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Celtic Languages
The Celts of Gaul settled in Britain after 600 B.C and the two populations (Celts and Britons) shared a language called Gallo-Brittonic. This was one of nine different branches of the Indo-European language. The Brittonic language survived the Roman rule in Britain, and it was largely supplanted by Old English at the time of Anglo-Saxon invasions. Welsh, Cornish and Breton descended from Gallo-Brittonic; the so-called “P” Celtic languages, because the KW sound became written into “P”. In Ireland it was called “Q” Celtic, because the KW was written first as “Q” and later as “C”.
Celtic Place-names in Europe The example of Celtic Place-names in Europe indicate the wide diffusion of this ancient people. Let’s take the Celtic name Noviomagus composed of two Celtic words: the adjective meaning new and “mogos” a field or plain. There were nine places with this name known in antiquity and six were in France, three outside France: “ Nimègue “ in Belgium , “Neumagen “in the Rhine Region and one in Speyer ,in the Palatinate. The fortress or castle is a typical Celtic element in European place-names. It occurred very frequently in France (Lyons,Verdun) and also in the Switzerland and in the Netherlands where the famous city of Leyden goes back to a Celtic “Lug-dumun”. In Portugal eight names terminate in “dumun” and in Germany the modern names “Kempton” and “Karnberg” go back to the Celtic forms “Cembo-dunum”, the same can be said for place names in other countries for example Croatia , Roumania ,Bulgaria. (Irene Predieri - Boschiero Silvia, 3^B int.) |
