Languages, haplogroups, and tribes

I think you are correct, English has a lot of "modern" words which recently were added to the language many of which based on latin and greek words. But like you said the primitive English words are very similar to the other Germanic languages.

Anybody know much about the Scots language?

There is a BBC program called "the adventures of English" which explains that english came from an Old Germanic language spoken only by the Frisians, who sill live in northern netherlands.

Anyone know if the celtic people from southern England ( Cornwall ) migrated to brittany in France or was it the other way around. They both speak a similar celtic language
 
^^

My heart's love is gone from me.
Dear Lord, will he perhaps return?
My yearning for the beloved is so great!
He (o: it, sc. my heart) is ill, when will he (it) recover?


what???
Vayse meu corach�n de mib.ya Rab, �si me tornar�d?�Tan mal meu doler li-l-habib!Enfermo yed, �cu�nd sanar�d?

si me tornar - identical to Venetian , it means = If I returned

Tan Mal Meu doler - in Venetian = Tant mal mi doler = a lot of pain and agony

Others have sylabols which prevent reading properly

Anyway, its very similar


 
Anyone know if the celtic people from southern England ( Cornwall ) migrated to brittany in France or was it the other way around. They both speak a similar celtic language

Cornish, Breton and Welsh are all part of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages. Before the Romans came to Britain, Brythonic was probably spoken in most of Britain before the Romans came (except possibly the north of Scotland, where Pictish was spoken, which however was either itself a dialect of Brythonic or closely related with Brythonic). By the migrations period, Brythonic fragmented into Breton, Cornish and Welsh. Before the Bretons migrated to Brittany, Gaulish was spoken there.
 
Cornish, Breton and Welsh are all part of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages. Before the Romans came to Britain, Brythonic was probably spoken in most of Britain before the Romans came (except possibly the north of Scotland, where Pictish was spoken, which however was either itself a dialect of Brythonic or closely related with Brythonic). By the migrations period, Brythonic fragmented into Breton, Cornish and Welsh. Before the Bretons migrated to Brittany, Gaulish was spoken there.


Very well described.

Have you come across any newer (past say, ten years) developments in finding what Pictish actually was?
I have read all sorts of opinions that had it to be Brythonic, Brythonic and pre-IE mixed, etc. I have not seen anything conclusive recently. Has there been anything new on this about which you may be aware?
 
I think they will be forever guessing the only thing you can be sure of is they never called themselves Picts or spoke Picts, not in their minds anyway. Picts was the Roman name given to the painted people of Northern Britannia. A technicality but at least its conclusive. :)
 
I think they will be forever guessing the only thing you can be sure of is they never called themselves Picts or spoke Picts, not in their minds anyway. Picts was the Roman name given to the painted people of Northern Britannia. A technicality but at least its conclusive. :)


That is what I was afraid of.

The most intruiging possibility is that they would have been identifiable as a remnant of a pre-IE group or maybe something simliar to Celtiberians of Spain.
 
Very well described.

Have you come across any newer (past say, ten years) developments in finding what Pictish actually was?
I have read all sorts of opinions that had it to be Brythonic, Brythonic and pre-IE mixed, etc. I have not seen anything conclusive recently. Has there been anything new on this about which you may be aware?

First off, one problem is that the term "Picts" is an exonym, and they almost certainly didn't constitute a coherent group. The "Picts" also gloss a considerable amount of time, from the 1st century BC to the early medieval ages. In any case, I think, the notion that Pictish was pre-IE exclusively comes from certain unreadable Ogham inscriptions found in Scotland, such as the Lunnasting Stone. If we go by onomastic evidence (Ptolemy), then Pictish must clearly have been a Celtic language - what kind of Celtic language is a question. In my opinion, there's only two viable scenarios: either, the Picts spoke a mere dialect of Brythonic, or they spoke a distinct P-Celtic language.
 
First off, one problem is that the term "Picts" is an exonym, and they almost certainly didn't constitute a coherent group. The "Picts" also gloss a considerable amount of time, from the 1st century BC to the early medieval ages. In any case, I think, the notion that Pictish was pre-IE exclusively comes from certain unreadable Ogham inscriptions found in Scotland, such as the Lunnasting Stone. If we go by onomastic evidence (Ptolemy), then Pictish must clearly have been a Celtic language - what kind of Celtic language is a question. In my opinion, there's only two viable scenarios: either, the Picts spoke a mere dialect of Brythonic, or they spoke a distinct P-Celtic language.


