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45-668: Before the Roman conquest, the Alps were Celtic -speaking in the north and Rhaetian -speaking in the south. The area was incorporated into the Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus . The Rhaeto-Romance languages originated as a dialect of the provincial Latin of the central Alps. By the end of the Roman Empire, there was an unbroken region of distinctive Romance speech here, which was gradually fragmented into secluded areas in

90-629: A branch of the Indo-European language family , descended from Proto-Celtic . The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron , who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages. During the first millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much of Europe and central Anatolia . Today, they are restricted to

135-466: A common Italo-Celtic subfamily. This hypothesis fell somewhat out of favour after reexamination by American linguist Calvert Watkins in 1966. Irrespectively, some scholars such as Ringe, Warnow and Taylor and many others have argued in favour of an Italo-Celtic grouping in 21st century theses. Although there are many differences between the individual Celtic languages, they do show many family resemblances. Examples: The lexical similarity between

180-589: A peripheral area, as are Balkano-Romance, Southern-Italian and Rhaeto-Romance, whereas Gallo-Romance and Italo-Romance are the central area. The Rhaeto-Romance languages were linked to other Romance languages that existed in bordering areas but have later disappeared, like the Moselle Romance and the Austrian Romance . While the areas that now speak Friulian were originally inhabited by speakers of Venetic (likely Italic ) and Celtic languages,

225-434: A rich literary tradition . The earliest specimens of written Celtic are Lepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC in the Alps. Early Continental inscriptions used Italic and Paleohispanic scripts. Between the 4th and 8th centuries, Irish and Pictish were occasionally written in an original script, Ogham , but Latin script came to be used for all Celtic languages. Welsh has had a continuous literary tradition from

270-1064: Is subject-verb-object , however this can change at times where the verb can come before the subject. Many place names in Romansh date back before Roman contact stemming from Raetic and Celtic origins. Most words in Friulian are of the Romance variety due to its Latin roots; however, it still has many place names and flora that trace back to Raetic, Venetic and Celtic origins. Celtic languages Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Celtic languages ( / ˈ k ɛ l t ɪ k / KEL -tik ) are

315-530: Is almost certainly an independent branch on the Celtic genealogical tree, one that became separated from the others very early." The Breton language is Brittonic, not Gaulish, though there may be some input from the latter, having been introduced from Southwestern regions of Britain in the post-Roman era and having evolved into Breton. In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic

360-574: Is an official language of Ireland and of the European Union . Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO . The Cornish and Manx languages became extinct in modern times but have been revived. Each now has several hundred second-language speakers. Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic form the Goidelic languages , while Welsh, Cornish and Breton are Brittonic . All of these are Insular Celtic languages , since Breton,

405-547: Is currently Switzerland , called "Lower Raetia" at that time, became German-speaking by the 12th century; and by the 15th century, the Rhine Valley of St. Gallen and the areas around the Walensee were entirely German-speaking. This language shift was a long, drawn-out process, with larger, central towns adopting German first, while the more peripheral areas around them remained Romansh-speaking longer. The shift to German

450-610: Is still quite contested, and the main argument for Insular Celtic is connected with the development of verbal morphology and the syntax in Irish and British Celtic, which Schumacher regards as convincing, while he considers the P-Celtic/Q-Celtic division unimportant and treats Gallo-Brittonic as an outdated theory. Stifter affirms that the Gallo-Brittonic view is "out of favour" in the scholarly community as of 2008 and

495-481: Is the only place where Romansh is the official language. This allows for any citizen to request official documents from the local government in the Romansh language. An official language of the autonomous region of Friuli, it has protected status, and is used in all forms of education in the region. Still used at popular levels for daily conversation. Ladin is recognized by both provincial and national law in Italy. In

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540-616: The Province of Belluno in Veneto , by about 41,000 people. The first Swiss constitution of 1848 along with its revision of 1872 neglected to mention the Romansh language; however, it was translated into two Romansh dialects after the first revision. In 1938 Romansh became a national language, though a delineation was made between "national" and "official" languages. National languages were largely symbolic while official languages (French, German, and Italian) were used in an official capacity by

