Where do the Goidelic languages come from?

[Zaarin]

The Brythonic languages have been in Britain for as long as we have records of the island, but this isn't the case for Goidelic. The Irish say they come from Spain, but despite being Q-Celtic most linguists seem to agree that Goidelic and Celtiberian are not related. What's more, I recall reading a genetic study suggesting that the Irish come from southern France, but clearly Goidelic is not a descendant of Gaulish either. So where was pre-Old Irish spoken?

[Dewrad]

The Brythonic languages have been in Britain for as long as we have records of the island, but this isn't the case for Goidelic.

Well, actually it kind of is. As long as there have been written records of Ireland, they indicate that the language spoken there was either Goidelic or ancestral thereunto.

The Irish say they come from Spain, but despite being Q-Celtic most linguists seem to agree that Goidelic and Celtiberian are not related.

This is correct, Goidelic and Celtiberian have no particular connection beyond their common Celticity.

What's more, I recall reading a genetic study suggesting that the Irish come from southern France, but clearly Goidelic is not a descendant of Gaulish either. So where was pre-Old Irish spoken?

Happily, genetic studies have fuck all to do with language, so it's not really relevant either way which areas of Europe the Irish population shares its mitochondrial DNA with.

The most likely scenario is this: the Proto-Celtic language spread from its original homeland (wherever that was- modern Switzerland isn't a bad candidate) into Gaul, Iberia, Britain and Ireland. At this point all Celtic speakers were "Q-Celtic". Then, probably linked to the spread of the La Tène culture, the *kʷ > *p soundchange spread throughout much of the Celtic-speaking area. It hit Gaul, northern Italy and Britain, but failed to make it as far as Ireland. So, to answer your question, pre-Old Irish was spoken in Ireland. Shocker, I know.

[Zaarin]

Interesting. I suppose then it's rather apparent that I haven't studied Irish much in quite some time, as the last time I did the idea that the (Gaelic) Irish invaded Ireland in late prehistoric/early historic times was still current. Are the Bronze Age Irish who built Newgrange and so forth still believed to be pre-Celtic or are they the ancestors of the Gaels?

[Dewrad]

Genetically? Yeah, very probably. Language shift does not have to be accompanied by a population change.

[Zaarin]

Cool. Thanks.

[TaylorS]

IMO the Q-Celtic languages represent an older Celtic-speaking stratum that existed before 2 waves of expansion of P-Celtic speakers during the Hallstatt and La-Tenne phases (the last expansion brought Gaulish speakers like the Parisi to the SE Britain).

[Salmoneus]

Interesting. I suppose then it's rather apparent that I haven't studied Irish much in quite some time, as the last time I did the idea that the (Gaelic) Irish invaded Ireland in late prehistoric/early historic times was still current. Are the Bronze Age Irish who built Newgrange and so forth still believed to be pre-Celtic or are they the ancestors of the Gaels?

N.B. Newgrange was built about 2000 years before the bronze age hit ireland. So its builders were (almost) certainly pre-Celtic: Newgrange and PIE were probably contemporaneous. If you had to to pick a suriving-into-history group to ascribe it to, it would have to be the Picts, assuming they started out pre-celtic - but the time gaps between Newgrange and any recorded history are so immense it's quite possible the Picts themselves are later invaders too.

Genetic studies suggest strong connections between the celtic fringe of britain and spain (particularly the basque region) - but this may be a common relict population rather than a later invasion. Having said that, a pre-Celtic/Basque connection isn't entirely unfeasible, afaics.

Newgrange has similarities with Maes Howe, built some time later, so there may be cultural connections between Ireland and Orkney. In turn, Maes Howe can be connected with Stenness, contemporaneous with Newgrange, and with the other early stone circles (e.g. Castlerigg). You could thus suggest a general cultural area beginning in scotland, cumbria, orkney, and ireland, particularly in coastal regions, which then spread to or influenced cultures in southern britain and brittany. But as I say, the time depth between this cultural area and recorded history is far too immense to say anything about who these people were.

[Zaarin]

Interesting. I suppose then it's rather apparent that I haven't studied Irish much in quite some time, as the last time I did the idea that the (Gaelic) Irish invaded Ireland in late prehistoric/early historic times was still current. Are the Bronze Age Irish who built Newgrange and so forth still believed to be pre-Celtic or are they the ancestors of the Gaels?

N.B. Newgrange was built about 2000 years before the bronze age hit ireland. So its builders were (almost) certainly pre-Celtic: Newgrange and PIE were probably contemporaneous. If you had to to pick a suriving-into-history group to ascribe it to, it would have to be the Picts, assuming they started out pre-celtic - but the time gaps between Newgrange and any recorded history are so immense it's quite possible the Picts themselves are later invaders too.

Genetic studies suggest strong connections between the celtic fringe of britain and spain (particularly the basque region) - but this may be a common relict population rather than a later invasion. Having said that, a pre-Celtic/Basque connection isn't entirely unfeasible, afaics.