I was not aware of ogham inscriptions attributed to Picts.
In that case I would lean towards some kind of celtic-type language, although it would not be impossible for that form of writing to have been picked up by another group.

It is true that the term Pict was fairly loosely applied. They fairly readily took on Gaelic after the later invasions of the Scots from Ireland, so it would seem likely that their base language would have been a celtic type.
 
Anyone know if the celtic people from southern England ( Cornwall ) migrated to brittany in France or was it the other way around. They both speak a similar celtic language

On cue, Taranis with an excellent response to this. But I wanted to clarify that the migrations into Brittany were not just from Cornish people, although there is a region of Brittany that recognizes its Cornish past. More generally, there was a first wave of Britons in Brittany that resulted from them being Roman troops stationed there. The second, probably larger, wave came from Britons, a lot of them from the Kingdom of Dumnonia (which probably included Cornwall but was not restricted to it), fleeing there as a result of the conquest of their countries by Wessex and the rest of the heptarchy.

See also this thread about the Cornish.
 
I was not aware of ogham inscriptions attributed to Picts.
In that case I would lean towards some kind of celtic-type language, although it would not be impossible for that form of writing to have been picked up by another group.

Well, most Ogham inscriptions, of course, especially the ones from Ireland*, very obviously contain an early form Irish, but some in Scotland were attributed to the Picts based on their location. I find the idea that because inscriptions are unreadable, they must represent a non-IE language somewhat far-fetched. Given how the Ogham system works, it's actually surprisingly easy to write gibberish in it.

*Actually, this primitive Irish VERY interesting because it shows that Irish as late as the 5th century AD exhibited a complex declension system very similar to Gaulish.

It is true that the term Pict was fairly loosely applied. They fairly readily took on Gaelic after the later invasions of the Scots from Ireland, so it would seem likely that their base language would have been a celtic type.

As I said, their language was most certainly a P-Celtic language, but it's impossible to say anything else beyond that. The possibilities are basically A) just a dialect of Brythonic B) a distinct language closely related with Brythonic or C) a language actually closer to Gaulish than to Brythonic.
 
. I find the idea that because inscriptions are unreadable, they must represent a non-IE language somewhat far-fetched.

*

Well said.
That brings a recollection to me about the positions of many who, years ago, were convinced that the only certain thing about Linear B was that it was not Greek.
 
. I find the idea that because inscriptions are unreadable, they must represent a non-IE language somewhat far-fetched.

*

Well said.
That brings a recollection to me about the positions of many who, years ago, were convinced that the only certain thing about Linear B was that it was not Greek.


For those who are not familiar with my sense of humor, I was agreeing with Taranis as Linear B was indeed later found to be a syllabic form of Mycenean Greek.
 
It's a Germanic language spoken in Scotland, generally mutually intelligible with English, with which it shares a close history.

Reading through the Scots Wikipedia can be funny to English speakers. You can't help but read it with a heavy Scottish accent in your head. I imagine that it's similar for German speakers with the Allemanic Wikipedia, and for other similar closely-related languages.


Well, I read some of the Scottish wikipedia, and I am astonished to see how many words can be linked directly with Dutch!
More specific, Southern Dutch.
 
Hoots man!

Well, I read some of the Scottish wikipedia, and I am astonished to see how many words can be linked directly with Dutch!
More specific, Southern Dutch.

I hate to ruin anyones romantic notions about Scotland, but....

Scots is not a real language! You can't go into any news agent in Scotland and find a paper written in Scots, there are no schools teaching it in place of English. If you write a business letter with those kind of spellings and grammar you'd be laughed at.

Scots has been promoted by some people as a language for politcal reasons as with many dialects, I appreciate its a heavy accent and as spoken has some gramatical variations that straight in english wouldn't work, but it is still just a informal variation of English.

I have lived in Scotland most my life and I am struggling to read half of the wiki pedia nonsense. Accents differ across the country as anywhere, people from Glasgow (the major population centre) consider anyone oustide of Glasgow to be a 'choochter' definition :grin:.

If you are hungry for more 'glasgow patter' watch some scottish comedy on youtube, it would be interesting to see if the humour translates to an international audience as many English people would struggle with it.