585-505: The 1885 creation of an asso­ci­a­tion of all Romansh regions known as Società Retorumantscha. In 1919, the Lia Rumantscha was created to encompass all of the regional Romansh-speaking societies. In addition, more schools began to teach Romansh by the mid-19th century. In 1860, Romansh became a subject in a teachers' college and an officially recognized language in 1880. Despite these efforts, with more and more of

630-537: The 2000s led to the reemergence of native speakers for both languages following their adoption by adults and children. By the 21st century, there were roughly one million total speakers of Celtic languages, increasing to 1.4 million speakers by 2010. Gaelainn / Gaeilig / Gaeilic Celtic is divided into various branches: Scholarly handling of Celtic languages has been contentious owing to scarceness of primary source data. Some scholars (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) posit that

675-468: The 20th century came a rise in tourism, which took the focus away from the region's agricultural focus and resulted in German becoming the more practical language to learn. Many in the intellectual class found this to be beneficial to the local pop­u­la­tion as Romansh appeared to hinder their intellectual development. As Heinrich Bansi, a notable priest in 1897, noted: The biggest obstacle to

720-586: The 6th century AD. SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are: the Goidelic languages ( Irish and Scottish Gaelic , both descended from Middle Irish ) and the Brittonic languages ( Welsh and Breton , descended from Common Brittonic ). The other two, Cornish (Brittonic) and Manx (Goidelic), died out in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. Revitalisation movements in

765-456: The 6th century CE. The first official use of Friulian can be traced back to the 13th century and by the 15th century a majority of the population spoke the language, while the noble classes continued to use Latin or German. In 1420, the area of Friuli transitioned under Venetian rule, and the Venetian dialect became the dominant language. As the influence of Venetian and Italian increased over

810-559: The Gallic and Brittonic languages are P-Celtic, while the Goidelic and Hispano-Celtic (or Celtiberian) languages are Q-Celtic. The P-Celtic languages (also called Gallo-Brittonic ) are sometimes seen (for example by Koch 1992) as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. According to Ranko Matasovic in the introduction to his 2009 Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic : "Celtiberian ...

855-492: The Insular Celtic hypothesis "widely accepted". When referring only to the modern Celtic languages, since no Continental Celtic language has living descendants, "Q-Celtic" is equivalent to "Goidelic" and "P-Celtic" is equivalent to "Brittonic". How the family tree of the Celtic languages is ordered depends on which hypothesis is used: " Insular Celtic hypothesis " " P/Q-Celtic hypothesis " Eska evaluates

900-465: The Insular Celtic languages were probably not in great enough contact for those innovations to spread as part of a sprachbund . However, if they have another explanation (such as an SOV substratum language), then it is possible that P-Celtic is a valid clade, and the top branching would be: Within the Indo-European family, the Celtic languages have sometimes been placed with the Italic languages in

945-491: The Larzac piece of lead (1983), the analysis of which reveals another common phonetical innovation -nm- > -nu (Gaelic ainm / Gaulish anuana , Old Welsh enuein 'names'), that is less accidental than only one. The discovery of a third common innovation would allow the specialists to come to the conclusion of a Gallo-Brittonic dialect (Schmidt 1986; Fleuriot 1986). The interpretation of this and further evidence

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990-460: The P-/Q-Celtic hypothesis. Proponents of each schema dispute the accuracy and usefulness of the other's categories. However, since the 1970s the division into Insular and Continental Celtic has become the more widely held view (Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; Schrijver 1995), but in the middle of the 1980s, the P-/Q-Celtic theory found new supporters (Lambert 1994), because of the inscription on

1035-593: The Romansh language is the Chianzun dalla guerra dagl Chiaste da Müs, which details the Musso War . By 1803, the state of Grisons , which was 50% Romansh and 50% German-speaking, became a part of Switzerland. The strength of the central government of Grisons, whose official language was German, began to impose on the Romansh-speaking people, which resulted in many Romansh speakers adopting German. With

