Pictish is an extinct Celtic language that was spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. The language is only attested in several dozen inscriptions in ogham and Latin alphabets, in addition to a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and early medieval records in the area controlled by the kingdoms of the Picts. Available evidence, however, shows the language was Insular Celtic – possibly a variant of Brythonic, once spoken in most of Great Britain, or a distinct branch of Celtic related to it, known as Pritenic.
The prevailing view in the second half of the 20th century was either that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language isolate, or that there coexisted not one but two Pictish languages: one Indo-European (Celtic) and the other non-Indo-European.
Pictish was replaced by – or merged into – Gaelic in the latter centuries of its period. During the reign of Donald II of Scotland (889–900), outsiders began to refer to the region as the Kingdom of Alba rather than the Kingdom of the Picts. However, the Pictish language did not disappear suddenly; a gradual process of Gaelicisation (which may have begun generations earlier) is thought to have been under way during the reigns of Donald II and his successors. By a certain point, probably during the 12th or 13th centuries, all the inhabitants of Alba had become fully Gaelicised Scots, and the Pictish identity was forgotten.; ; ; ; cf. , , representing the "traditional" view.
Classification
The existence of a distinct Pictish language during the Early Middle Ages is attested clearly in Bede's early eighth-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which names Pictish as a language distinct from those spoken by the Britons, the Irish, and the English.; references to Pictish also at several other points in that text. Bede states that Columba, a Gael, used an interpreter on one occasion during his mission to the Picts. A number of competing theories have been advanced regarding the nature of the Pictish language: It was a distinct Insular Celtic language from Brittonic branch (together with Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric, and Breton). It was a dialect of Common Brittonic or Cumbric, and not a separate language. It was an Insular Celtic language allied to the P-Celtic languages, but distinct from Brittonic, having its own branch, known as Pritenic. It was an insular Celtic language allied to the Q-Celtic (Goidelic) languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx). It was one of the Pre-Indo-European languages left after the Bronze Age, potentially similar to Basque.
Most modern scholars agree that the ancestor of the Pictish language, spoken at the time of the Roman conquest, was a branch of the Brittonic language, while a few scholars accept that it was merely "related" to the Brittonic language. Thomas Charles-Edwards argues that there was a common language in north Britain in the early Roman period, and that the Pictish language developed as a consequence of the emergence of the Pictish confederation in the late third century. Pictish came under increasing influence from the Goidelic language spoken in Dál Riata from the eighth century until its eventual replacement.
Pictish is thought to have influenced the development of modern Scottish Gaelic. This is perhaps most obvious in the contribution of loanwords, but, more importantly, Pictish is thought to have influenced the syntax of Scottish Gaelic, which bears a greater similarity to those of the Brittonic languages than it does to that of Irish.; .
Some commentators have noted that, in light of the disparate nature of the surviving evidence and large geographical area in which it was spoken, that Pictish may have represented not a single language, but rather a number of discrete Brittonic varieties.
Position within Celtic The evidence of place names and personal names demonstrates that an insular Celtic language related to the more southerly Brittonic languages was formerly spoken in the Pictish area.; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; . The view of Pictish as a P-Celtic language was first proposed in 1582 by George Buchanan, who aligned the language with Gaulish.All other research into Pictish has been described as a postscript to Buchanan's work. This view may be something of an oversimplification: offers a short account of the debate; may be helpful for a broader view. A compatible view was advanced by antiquarian George Chalmers in the early 19th century. Chalmers considered that Pictish and Brittonic were one and the same, basing his argument on P-Celtic orthography in the Pictish king lists and in place names predominant in historically Pictish areas.
Although demonstrably Celtic-speaking, the exact linguistic affinity of the Roman-era predecessors to the Picts is difficult to securely establish. The personal name Vepogeni, recorded c. 230 AD, implies that P-Celtic was spoken by at least the Caledonians.
Celtic scholar Whitley Stokes, in a philological study of the Irish annals, concluded that Pictish was closely related to Welsh. This conclusion was supported by philologist Alexander MacBain's analysis of the place and tribe names in Ptolemy's second-century Geographia. Toponymist William Watson's exhaustive review of Scottish place names demonstrated convincingly the existence of a dominant P-Celtic language in historically Pictish areas, concluding that the Pictish language was a northern extension of British and that Gaelic was a later introduction from Ireland.
