggested, but that is debated.
Attested languages
It is likely that
Celts
The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient ...
spoke dozens of different languages and
dialects across Europe in pre-
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
* Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...
times, but only a small number are
attested:
*
Lepontic
Lepontic is an ancient Alpine Celtic languageJohn T. Koch (ed.) ''Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia'' ABC-CLIO (2005) that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul (now Northern Italy) between 550 and 100 BC. Lepontic is att ...
(6th to 4th century BC) was spoken on the southern side of the Alps. It is evidenced in a number of inscriptions as well as place names.
*
Gaulish
Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerl ...
(3rd century BC to 5th (?) century AD) was the main language spoken in greater
Gaul. This is often considered to be divided into two dialects,
Cisalpine (spoken in what is now Italy) and
Transalpine (spoken in what is now France). It is evidenced in a number of inscriptions as well as place names and tribal names in writings of classical authors. It may have been a
substratum to Breton (see below).
*
Galatian, which was spoken in the region of
Ankara
Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, mak ...
of what is now central Turkey. Classical writers say that the language is similar to that of Gaul. There is also evidence of invasion and settlement of the Ankara area by Celts from Europe.
*
Noric, which is the name given sometimes to the Celtic spoken in Central and Eastern Europe. It was spoken in
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous c ...
and
Slovenia; only two fragmentary texts are preserved.
*
Celtiberian or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic (3rd to 1st century BC) is the name given to the language in northeast Iberia, between the headwaters of the
Douro
The Douro (, , ; es, Duero ; la, Durius) is the highest-flow river of the Iberian Peninsula. It rises near Duruelo de la Sierra in Soria Province, central Spain, meanders south briefly then flows generally west through the north-west part o ...
,
Tagus,
Júcar
left
The Júcar () or Xúquer () is a river on the Iberian Peninsula of Spain. The river runs for approximately 509 km from its source at Ojuelos de Valdeminguete, on the eastern flank of the Montes Universales, Sistema Ibérico. Its most ...
and
Turía rivers and the
Ebro
, name_etymology =
, image = Zaragoza shel.JPG
, image_size =
, image_caption = The Ebro River in Zaragoza
, map = SpainEbroBasin.png
, map_size =
, map_caption = The Ebro ...
river. It is attested in some 200 inscriptions as well as place names. It is distinct from
Iberian.
*
Gallaecian
Gallaecian, or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, is an extinct Celtic language of a Hispano-Celtic group. It was spoken by the Gallaeci at the beginning of the 1st millennium in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula that became the Roman ...
also called Gallaic or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, attested in a set (corpus) of Latin inscriptions containing isolated words and sentences that are unmistakably Celtic.
It was spoken in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula comprising today's Spanish regions of
Galicia, western
Asturias
Asturias (, ; ast, Asturies ), officially the Principality of Asturias ( es, Principado de Asturias; ast, Principáu d'Asturies; Galician-Asturian: ''Principao d'Asturias''), is an autonomous community in northwest Spain.
It is coextensive ...
and western
Castile and León
Castile and León ( es, Castilla y León ; ast-leo, Castiella y Llión ; gl, Castela e León ) is an autonomous community in northwestern Spain.
It was created in 1983, eight years after the end of the Francoist regime, by the merging of the ...
, and the
Norte Region in northern Portugal.
Use of term
The modern term ''Continental Celtic'' is used in contrast to ''
Insular Celtic''. While many researchers agree that Insular Celtic is a distinct branch of Celtic (Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; Schrijver 1995) that has undergone common
linguistic innovations, there is no evidence that the Continental Celtic languages can be similarly grouped. Instead, the group called ''Continental Celtic'' is
paraphyletic, and the term refers simply to non-Insular Celtic languages. Since little material has been preserved in any of the Continental Celtic languages,
historical linguistic analysis based on the
comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
is difficult to perform. However, other researchers see the Brittonic languages and Gaulish as forming part of a subgroup of the Celtic languages that is known as
P-Celtic. Continental languages are P-Celtic except for Celtiberian, which is Q-Celtic. They have had a definite influence on all of the
Romance languages.
See also
*
Italo-Celtic
In historical linguistics, Italo-Celtic is a hypothetical grouping of the Italic and Celtic branches of the Indo-European language family on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. There is controversy about the cause ...
References
Bibliography
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Extinct Celtic languages