1080-486: The areas of Northeastern Italy that now speak Ladin initially spoke a non-Indo-European language called Raetic . Ladin and Romansh originate from the Vulgar Latin spoken by Roman soldiers during the conquests of Raetia . By the mid-9th century, Romansh was spoken over a far wider area. However, with the migration of many elite German land owners, Romansh dissipated across Northern Italy. The oldest literary text in

1125-540: The break-up much earlier at 3200 BC ± 1500 years. They support the Insular Celtic hypothesis. The early Celts were commonly associated with the archaeological Urnfield culture , the Hallstatt culture , and the La Tène culture , though the earlier assumption of association between language and culture is now considered to be less strong. There are legitimate scholarly arguments for both the Insular Celtic hypothesis and

1170-461: The different Celtic languages is apparent in their core vocabulary , especially in terms of actual pronunciation . Moreover, the phonetic differences between languages are often the product of regular sound change (i.e. lenition of /b/ into /v/ or Ø). Lia Rumantscha Lia Rumantscha ( Romansh: [liɐ̯ruˈmantʃɐ] ) is an organization that promotes Romansh language usage and study. Established in 1919, its seat

1215-593: The early 1990s Italy signed European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages which is meant to protect and promote minority languages such as Ladin. The area where Rhaeto-Romance languages (also called Ladin languages in a wider sense, not to be confused with Ladino or Judaeo-Spanish ) were spoken during the Middle Ages stretched from Switzerland to the Julian Alps (in modern-day western Slovenia ). The Rhaeto-Romance languages can be distinguished into

1260-506: The early Middle Ages, the Ladin region came under House of Habsburg and Republic of Venice rule. From these two influences, the Ladin area underwent the process of Germanisation . By the end of World War I Italy had annexed the region that encompassed the Ladin language. With the nationalism of the 20th century, Ladin was considered by many Italians to be an Italian dialect. Benito Mussolini later pushed forward an Italianization of

1305-474: The evidence as supporting the following tree, based on shared innovations , though it is not always clear that the innovations are not areal features . It seems likely that Celtiberian split off before Cisalpine Celtic, but the evidence for this is not robust. On the other hand, the unity of Gaulish, Goidelic, and Brittonic is reasonably secure. Schumacher (2004, p. 86) had already cautiously considered this grouping to be likely genetic, based, among others, on

1350-548: The following varieties: A phylogenetic classification using basic lexicon identifies a primary split between Romansh in Switzerland and Ladin in Italy. One secondary split distinguishes Engadinic from the other Romansh varieties in Switzerland. In Italy, another secondary split is evidently caused by the Dolomite mountain range that divides Ladin into a northern and a southern subbranch, with Friulian being grouped closest to

1395-472: The government. One notable disadvantage of being a national, rather than official language was that parents would have to register their children's names under one of the official languages. By 1996 Romansh was recognized as an official language beside French, German and Italian, and Rhaeto-Romansh is now the official correspondence used when communicating with Romansh people. At this time the Canton of Grison

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1440-566: The high valleys by the encroachment of German dialects from the north and of Gallo-Italic languages from the south. Rhaeto-Romance was spoken over a much wider area during Charlemagne 's rule, stretching north into the present-day cantons of Glarus and St. Gallen , Walensee in the northwest, and Rüthi and the Alpine Rhine Valley in the northeast. In the east, parts of modern-day Vorarlberg were Romance speaking, as were parts of Austrian Tyrol . The northern areas of what

1485-435: The last or second to last syllable. In Romansh word order directs the grammar rather than the noun being inflected. Additionally, similar to most other Romance languages there are two genders in addition to s being used to indicate a plural word. Similar to Italian and Spanish, most Friulian nouns end in a vowel based on the gender, with feminine nouns ending in e while masculine nouns end in i . The general word order

1530-426: The local geography as many of the local towns and geographical landmarks (mountains, woods, animals, plants) were given Celtic names that survive to this day. Ladin was initially a vulgar Latin language from the Alps of northern Italy. Beginning in the 6th century, the Ladin language began to shrink due to the encroachment of Bavarian and Gallo-Italic languages , surviving in only the isolated mountainous areas. In

