Brittonic languages
subfamily of Celtic languages, including Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Cumbric
The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages; the other is Goidelic. It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, denoting a Celtic Briton as distinguished from Anglo-Saxons or Gaels.
The Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic language, spoken throughout Great Britain during the Iron Age and Roman period. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia. During the next few centuries, in much of Britain the language was replaced by Old English and Scottish Gaelic, with the remaining Common Brittonic language splitting into regional dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric, and possibly Pictish, which is more often identified as a descendant of a related to Brittonic branch of Celtic, known as Pritenic. Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by Goidelic and Anglic speech. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in Y Wladfa (the Welsh settlement in Patagonia).
Name
The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to the Celtic languages of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated Common Brittonic, in contrast to the Goidelic languages originating in Ireland.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Brittonic languages” is subfamily of Celtic languages, including Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Cumbric. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Brittonic, languages and subfamily, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brittonic languages” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.