Uhtred's Welsh Course

[Smaug]

Well, not quite. They're both Indo-European. Western Indo-European, at that. Beyond that there's no close rlationship, Welsh being a Celtic language and English a Germanic one.

You know what I meant.

[Longbowman]

You know what I meant.

Indeed I did!

[rhiannon]

Subscribing.

Me too

[rhiannon]

What are the differences between Gaelic and Brythonic Celtic languages/culture?

[Smaug]

What are the differences between Gaelic and Brythonic Celtic languages/culture?

Gaelic and Brythonic share similar grammatics and syntax, the main difference between them lies in the vocabulary and on the writting system. Brythonic languages have a very phonetic writting system while Gaelic has a very confusing one. Other than that, Brythonic is a P-Celtic language, while Gaelic is Q-Celtic, what means Brythonic preserved p*/b* sounds while in Gaelic it shifted to g*/k*/c*.

[Rosier12]

Swydd dda!

[Weedman]

@Uhtred how similar is modern Welsh to Old British?

...and to Cumbric?

how many changes have taken place since it was widely spoken in Britain?

[Weedman]

Gaelic and Brythonic share similar grammatics and syntax, the main difference between them lies in the vocabulary and on the writting system. Brythonic languages have a very phonetic writting system while Gaelic has a very confusing one. Other than that, Brythonic is a P-Celtic language, while Gaelic is Q-Celtic, what means Brythonic preserved p*/b* sounds while in Gaelic it shifted to g*/k*/c*.

ex. Gaelic-Mac, means "son of" as in MacDonald
Welsh-Map, means "son of" shortened to Ap' as in Ap'Howell/ Powell

Welsh-Pen "head" as in Pendragon (head dragon)
Gaelic Cenn" head" as in Kennedy (head like a helmet)

this is where the phrase "mind your p's and q's " originally came from, so I've heard

[Smaug]

@Uhtred how similar is modern Welsh to Old British?

...and to Cumbric?

how many changes have taken place since it was widely spoken in Britain?

Many changes took place, but all in all Brythonic remained quite a preserved language since Antiquity. Most of influences in Old Brythonic comes from Latin, from the times of the Roman Invasion of Britannia. Maybe that's why I find so many similarities between my Romance language (Portuguese) and Modern Welsh.

[Longbowman]

The Celtic languages are the closest living relation to the Romance or Italic languages. They are considered part of the Italo-Celtic family. Which is why there's a lot of similarity between them and languages derived from vulgar Latin.

Cumbric was basically Welsh. In fact, it was Welsh.