The Limmy Show

Clip One

Clip Two

Clip Three
 
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Edao,
I did not know that the advancment of Scots as an actual language had no real foundation.
Would it more correct, then to say that it is a very specific accent that came from the area of Northumbria?
 
. I find the idea that because inscriptions are unreadable, they must represent a non-IE language somewhat far-fetched.

Well said.
That brings a recollection to me about the positions of many who, years ago, were convinced that the only certain thing about Linear B was that it was not Greek.

For those who are not familiar with my sense of humor, I was agreeing with Taranis as Linear B was indeed later found to be a syllabic form of Mycenean Greek.

The key issue with Linear B is that this writing system was not originally made for the Greek language, but for what has been dubbed "Eteocretan", that is, the language used in Linear A (which thus far has been still undeciphered), and as such, Linear B was somewhat unsuitable for properly representing Greek. Other examples of this phenomenon include the Celtiberian language written in a variant of the Northeastern Iberian script, or for instance English words rendered in Japanese Katakana (for example, "Christmas" is rendered as "Kurisumasu" :giggle: ).

Conversely, this is to me the strongest argument why the Tartessian language cannot have been Celtic or otherwise Indo-European: it is the oldest of the Paleohispanic writing systems (hence the original setup, and must by that logic most closest match to the language it was developed for), and it's inventory is totally non-consistent with a Celtic language.
 
Correct, in fact Christmas is rendered alomost identically in Korean.

My only point was to provide an example of your position (with the Ogham) that some will, upon being unable to decipher a script, will quickly proclaim it to be that of an entirely different language.

Yes, of course there are vast differences between Ogham and the Syllabic and pictogram Linear B, which was adopted for use by Mycenaean Greeks. I was using this example to support your position that the mere fact that a script cannot be figured out should not mean that it should be pronounced to be a different language.
 
I see your point. The key problem with Ogham is that technically it is an alphabet, however it is peculiar because it's based on strokes that are placed along a line. The basic Ogham setup is the following:

right pointing strokes:
1 = B
2 = L
3 = F (more probably "W" in primitive Irish, since later Irish makes the mutation from W -> F)
4 = S
5 = N

left pointing strokes:
1 = H
2 = D
3 = T
4 = C (or "k")
5 = Q (or "kw")

left-and-right pointing strokes:
1 = A
2 = O
3 = U
4 = E
5 = I

diagonal strokes:
1 = M
2 = G
3 = NG (or "gw")
4 = Z (or "ts")
5 = R

From the purely phonemic perspective, this setup is rather decent for representing a Q-Celtic language like archaic Irish (you may notice that the letter "P" is conspicously absent, and was indeed added only later in the Ogham system!). However, if you place a stroke wrongly, or add an additional stroke, it's very easy to make mistakes in this writing system, thereby easily producing gibberish.

The main problem with Linear B (which made it's deciphering problematic) is that it became extinct without leaving a descendant, and for the period of several centuries, Greek society was again completely illiterate, until centuries later the Greeks developed their alphabet off the Phoenician one. The other problem is that it's based off Linear A, which was used for writing the (as of presently) undeciphered 'Eteocretan' language.
 
Scots is not a real language!

I remember reading that a clear majority of Scottish people think that Scots is a real language... although popularity polls shouldn't determine linguistic classification. Either way, if it is a dialect or a set of dialects, it is a strong one, and I hope that it gets preserved somehow, or we wouldn't have gems like these:

Scots Wikipedia said:
The hornie-gollach, clipshear, gavelock or forkietail is a group o insects (cawed Dermaptera). Thay are chairacterised by weengs thay can fauld unner short, laither-like foreweengs. Thare are aboot 1800 speshie o hornie-gollachs. Thay daena seem tae spreaid ony disease, or hairm humans in ony wey. Maist o thaim are 10-14mm lang, some speshie can reak 80mm. Maist hornie-gollachs are omnivores thay eat some insect larvae an aw.
 
I remember reading that a clear majority of Scottish people think that Scots is a real language... although popularity polls shouldn't determine linguistic classification. Either way, if it is a dialect or a set of dialects, it is a strong one, and I hope that it gets preserved somehow, or we wouldn't have gems like these:

well it says 500,000 speak the scottish language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language

hmmm....i always though it was all one language in scotland, but the highland scots have another language
 

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