Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

girrltHMbgta (Italrrmig, THIRD SERIES, No. XXXIX.—JULY, 1864. ON THE SO-CALLED CELTIC LANGUAGES IN REFERENCE TO THE QUESTION OF RACE. BY JOHN CEAWFTTED, F.E.S. There exist two living European languages which, going under the common name of Celtic, are usually believed to be one tongue, or at least sister languages of one origin and spoken by the same race of man. These are, on one hand, the native language of Ireland and of the mountainous part of Scotland, which are beyond doubt essentially the same ; and the native language of Wales and Brittany, which are equally sister tongues. I have long been of opinion that the two languages in question are really different and distinct tongues, and having made such inquiry as was in my power with the view of deter¬ mining the question, I propose to state the result in the present paper. The qualifications which I bring to this task are soon told. One of the two languages, the Gaelic, was the language of my childhood (I still retain some colloquial acquaintance with it), and of the languages of some oriental nations, probably in as advanced a state when their tongues took their present shape as were the Welsh and Irish when theirs did so. In order to determine the consanguinity of languages, the first thing necessary is to find a test by which consanguinity can be certainly determined, and I think this not a matter of much difficulty. The test which I would apply would be the follow¬ ing. When between two or more languages there is a substan¬ tial agreement in phonetic character, in grammatical structure, and in the great body of their words, such languages may con¬ fidently be pronounced to be cognate tongues, or languages having a common parentage. The words which seem to me most distinctly to prove lan- 3kd see., vol. x. 13