DM website update report #3: The CH Conundrum

daniel zucker

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All depends upon how you use the term British.

If you are using the term as a geographical location label then the British Isles covers all Britain, Ireland, Mann and a multitude of small islands. Britain or Great Britain only covers the contiguous land mass of England, Scotland and Wales.

If you are using British as a cultural, ethnic or linguistic label then that covers only Wales, Cornwall and possibly Brittany (Britons who fled to France) as these were the areas of Britain that continued the use of the P-Celtic Brittonic languages into at least early modern times (1500+). The P-Celtic Pictish and Stratclyde Brittonic of what is modern Scotland had by then been replaced by the Q-Celtic Scots variant of Gaelic imported from Ireland. While Scots Gaelic took most of its features, like vocabulary, from Irish Gaelic it retained many grammatical elements from its inhabitants earlier Brittonic/Pictish languages.

Linguists will have a good bar fight as to whether the Insular Celtic P-Q (eg. Irish "mac" = son, vs Welsh "(m)ap") split is a descendant of the Continental Celtic P-Q split or was a subsequent independent Insular development. By Roman times most of the Continental Celtic languages seem to have been of the P form with the exception of some areas of Spain using the likes Gallaecian or Celtiberian which seem to have been Q-Celtic languages. Being the furtherest westward from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) heartland the Q-Celtic seems to be closer to PIE than the physically nearer P-Celtic branches. Why? An explanation could be the first to move still clung to the original PIE forms and due to isolation could not adopt later PIE innovations/developments, IE language changes originate more often from the core than the periphery.

While dismissed as mainly mythical with a little real orally transmitted history the "Lebor Gabála Érenn" aka "Book Of Invasions" suggests that the last major wave of Celtic invasion of Ireland originated in NW Spain, That would match the Continental P-Q (most vs Spain) split to the Insular P-Q (Britain vs Ireland) split in effect at around 0 CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebor_Gabála_Érenn#Modern_criticism

The Celtic P-Q split has a parallel with the Italic languages of the same era with Latin being a Q-Italic and Osco-Umbrian being a P-Italic languages.

Oh, by the way, all Celtic "C"s are spoken as a "K". So "Celtic" is pronounced "Keltic", despite a certain football club mispronouncing it as "Seltic".

Sorry, but had to get it off my chest! ?
Yes . yes or here, here.
BUT what is the cmg/bmg and AF difference between the Continental P-Q and the Insular Celtic P-Q/ And is there really that much of a difference between the Irish "mac" module and the Welsh?
 
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