1575-434: The moral and economical improvement of these regions is the language of the people. This viewpoint was countered with the belief that the Romansh language was a hybrid of both Italian and German, allowing the Romansh speakers to have a moderate understanding of the other two more widely used languages. By the mid-19th century, amidst a dwindling Romansh-speaking population, a renaissance of sorts appeared. This culminated in

1620-459: The northwestern fringe of Europe and a few diaspora communities . There are six living languages: the four continuously living languages Breton , Irish , Scottish Gaelic and Welsh , and the two revived languages Cornish and Manx . All are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation . Welsh is an official language in Wales and Irish

1665-407: The only living Celtic language spoken in continental Europe, is descended from the language of settlers from Britain. There are a number of extinct but attested continental Celtic languages , such as Celtiberian , Galatian and Gaulish . Beyond that there is no agreement on the subdivisions of the Celtic language family. They may be divided into P-Celtic and Q-Celtic . The Celtic languages have

1710-469: The primary distinction is between Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic , arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brittonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages. Other scholars (such as Schmidt 1988) make the primary distinction between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages based on the replacement of initial Q by initial P in some words. Most of

1755-658: The region which further dwindled the Ladin language user base. Despite the small number of Ladin speakers, in 1972 the Italian government afforded Ladin the status of a secondary language. Spoken in the Swiss canton of Graubünden by 60,561 people – 0.83% of the Swiss population – but this number is rapidly dropping. Spoken in Italy, most notably the provinces of Udine and Pordenone , by about 600,000 people. Spoken in northeastern Italy, in Trentino-Alto Adige and

1800-492: The shared reformation of the sentence-initial, fully inflecting relative pronoun *i̯os, *i̯ā, *i̯od into an uninflected enclitic particle. Eska sees Cisalpine Gaulish as more akin to Lepontic than to Transalpine Gaulish. Eska considers a division of Transalpine–Goidelic–Brittonic into Transalpine and Insular Celtic to be most probable because of the greater number of innovations in Insular Celtic than in P-Celtic, and because

1845-614: The southern branch. In this study, the divergence of the Rhaeto-Romance languages from their reconstructed lexical ancestor is about 7% on average. This would correspond to a time depth of about 500 years if the glottochronological replacement rate of 14% per millennium for Romance were trustworthy. However, the earliest available Romance text from the Alpine area is somewhat older and dates to AD 1200. The Romansh language has up to 26 consonant phonemes. Word stress occurs either on

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1890-609: The surrounding area speaking German, the Lia Rumantscha created Romansh-speaking daycare schools in the 1940s. Unfortunately, this effort failed to deliver, and the last school was closed by 1979. Friulian traces its roots back to the Latin Aquileia. Prior to Roman contact in 181 BC the region of northeastern Italy was of Raetian, Italic and Celtic origins and used a form of either Raetian , Venetic or Celtic . The transition from Vulgar Latin to Friulian occurred in

1935-420: The years, the Friulian language waned. Accelerating this decline currently is the ongoing loss of Friulian language teaching in higher education. An exception to this decline occurred in the mid 20th century when a devastating earthquake struck the local region. In the aftermath, many found solace in sharing their local Friulian language, thus renewing interest in it. The imprint of the language also remains on

1980-725: Was Gaelic. It has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages (see Schmidt). In the Insular/Continental classification schema, the split of the former into Gaelic and Brittonic is seen as being late. The distinction of Celtic into these four sub-families most likely occurred about 900 BC according to Gray & Atkinson but, because of estimation uncertainty, it could be any time between 1200 and 800 BC. However, they only considered Gaelic and Brythonic. A controversial paper by Forster & Toth included Gaulish and put

2025-545: Was caused in particular by the influence of the local German-speaking elites and by German-speaking immigrants from the north, with the lower and rural classes retaining Romansh longer. The family is most closely related to its nearest neighbors: French , Franco-Provençal , Occitan , Venetian , Istriot and Lombard . A number of lexical items are shared with Ibero-Romance due to the similar date of Latinization for both regions, although it can also be explained by means of Bartoli's areal linguistics theory, Ibero-Romance being

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