Are therre any surviving celtic languages?
537342
Yes.\n\nIn Wales about 15% of the population speak Welsh as a first or equal first language.  Most scoolchildren in Wales have to learn Welsh.\n\nIn Ireland, Irish Gaelic is spoken - particularly in the Western areas.\n\nIn Brittany (North Western France), Breton is spoken by a sizeable minority as a first language alongside French.\n\nIn Scotland - paricularly the Western Isles and Western Highlands - Scots Gaelic is spoken by a - diminishing - minority.\n\nManx is surviving as a second (learned) language but has no real mother tongue speakers on the Isle of Man.\nThe same applies to Cornish.\n\nCumbrian is to all intents and purposes extinct and survives in a few ancient texts only.\n\nNumerous other celtic languages - from as far afield as present-day Turkey and Spain are long dead.\n\n'Britain' is a celtic name from the original celtic (sometimes referred to as British) language spoken throughout the British Isles before the Roman conquest in the first century A.D.
929204
it is a mix of Latin and Gaelic, you will find it after the Roman occupation of Britannia
1068557
there is a difference  between a language being 'alive' and it being 'viable'.\n\nmost linguists would agree that a language is still 'alive' as long as it has at least two speakers - one to talk and one to listen. with two speakers a language can be used as a means of communication, so it most certainly still functions as a language.\n\n but languages which are spoken by fewer than a few thousand (precise numbers vary according to linguistic context, and even who is doing the estimating) are clearly at risk since more and more of their speakers will turn to other languages as their best hope of being understood by those around them.\n\na language which is in decline need not be lost though. cornish hit a severe problem in the late middle ages and died when dolly pentreath did in.  whether cornish has been revived is something scholars discuss without ever reaching a conclusion.\n\nwelsh had similar problems by the middle of the nineteenth century, but after a radio broadcast by the welsh politician and poet saunders lewis ('tynged yr iaith' : 1962) the decline in number of welsh speakers first plateaued, and more recently has even begun to rise again (as engllish-speaking parents send their children to welsh-speaking schools).\n\nthis leads into the deeper consideration of whether for a language to be truly 'alive' it needs to be seen as having some kind of purpose by the people who speak it.
480678
I think some celts that lived in the british isles already converted before the Roman Empire came in.  Not many though.
579828
Yep.\n\nRhiannon, after the Celtic Goddess \nof Inspiration and the Moon\n\nAINE (AN-yuh):Ireland, a woman of the Leanan Sidhe (Sweetheart of the Sidhe). Some said she was the daughter of Manannan, some said she was the Morrigan herself.\n\nMorgan \n\nNIMUE : Welsh, Cornish, Celtic Moon Goddess; also called Morgan.
610618
Yes.\nRight now, while they're young enough I can still influence them, we are learning Irish.  I use Pimsleur for the kids, and then I am studying using a book and tape system.  It's working fairly well, however, this is nothing like learning French or Spanish.  There is no frame of reference within the English language for pronunciation of Irish Gaelic.\n\nThe reason we are learning Irish is because of our Irish heritage and the fact that there are only 50,000 speakers of this language left.  If I don't teach my children the lyrical tongue of their mothers, it will die.  It's also an extreme intellectual exercise for me, hopefully putting off Alzheimer's for a couple more years.  ;)\n\nWhen they reach high school age, they know they can pick whatever language they feel will serve them in the future.  But I wanted them to learn Irish first.  Anything else will be a piece of cake after that.
996888
Hidden beneath the etymology of the placename of Lothian is a shadowy mythological figure called Lleu. The earliest known Brythonic (and thus linguistically indigenous) form of "Lothian" is from a C12th Welsh poem by Hywel ap Owain:\n\nHere, Lleudinyawn can be understood in the modern form Lleuddiniawn, meaning, literally, the "land of Lleu's fortress", comprised of the elements lleu (personal name), din (fortress), and -iawn (land of). The question then arises that if the meaning of "Lothian" is "land of Lleu's fortress", who is this Lleu?\n\nY Mabinogi\nScattered throughout the margins of the Celtic traditions from both Continental and Insular Europe are a series of clues about a pagan sun deity whose name generally means "light". In the Brythonic traditions related to the earliest Celtic culture of Lothian, there are traces of a solar deity called Lleu. In the Gaelic traditions, we have a mythological figure called Lúgh, and in Continental Gaul and Romano-Celtic cultures, he appears to be known as Lugus.\n\nThe majority of what is known about Lleu/Lúgh/Lugus as a pagan deity is generally from the Gaelic tradition, rather than the Brythonic, but one medieval Welsh text with strong Northern associations gives us a certain amount of information about him. Y Mabinogi, transcribed by Welsh monks around the C11th (historically later than the Gaelic texts concerning Lúgh), shows a distinct Christianisation of what were, evidently, nonetheless originally pagan myths. In the story of Mâth ap Mâthonwy, we have a basic version of Lleu's origins. One has to bear in mind, however, that despite the fact that many of the elements in the Mabinogi may have an originally Northern provenance, by the time that the stories were committed to writing, Brythonic-speaking territory had been pretty much reduced to Wales, Cornwall, and Cumbria, although Strathclyde was still a Brythonic-speaking territory on the immediate Western borders of Lothian. As a result, the Welsh scribe who worked on this text tended to set the myths in a local Welsh geography, as so often happens with local variants of otherwise international myths. As a result, the possible original Northern provenance is lost, and Lothian is not specifically mentioned. However, given that Lleu's cult was evidently followed throughout the entire continent, as well as Britain and Ireland, it's no doubt that the myth came in as many versions as there were regions in which it was told. Unfortunately, we have precious little left of the version(s) which may have been told in Lothian itself, and so the later version recorded in Y Mabinogi is probably as close as we can come to it. An online version of this story (from Charlotte Guest's C19th translation) can be found here from the Celtic Twilight website.\n\nIn Y Mabinogi, Lleu has a magical, apparently virgin birth, and his mother is given as Arianrhod, the ancient Brythonic moon-goddess whose name means, literally, "silver circle", a name which still attached itself to the moon in Welsh lore until recently. More specifically, Arianrhod's mother is Dôn, often thought of as the Brythonic Earth-goddess whose Gaelic equivalent is Danu), which makes Lleu the sun-god the son of Arianrhod the moon-goddess, and the grandson of the Earth-goddess: Earth → Moon → Sun. In Mâth ap Mâthonwy, the miraculous birth of Lleu is given as follows:\n\n"Oh men," said he [Mâth], "you have obtained peace, and you shall likewise have friendship. Give your counsel unto me, what maiden I shall seek." "Lord," said Gwydion the son of Don, "it is easy to give thee counsel; seek Arianrod, the daughter of Don, thy niece, thy sister's daughter."
1048656
Try gaydar..there's thousands of them. Try the Scots, Welsh and Irish, too
564848
I presume you mean Scots Gaelic, the Irish language is known simply as Irish or Gaeilge. Just google learn scots gaelic online, and all different websites will come up.
17101
Communication is always available, however I suspect you are referring to modern communication.  \n\nThink of the Celtic peoples.  They had no modern communication facilities and no written language.  And yet, they made deep inroads of culture over much of Europe and a strong culture in England beginning at least as far back as 1,000 BCE.  .
217558
I love the Irish! They are hard working, practical, and fun loving people. I really like the Gaelic language.
540859
Ancient Irish folklore is full of stuff like that, here is a pretty good book on-line, and the Celtic knot, is a ritual, a form of spell-work, the second link is OK, I'm looking for a better one, all my books are still packed
5159
The English language consists of many words which have germanic/celtic origins, others have latin ones. You find negation prefixes like "dis" or "im" on those words which originally come from latin. There are of course exceptions (unpleasant for example). Sometimes both possibilities exist but mean something slightly different. Compare "immortal" with "undead". But there are synonyms. For your examples:\n\nunhappy: disconsolate\ndishonest: untrustworthy\n\nIt is quite interesting to consult a thesaurus and find the equivalents with germanic/celtic origin to the latin ones and vice versa.
656324
Well in Celtic tradition weren't they...\n\nScotland\nWales\nCornwall\nIsle of Man\nSpain\nBrittany\nIreland
886411
the celts came along much later,in fact around 7000years later,there is a program that was on the history channel about the early brits,it showed some of  the places that they built over 9000years ago and according to this historian they were very advanced,in fact he said that they were building when the rest of the world were still wearing animal skins and living in caves,the historian has been studying this after he decided that other cultures have been studied time and time again so he wanted something different,
1062036
Linguists do not know. The oldest recorded WRITTEN language is Sumerian. Before that no languages were written (as far as we know) and therefore, by definition, left traces only in the spoken languages which they evolved into.\nIt is now pretty much agreed that Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa and spread from there. Anthropologically speaking, the 'oldest' races of humans are - quite possibly - the Khoi-San peoples of Southern Africa. Their languages have features that linguists speculate make them likely to be extremely old:\n1. They are extremely complex\n2. They have (phonetic) systems that are significantly more complex than any other languages. (Among these features are the wide varety of speech sounds - up to 147 as opposed to 44 of Standard English. These include many 'click' sounds.)\nThe Khoi-San peoples were displaced by later herdsmen migrations and invasions over the last thousands of years and survive in small pockets in Botswana and elsewhere).
196313
celts just did a report on it lol