Newgrange has similarities with Maes Howe, built some time later, so there may be cultural connections between Ireland and Orkney. In turn, Maes Howe can be connected with Stenness, contemporaneous with Newgrange, and with the other early stone circles (e.g. Castlerigg). You could thus suggest a general cultural area beginning in scotland, cumbria, orkney, and ireland, particularly in coastal regions, which then spread to or influenced cultures in southern britain and brittany. But as I say, the time depth between this cultural area and recorded history is far too immense to say anything about who these people were.

That's some interesting stuff to think about. With that kind of time gap it's not difficult to see how places like Newgrange got associated with fairies by historic times. This almost makes me want to do some conworlding/alternate history with pre-Celtic Western Europe. But I have enough projects on my plate at the moment...

[marconatrix]

In Irish mythical history the Gaels were only the last of several waves of semi-legendary invaders to come to Ireland, having sailed from 'Spain' (= somewhere far off in mainland Europe?) Then then mixed in with the previous inhabitants having reached some kind of agreement with them and became the politically dominant group. Of course this is largely a 'just so' story to explain the different social casts and social rôles in early Ireland, so I wouldn't put any weight on the details of the story. However the idea of waves of immigrants makes sense. Also most tribes identify with their homeland and claim to have been there since the beginning of time, having sprung from the earth itself, or fallen from the sky or whatever. So when you have an 'invasion myth' as with the Irish or the Maori then perhaps it really does have some historical basis.

The nearest Q-Celts to Ireland were in the south of Gaul, and Spain of course. AFAIK there are no traces of Q-Celtic (e.g. Greek/Roman writers) in Britain before the Irish expansion of the dark ages. (Not sure about all the tribal names though, but they were often scrambled in transmission, and you'd have to be able to identify the elements). The Caledonians/Picts were P-Celts and they may well have colonised parts of Ireland in Early times. There are some obscure passages in Irish materials that could be references to other languages once spoken in Ireland, but they could also refer to special styles, obscure ritual language, and so on. But obviously there were people in Ireland long before any Celts arrived, and they obviously spoke languages that weren't Irish, but we have no way of knowing what they might have been.

There's always been a lot of confusion/misunderstanding between linguists and archaeologists and now geneticists too. I remember seeing a gene map where a spread going from Spain to Ireland (iirc) had been labelled 'Celtic' probably just because these are the historic/present Celtic areas. However the genetic diffusion may well have been much older than the linguistic/cultural spread. Unfortunately that doesn't stop a certain type of person taking labels like 'Celtic' literally and then trying to 'prove' by accidental circular reasoning that there have been Celts in Ireland or Britain since the neolithic or the Ice Age or whatever. Odd when this is exactly what the ancient Irish themselves didn't claim.

Also in this quackery category, people who insist that Gaelic was 'always' spoken in Scotland, when its spread from Ireland can be dated to historical times. What they don't realise is that being brought originally from Ireland doesn't make Scots G. any the less Scottish, since it developed along its own lines influenced by a particular set of influences different from those in Ireland, and so is still 100% 'made in Scotland', not a 'foreign language' as anti-Gaelic lowlanders have sometimes tried to make out. But by that logic, English is a foreign language in Britain!!

Another source of confusion are the dark age Irish ogham inscriptions found in Wales and Cornwall. Early Welsh scholars thought these were a very early form of Welsh and so imagined that P-Celtic/British/Welsh had evolved in situ in Britain. Then all you need is archaeologists reading out of date linguistics ... and well need I go on? And now we have geneticists added to the mix reading out of date archaeology and linguistics, and all these circular theories arise.

Edit : Another point is that when you look at the oldest recorded Irish language, it looks like it had just recently developed a very heavy initial stress, and this led to loss of alternate vowels and assimilation between the consonants that were thrown together, and generally played merry hell with verb paradigms in particular. This to me suggests a strong substratum effect since none of the other branches of Celtic behave like this, neither does Germanic which also has initial stress afaik. Otoh you don't seem to have a large non-Celtic vocabulary in Irish the way you have lots of non-IE words in Greek.

[hwhatting]

Otoh you don't seem to have a large non-Celtic vocabulary in Irish the way you have lots of non-IE words in Greek.

But that's parallelled in English, where we know that English must have superseded Brythonic or Britanno-Romance as the language spoken in the area where the English settled, and where we have a negligible layer of old Celtic loanwords and where Latin loans attested in Anglo-Saxon have either been brought already from the continent or are clearly from ecclesiastical / literary Latin. And OTOH we have all kinds of claims for Celtic Substrate influence on English Syntax.

[Shemtov]

I have heard a theory that the "Spain" legends come from a group of Phoenicians from Hispania coming to the British Isles and assimilating into the Celtic population, explaining Insular Celtic being VSO.

[Zaarin]

I have heard a theory that the "Spain" legends come from a group of Phoenicians from Hispania coming to the British Isles and assimilating into the Celtic population, explaining Insular Celtic being VSO.

