Pictish Language

[8Deer]

I've spent the past couple of days reading up online about the so-called Pictish language of Scotland during the early medieval period. Before looking into it more, I'd always believed the non-Indo-European theory of Pictish origins. However, after looking into it more, it seems that Pictish was a P-Celtic relative, albeit with some Q-Celtic influences later on and probably a large pre-Celtic substrate. Darn! I was really hoping for a northern British Basque .

Anyways, what are your thoughts and/or opinions on the different theories about the Pictish language?

PS: Here is the article that helped to sway my opinion: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/2081/1/languagepictland.pdf

PPS: I'm new, so I'm likely to make a few mistakes. You know what they say about amateur linguists.

[marconatrix]

There are no continuous texts in Pictish, only personal and place names, lists of kings etc. There are some weird oghams that no one can make any sense of, but since ogham is sort of like tally marks, there's no reason that these are necessarily language at all. All the names that aren't wildly corrupted look pretty straightforward p-celtic, with the Scots (i.e. Irish) gradually infiltrating the territory. There are some 'old european' type river names, same as everywhere in NW Europe. Clearly there were people living in Britain before the Celts arrived, and it's not at all impossible that some remained in remote corners even into early mediaeval times. However there's no proof and even if they did survive we know nothing whatever of their language(s).

And why does everyone always pick on Basque? Research per-roman Iberia, there were a whole bunch of languages (sadly poorly known) spoken there, belonging to two, three or more different families, and no doubt a similar diversity was found elsewhere in Europe, especially prior to the spread of agriculture.

I quite like the Picts though, their symbols are really cool

[WeepingElf]

I can only second what marconatrix said.

Certainly, there once were people in what is now Scotland who spoke non-Indo-European languages (the Palæolithic Continuity Hypothesis can be dismissed out of hand), but we know virtually nothing about those languages, and there is no reason to assume they were related to Basque. The Old European Hydronymy hints at a stratum of languages that were widespread in northwestern Europe, but nobody knows what those languages were. My pet hypothesis is that those languages formed a sister group of Indo-European introduced by Neolithic farmers, but that remains speculation. (At least, I have based my main conlang on that idea.) The attested Pictish material, which is very little, seems to show a Brythonic ("P-Celtic") language, though a somewhat aberrant one, possibly with some influence from a lost non-IE substratum.

I invite you all to join the discussion in the "European languages before Indo-European" thread - which has become a rather quiet place now that Octavià is gone.

[8Deer]

Interesting, I didn't know that Old European river names were found in Britain.

Speaking of which, I've read several articles online about the Old European Hydronymy, but none seem to give examples. Wikipedia gives "Dur", but I've never seen any other examples. Can you provide any?

[WeepingElf]

Interesting, I didn't know that Old European river names were found in Britain.

Speaking of which, I've read several articles online about the Old European Hydronymy, but none seem to give examples. Wikipedia gives "Dur", but I've never seen any other examples. Can you provide any?

I have a list of about 1000 of them, though not in digital form. I am in the process of cataloging and mapping them, but that work progresses only slowly, so don't hold your breath for the results. I posted a list of the roots and suffixes in the "European languages before Indo-European" thread a few weeks ago.

[marconatrix]

The oldest records of Irish seem to suggest a fairly 'normal' IE language, then just before we have continuous texts the language developed a very strong initial stress accent, which played hell with all the polysyllabic inflexions etc. Non-initial vowels were reduced or eliminated, consonants crashed together and assimilated, vowel quality was transferred to adjacent consonants ... Which is why OI verb morphology looks like a city after an earthquake. It took most of the Middle Irish period to tidy up the mess. Now this rather suggests that that proto-OI may have been introduced by relative late-comers (just as Irish mythical-history says), who became linguistically dominant, but otherwise blended in with the previous inhabitants, so we're seeing a strong substratum effect. However no such effect is seen in British, which seems to have kept a light mobile (pitch?) accent, which with a few changes remains in the modern languages.

So who did the Irish meet when they first came to Ireland, and where had that previous population come from?

[WeepingElf]

So who did the Irish meet when they first came to Ireland, and where had that previous population come from?

The "official" answer is of course that we simply don't know. In the old Irish tales, the island was inhabited by a people called "Tuatha Dé Danann" (which means 'People of the Goddess Dana') before the Irish came there, who are described as a race of demigods similar to Tolkien's Elves. Nobody knows how much truth there is in those tales; I think we can rule out actual demigods, though.

I think it is not implausible to assume that the language of pre-IE Ireland was related to the languages of pre-IE Britain, and it is possible (but uncertain) that it was brought there from Central Europe by the Bell Beaker people. AFAIK, Ireland takes part in the "Old European hydronymy". In my personal hypothesis, the language (or rather, some of the languages) of pre-IE Ireland was a member of the Hesperic family (as I call it), distantly related to Indo-European; certainly, there were other languages in Ireland before Hesperic was established there.

[hwhatting]

IPS: Here is the article that helped to sway my opinion: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/2081/1/languagepictland.pdf

Thanks for posting that!