Insular Celtic languages are those
Celtic languages that originated in the
British Isles, in contrast to the
Continental Celtic languages of
mainland Europe and
Anatolia. All surviving Celtic languages are from the Insular Celtic group; the Continental Celtic languages are extinct. The six Insular Celtic languages of modern times can be divided into:
Insular Celtic hypothesis
The "Insular Celtic hypothesis" is a theory that the Brythonic and Goidelic languages
evolved together in those islands, having a
common ancestor more recent than any shared with the
Continental Celtic languages such as
Celtiberian,
Gaulish, Galatian and
Lepontic, among others, all of which are long extinct.
The proponents of the Insular Celtic hypothesis (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) point to shared innovations among Insular Celtic languages, including
inflected prepositions, shared use of certain verbal particles,
VSO word order, and the differentiation of
absolute and conjunct verb endings as found extensively in Old Irish and to a small extent in Middle Welsh (see
Morphology of the Proto-Celtic language). They assert that a partition that lumps the Brythonic languages and Gaulish (
P-Celtic) on one side and the Goidelic languages with Celtiberian (
Q-Celtic) on the other may be a superficial one...
Read More