Isn't there also an outdated 18th/19th century theory, based on some Irish legend, that the Irish are Scythians? "The Irish are Near Eastern" seems to be something of a trope.

[WeepingElf]

My pet theory is that the bards concluded that the Irish were from Spain because they noticed (in pre-Roman times) that the Celtic of Ireland was like the Celtic of Spain with regard to the "P"/"Q" isogloss. I don't know how much sense that makes, though; did Celtic bards travel that far in the Iron Age?

But actually, the "Q" feature in Goidelic and Celtiberian is of course just an archaism that tells nothing about relationships. Some scholars think that the *k^w > p shift spread as a shibboleth of the more sophisticated La Tène culture and just failed to reach Ireland and Spain.

[Shemtov]

I have heard a theory that the "Spain" legends come from a group of Phoenicians from Hispania coming to the British Isles and assimilating into the Celtic population, explaining Insular Celtic being VSO.

Isn't there also an outdated 18th/19th century theory, based on some Irish legend, that the Irish are Scythians? "The Irish are Near Eastern" seems to be something of a trope.

There was also Irish=Jews legend.....

[WeepingElf]

I have heard a theory that the "Spain" legends come from a group of Phoenicians from Hispania coming to the British Isles and assimilating into the Celtic population, explaining Insular Celtic being VSO.

Isn't there also an outdated 18th/19th century theory, based on some Irish legend, that the Irish are Scythians? "The Irish are Near Eastern" seems to be something of a trope.

The origin of this trope, I think, is simply the fact, discovered around that time, that the Celtic languages are Indo-European, and thus ultimately originating in the east. The "Great Tartary", as Central Asia was called then, was discussed as a homeland for PIE, as were India and Atlantis, both sometimes mentioned as the places of origin of the Celts in esoteric literature until today.

[Salmoneus]

I have heard a theory that the "Spain" legends come from a group of Phoenicians from Hispania coming to the British Isles and assimilating into the Celtic population, explaining Insular Celtic being VSO.

Isn't there also an outdated 18th/19th century theory, based on some Irish legend, that the Irish are Scythians? "The Irish are Near Eastern" seems to be something of a trope.

The origin of this trope, I think, is simply the fact, discovered around that time, that the Celtic languages are Indo-European, and thus ultimately originating in the east. The "Great Tartary", as Central Asia was called then, was discussed as a homeland for PIE, as were India and Atlantis, both sometimes mentioned as the places of origin of the Celts in esoteric literature until today.

Actually, I think it's from a confusion of the Celts with the Picts. Bede claimed that the Picts were Scythian (although it's possible this was misread and he actually meant Scandinavian), and everyone else has just copied him. When the Picts were later redefined as Celtic, that probably lead people to think the Celts were Scythian too.

[Plus archaeologically Celtic and Scythian cultures apparently interacted closely, and many settlements show shifts from one to the other. It may be that early archaeologists took this as evidence of some particularly close genetic link]

[Zaarin]

I have heard a theory that the "Spain" legends come from a group of Phoenicians from Hispania coming to the British Isles and assimilating into the Celtic population, explaining Insular Celtic being VSO.

Isn't there also an outdated 18th/19th century theory, based on some Irish legend, that the Irish are Scythians? "The Irish are Near Eastern" seems to be something of a trope.

The origin of this trope, I think, is simply the fact, discovered around that time, that the Celtic languages are Indo-European, and thus ultimately originating in the east. The "Great Tartary", as Central Asia was called then, was discussed as a homeland for PIE, as were India and Atlantis, both sometimes mentioned as the places of origin of the Celts in esoteric literature until today.

Actually, I think it's from a confusion of the Celts with the Picts. Bede claimed that the Picts were Scythian (although it's possible this was misread and he actually meant Scandinavian), and everyone else has just copied him. When the Picts were later redefined as Celtic, that probably lead people to think the Celts were Scythian too.

[Plus archaeologically Celtic and Scythian cultures apparently interacted closely, and many settlements show shifts from one to the other. It may be that early archaeologists took this as evidence of some particularly close genetic link]

I think there was some romantic (or perhaps more accurately Romantic) Othering involved as well. The Orientalist movement was in full-swing, and the Scottish Highlanders were already being embraced as the European "Noble Savage" (which leads to some interesting art portraying them alongside their American cousins, the Native Americans).

[jmcd]

Also in this quackery category, people who insist that Gaelic was 'always' spoken in Scotland, when its spread from Ireland can be dated to historical times.

That certainly is the most common theory among experts nowadays. But I did read a serious article a few months ago that suggested that there were Goidelic speakers in the Highlands during the Iron Age; that the Dark Ages spread of Gaelic occured from the Highlands into the Lowlands. It used place names (for example, the lack of placenames of Pictish origin in the Highlands) as evidence. I can't seem to find the article again though. EDIT: Found it via wikipedia: http://www.electricscotland.com/history ... sirish.htm