William Forbes Skene argued in 1837 that Pictish was a Goidelic language, the ancestor of modern Scottish Gaelic. He suggested that Columba's use of an interpreter reflected his preaching to the Picts in Latin, rather than any difference between the Irish and Pictish languages. This view, involving independent settlement of Ireland and Scotland by Goidelic people, obviated an Irish influence in the development of Gaelic Scotland and enjoyed wide popular acceptance in 19th-century Scotland.
Skene later revised his view of Pictish, noting that it appeared to share elements of both Goidelic and Brittonic:
The Picts were under increasing political, social, and linguistic influence from Dál Riata from around the eighth century. The Picts were steadily gaelicised through the latter centuries of the Pictish kingdom, and by the time of the merging of the Pictish and Dál Riatan kingdoms, the Picts were essentially a Gaelic-speaking people. Forsyth speculates that a period of bilingualism may have outlasted the Pictish kingdom in peripheral areas by several generations. Scottish Gaelic, unlike Irish, maintains a substantial corpus of Brittonic loan-words and, moreover, uses a verbal system modelled on the same pattern as Welsh.
Conversely, when discussing place-names, Watson (1926) eschewed the terms "Pictish" and "Cumbric" in favour of "British" and W. F. H. Nicolaisen (1976) grouped Cumbric and Pictish names together, implying merely dialectal distinction. Neil Whalley (2021) also referred to the two collectively as "Northern Brittonic". Guto Rhys (2015) claimed that the majority of proposals that Pictish diverged from Brittonic at an early date were spurious, and argued for significant co-evolution.
The traditional Q-Celtic vs P-Celtic model, involving separate migrations of P-Celtic and Q-Celtic speaking settlers into the British Isles, is one of mutual unintelligibility, with the Irish Sea serving as the frontier between the two. However, it is likely that the Insular Celtic languages evolved from a more-or-less unified proto-Celtic language within the British Isles.: See for alternate views. Divergence between P-Celtic Pictish and Q-Celtic Dalriadan Goidelic was slight enough to allow Picts and Dalriadans to understand each other's language to some degree. Under this scenario, a gradual linguistic convergence is conceivable and even probable given the presence of the Columban Church in Pictland.
Pritenic hypothesis
Many scholars agreed on the idea of Pritenic language - a separate branch of P-Celtic that later evolved into Pictish, aligned but distinct from Brittonic, with significant pre-Celtic component, separating possibly as early as 1st century AD.Taylor, Simon (2010) Pictish Place-Names RevisitedJackson, Kennth (1955) The Language of the Picts Initially proposed by Kenneth Jackson, it was supported by scholars like Koch and Alan James as a "helpful term to refer to distinctive features of northernmost parts of Britain", with evidences being largely centred around the Ptolemaic map and sound changes like o-grade, where /e/ shifts to /o/. Later, the theory was heavily criticised by Guto Rhys, who stated that all proofs were incorrect or little importance. Despite this, Pritenic hypothesis still remains visibly popular among scholars.Alan G. James (2020), The Brittonic Language in the Old North - A Guide to the Place-Name Evidence (Volume 1) PDF
Pre-Indo-European hypothesis
In 1892, the Welsh scholar John Rhŷs proposed that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language. This opinion was based on the apparently unintelligible ogham inscriptions found in historically Pictish areas (compare ).; . A similar position was taken by Heinrich Zimmer, who argued that the Picts' supposedly exotic cultural practices (tattooing and matriliny) were equally non-Indo-European,; see for a more current view of Pictish matriliny and a pre-Indo-European model was maintained by some well into the 20th century.For example: ; .
A modified version of this theory was advanced in an influential 1955 review of Pictish by Kenneth Jackson, who proposed a two-language model: while Pictish was undoubtedly P-Celtic ( evolving from Pritenic), it may have had a non-Celtic substratum and a second language may have been used for inscriptions. Jackson's hypothesis was framed in the then-current model that a Brittonic elite, identified as the Broch-builders, had migrated from the south of Britain into Pictish territory, dominating a pre-Celtic majority.See, for example, . He used this to reconcile the perceived translational difficulties of Ogham with the overwhelming evidence for a P-Celtic Pictish language. Jackson was content to write off Ogham inscriptions as inherently unintelligible.For a general view, see .
Jackson's model became the orthodox position for the latter half of the 20th century. However, it became progressively undermined by advances in understanding of late Iron Age archaeology.; Celtic interpretations have been suggested for a number of Ogham inscriptions in recent years, though this remains a matter of debate.Compare for example and
Other discredited theories