Irish Gaelic and Romance languages similarities?

[Sikeliot]

When I see Irish Gaelic, I see a lot of words that are similar to Romance languages. I do not notice this about Welsh.

Is this due to the influence of Latin in the Catholic Church in Ireland, or is it rather due to the similarities between Italic and Celtic languages?

For instance, "How are you?" in Gaelic is "Conas tá tú" which looks clearly familiar to an Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish speaker.

[Cristiano viejo]

How are you = ¿cómo estás tú?, in Spanish.

Conas tá tú, in Gaelic. Interesting...

[ovidiu]

For similarity in such basic words it's probably due to the Italo-Celtic link, although some is coincidence. Of all Celtic languages, Gaulish I think had the clearest links to Latin.

Welsh was actually quite influenced by Latin from the Roman occupation of Britain however.

Irish/Gaelic received more of its influence through the Catholic church/monks a little later.

[Óttar]

When I see Irish Gaelic, I see a lot of words that are similar to Romance languages. I do not notice this about Welsh.

Is this due to the influence of Latin in the Catholic Church in Ireland, or is it rather due to the similarities between Italic and Celtic languages?

For instance, "How are you?" in Gaelic is "Conas tá tú" which looks clearly familiar to an Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish speaker.

Irish has a lot of Latin vocabulary like Ifearn "Hell" Eaglais (Latin via Greek) "Church (ecclesiastical community not the building i.e. kille)", scholairi "student" most likely leabhair "book". I even noticed a verb leithreaocht "to read." Neologisms Uisge bheatha > L. Aqua Vitae i.e. Whiskey, fermented spirits.

The other similarities may come from the common IE roots of Latin and Celtic languages.

[Mingle]

The example you gave was probably some Italo-Celtic link. But otherwise, there are a lot of Latin loanwords in these languages that would explain the similarities.

[dperucca]

There is a great deal of Celtic influence left over in the West Med. It is more evident in France and Iberia if you look at language, music and customs. To a lesser extent it is also evident in Liguria/North Italy as well.

[Sikeliot]

For Irish Gaelic it might be due to Latin influence in the Church.

I see much less Romance-language similarity in Welsh than I do in Gaelic.

[dperucca]

For Irish Gaelic it might be due to Latin influence in the Church.

I see much less Romance-language similarity in Welsh than I do in Gaelic.

Welsh is supposedly a more indigenous language to the British Isles

[Mens-Sarda]

How are you = ¿cómo estás tú?, in Spanish.

Conas tá tú, in Gaelic. Interesting...

Similar also to Sardinian or Italian

Italian :

Come stai? (tu) = literally = How do you stay?

Sardinian :

1) Coment'ìstas? (tue) = literally = How do you stay?

2) Comente ses? (tue) = literally = How are you?


It's perhaps some influence from Latin through Catholic Church, we should consider also that Ireland started to be Christianized in Vth century, about 1600 years of exposition to Latin language used in Catholic liturgy.

[Dandelion]

Seems to be coincidental. Latin and Modern Romance are quite different from one another, and one can only pull lines of its development the way they are today. They're barely alike grammatically. Celtic and Italic are believed to share a common origin splitting off from Proto-IE. But judging how far Romance has diverged from Latin, Modern Romance and Modern Celtic have diverged quite a bit more to make it noticeable or easy to prove the hypothesis.

Of Gallic only exists a fragmentary record and to compare that to Latin of the fragmentary knowledge of other Italic language like Oscan is more interesting, I would think.