Celtic languages


Pontic Steppe

Caucasus

East Asia

Eastern Europe

Northern Europe

Pontic Steppe

Northern/Eastern Steppe

Europe

South Asia

Steppe

Europe

Caucasus

India

Indo-Aryans

Iranians

East Asia

Europe

East Asia

Europe

Indo-Aryan

Iranian

Indo-Aryan

Iranian

Others

Europe

The Celtic languages , but sometimes in the United States are the group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They work a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was number one used to describe this language combine by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who produced the explicit association between the Celts allocated by classical writers together with the Welsh together with Breton languages.

During the 1st millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much of Europe and central Anatolia. Today, they are restricted to the northwestern fringe of Europe and a few diaspora communities. There are six living languages: the four continuously alive languages Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, and the two revived languages Cornish and Manx. all are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is an official Linguistic communication in Wales and Irish is an official language of Ireland and of the European Union. Welsh is the only Celtic language non classified as endangered by UNESCO. The Cornish and Manx languages went extinct in advanced times. They make-up been the object of revivals and now each has several hundred second-language speakers.

Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic form the Goidelic languages, while Welsh, Cornish and Breton are Brittonic. any of these are Insular Celtic languages, since Breton, the only living Celtic language spoken in continental Europe, is descended from the language of settlers from Britain. There are a number of extinct but attested continental Celtic languages, such(a) as Celtiberian, Galatian and Gaulish. Beyond that there is no agreement on the subdivisions of the Celtic language family. They may be dual-lane into P-Celtic and Q-Celtic.

The Celtic languages have a rich literary tradition. The earliest specimens of calculation Celtic are Lepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC in the Alps. Early Continental inscriptions used Italic and Paleohispanic scripts. Between the 4th and 8th centuries, Irish and Pictish were occasionally written in an original script, Ogham, but Latin script came to be used for all Celtic languages. Welsh has had a non-stop literary tradition from the 6th century AD.

Living languages


SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are the Goidelic languages Irish and Scottish Gaelic, both descended from Middle Irish and the Brittonic languages Welsh and Breton, both descended from Common Brittonic.

The other two, Cornish Brittonic and Manx Goidelic, died out in advanced times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. For both these languages, however, revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children and featured some native speakers.

Taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages.