Theosophy Wales, UK:- Pages About Wales. Celtic Migration and the Origin of Celtic Languages

WALES

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Wales is a Principality within the United Kingdom and has an eastern border with England. The land area is just over 8,000 square miles. Snowdon is the highest mountain at 3,650 feet. The coastline is almost 750 miles long. The population of Wales as at the 2001 census is 2,946,200.

Theosophy Wales is pleased to present

general pages about Wales, Welsh History

and The History of Theosophy in Wales

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Celtic Migration

The Origin of Celtic Languages

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There was originally a unifying language spoken by the Celts, now known as Old Celtic. Philogists have shown the descendence of Celtic from the original

Ur-language and from the Indo-European language tradition. In fact, the form of old Celtic was the closest cousin to Italic, the precursor of Latin. The Hittites are known to have spoken an early form of Latin.

The original wave of Celtic migration to the British Isles are called the q-Celts and often referred to as the Gaels and spoke Goidelic. It is not known exactly when this migration occurred but it may be placed sometime in the window of 1200 to 1000 BCE. Red hair is said to be a Gaelic characteristic.

The label q-Celtic stems from the differences between this early Celtic tongue and Italic. Some of the differences between Italic and Celtic included that lack of a p in Celtic and an a in place of an the Italic o.

At a later date, a second wave of immigrants took to the British Isles, a wave of Celts referred to as the p-Celts speaking Brythonic. This is placed around 700 to 600 BCE

Goidelic led to the formation of the three Gaelic languages spoken in Ireland, Man and later

Scotland.

Brythonic gave rise to four Celtic languages, Welsh Cornish and Cumbric spoken in Britain, as well as surviving in France in the form of Breton, spoken in Brittany.

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