Celtic languages

[MykeSoBe]

Well I would first like to say that I have enough sufficient knowledge of the Celtic languages, at least the six spoken today, which all form Insular Celtic, the other group, Continental Celtic, became extinct more than a thousand years ago. The six Celtic languages today are as follows and are all in the Insular group:

Goidelic (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goidelic_languages) (Gaelic)- Scottish Gaelic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic_language), spoken in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, by a total of 58,552 people
- Irish (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language), spoken mostly in the small Gaeltacht pockets of Ireland, mainly in Connemara, Donegal, Sligo, etc, by a total of 355,000 people
- Manx (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_language), spoken in the Isle of Man, a British crown dependency (territory), by 1,689 people. The language went extinct in 1974, but has been successfully revived.

Brythonic (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brythonic_languages) (Brittonic)- Welsh (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language), spoken in mostly rural areas of Wales, by 611,000 people
- Breton (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breton_language), spoken in rural areas of the French province of Brittany, by 200,000 people.
- Cornish (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language), spoken in the province of Cornwall in SW England. Went extinct in 1777, but revived in 1904, with now about 2000 speakers.

I find a lot of annoying pieces of misinformation in many books on the topic. Firstly, Welsh has little relation to the Gaelic languages, yet I've seen it written as Welsh Gaelic in many books. This is so ignorant it's not funny. Secondly, even the newer books will say that Cornish and Manx are still extinct. It doesn't seem that way to me, especially because the number of the languages' speakers is dramatically increasing annually.

I also would like to argue about what cause is the one which is contributing to the decrease in the number of speakers of the other 4 which haven't gone extinct .. yet. Do you think that perhaps the native speakers are dying too quickly, or is it that English (or French in the case of Breton) is completely taking over?

More importantly though, do you think that the use and the continuation of these languages is important? To what extent? Do you think they're useful? I sure think so; they are important treasures of Celtic culture and are not barriers at all in any way.

[Bobby]

How exactly is this a debate?

[Clawhammer]

You... are... awesome! I'm soooo jealous! I have a lot of Celtic heritage, and I really wanna learn Scottish Gaelic one day.

[MykeSoBe]

How exactly is this a debate?

Read the rest of the paragraph now. I thought people would've been able to come up with logical answers themselves, but I guess I have to add the questions manually so that way you guys can debate it.

Well, some people may call Welsh, Welsh Gaelic instead. Some people will come to terms that yes, Welsh does come from the Goidelic branch and not the Brythonic branch of Celtic. But these people are actually clueless. Welsh is NOT in any way Gaelic!! And most of the time this mistake ends up being published in almost half of childrens' books on the Celts.

More importantly that that, though, in my opinion, Manx and Cornish are not extinct, at least not anymore. The languages lost their original group of native speakers in the late 1700's as is the case for Cornish and in 1974 as is the case in Manx, making them "extinct". Nowadays, the languages have revived and are now spoken by about 2000 fluent speakers each, the number only increasing now instead of decreasing. People will still say though that the two languages are still extinct, though, and that the modern "native" speakers of the two languages are really "neo-native", meaning that even thought they are native speakers of it, because their parents were not native speakers of it, the kids are only partially native. To me, it is only necessary that if a kid learned a language from their parents, they are native speakers of it, period.

But also, especially in the 20th century, the languages were of low prestige much as we would consider colloquial dialects of English, especially in the S. United States. Many of them were banned from the schools and were discouraged from being spoken. I believe this was unnecessary, as because of that all six of them were showing decreases in the number of speakers. Even if England wouldn't have interfered, they'd most likely still would've spoken English. Now, they have come to a point of no return, and even where the languages are at their strongest, English is still interfering severely, as is the case in the Irish Gaeltachtaí (regions in Ireland where Irish is at its strongest). The population is increasing, but none of the newcomers speak or even want to speak Irish Gaelic. This is nothing but ignorance. The same goes for the Isle of Man; only 47% of its people are from the Manx race, which is of strict Celtic and Norse roots, similar to the Icelanders and the Faeroese. Do you see now?

You... are... awesome! I'm soooo jealous! I have a lot of Celtic heritage, and I really wanna learn Scottish Gaelic one day.

I really can't speak a lot of them but I know some basic words and phrases in them. Manx is the one out of all of them of which I know, of which I can count from one to ten in and hold a small conversation. I took a course in Scottish Gaelic at home about a year ago, but after 6 months I got interested in Manx. I still know a little Gaelic though, for example cò às a tha sibh? (pron. coa aass uh haa shiv?) meaning where do you come from? and tha mi sgith (pron. haa mee skee), meaning I'm tired, among a few others. But something I'm really good at is reading all six of them. It is really hard to learn how to read them, like in Irish and Scottish Gaelic you do not pronounce fh, th, and sh. Bh and mh is pronunced v, while dh and gh are pronounced as a soft gargling sound when before and after a consonant, like the French r, but as y when before and after a vowel. Overall, it is something you should learn in leisure time. It will eventually get boring but you will be proud of yourself at the end.

Scottish Gaelic and Irish though are nothing when compared to Welsh. Like, you have the Welsh fyddan nhw ddim ond yn cysgu pan fydd angen (pron. fidh'n nyoo dhim ond'n kizgee paan fidh aang'n), not much of a tongue twister compared to such other phrases. Plus there are a whole bunch of dialects such as Powys, Venedotan, Anglesey, etc.

I really recommend you look more into this topic. I have no ounce of Celtic in my blood but I find these languages very interesting. They're very challenging and useful, but unfortunately many see it as boring and so that's how languages die.