The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language."The Celtic languages: An Overview", Donald MacAulay, The Celtic Languages, ed. Donald MacAulay, Cambridge University Press, 1992, 3. The term Celtic was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707,Cunliffe, Barry W. 2003. The Celts: a very short introduction. p. 48 following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages.Alice Roberts, The Celts (Heron Books 2015)
During the first millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much of Europe and central Anatolia. Today, they are restricted to the northwestern fringe of Europe and a few diaspora communities. There are six living languages: the four continuously living languages Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, and the two revived languages Cornish and Manx. All are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is an official language in Wales and Irish is an official language across the island of Ireland and of the European Union. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO. The Cornish and Manx languages became extinct in modern times but have been revived. Each now has several hundred second-language speakers.
Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic form the Goidelic languages, while Welsh, Cornish and Breton are Brittonic. All of these are Insular Celtic languages, since Breton, the only living Celtic language spoken in continental Europe, is descended from the language of settlers from Britain. There are a number of extinct attested Continental Celtic languages: Galatian, Lepontic, Gaulish, Celtiberian and Gallaecian, where the last two form Hispano-Celtic subbranch. Beyond that, there is no agreement on the subdivisions of the Celtic language family. Traditionally, they are considered to be divided into P-Celtic and Q-Celtic. However, Gaulish is considered more closely related to Insular Celtic than either of these two are to Celtiberian; proposed connection between Gaulish and Insular Celtic is called Nuclear Celtic.
The Celtic languages have a rich literary tradition. The earliest specimens of written Celtic are Lepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC in the Alps. Early Continental inscriptions used the Italic and Paleohispanic scripts. Between the 4th and 10th centuries, Irish and Pictish were written in a native script, Ogham, whose derivation is unclear, but the Latin script eventually came to be used for all Celtic languages.
Living languages SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are: the Goidelic languages (Irish and Scottish Gaelic, both descended from Middle Irish) and the Brittonic languages (Welsh and Breton, descended from Common Brittonic). The other two, Cornish (Brittonic) and Manx (Goidelic), died out in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. Revitalisation movements in the 2000s led to the re-emergence of native speakers of both languages following their adoption by adults and children.
Demographics Language Native name Grouping Number of native speakers Number of skilled speakers Area of origin(still spoken) Regulated by/language body Estimated number of speakers in major cities Irish / / / / Goidelic 40,000–80,000In the Republic of Ireland, 73,803 people use Irish daily outside the education system. Northern Ireland: 5,971 (2021)
Canada: 530 (2021) Total speakers: 2,024,095Republic of Ireland: 1,774,437 (2011)1,873,997 (of whom 788,927 (14.6% of the population) could speak it "well")(2022) Northern Ireland: 126,743 (2021)United States: 18,000Canada: 5,355 (2021) Gaeltacht of Ireland Dublin: 184,140Galway: 37,614Cork: 57,318Belfast: 14,086 Welsh / Brittonic 538,000 (17.8% of the population of Wales) claim that they "can speak Welsh" (2021) Canada: 855 (2021) Total speakers: ≈ 989,500 Wales: 828,500 speakers (26.9% of the population) (2025) England: est. 150,000 (2011) Chubut Province, Argentina: est. 5,000 (2008) United States: 2,003 (2021) Canada: 2,260 (2021) Australia: 1,737 (2021) Wales Welsh Language CommissionerThe Welsh Government(previously the Welsh Language Board, ) Cardiff: 96,800 Swansea: 45,085Newport: 18,490Bangor: 7,190 Breton Brittonic 206,000 356,000 Données clés sur breton, Ofis ar Brezhoneg Brittany Rennes: 7,000Brest: 40,000Nantes: 4,000 Scottish Gaelic Goidelic Scotland: 69,701 (2022) Canada: 385 (2021) Scotland: 87,056 (2011)2011 Scotland Census , Table QS211SC. (1.7% of the population)130,156 (2022) (2.5% of the population)
Canada: 2,170 (of whom 630 in Nova Scotia) (2021) Scotland Glasgow: 5,726Edinburgh: 3,220Aberdeen: 1,397 Cornish Brittonic 563 (UK 2021 Census)See Number of Cornish speakers 2,500 - 5,000 Cornwall Akademi KernewekCornish Language Partnership () Truro: 118 Manx / Goidelic 100+, including a small number of children who are new native speakers 2,223 have some skills in Manx, of whom 2,023 could speak it (2021) Isle of Man Douglas: 507
Mixed languages Beurla Reagaird, Highland travellers' language Shelta, based largely on Irish and Hiberno-English (some 86,000 speakers in 2009).
Classification
Celtic is typically divided into various branches:
Continental Celtic languages, a fully extinct branch spoken in the continental Europe. Insular Celtic languages, spoken in the British Isles and Brittany in modernity. Hispano-Celtic languages, typically subbranch of Continental Celtic, including Celtiberian and Gallaecian. Celtiberian, also called Eastern or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic, was spoken in the ancient Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern part of Old Castile and south of Aragon (modern provinces: Segovia, Burgos, Soria, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Zaragoza and Teruel) The relationship of Celtiberian with Gallaecian, in northwest Iberia, is uncertain.Villar F., B. M. Prósper. (2005). Vascos, Celtas e Indoeuropeos: genes y lenguas. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. pp. 333–350. . Gallaecian, also known as Western or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, was spoken in the northwest of the peninsula (modern Northern Portugal, and the Spanish regions of Galicia, Asturias and northwestern Castile and León)."In the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, and more specifically between the west and north Atlantic coasts and an imaginary line running north-south and linking Oviedo and Merida, there is a corpus of Latin inscriptions with particular characteristics of its own. This corpus contains some linguistic features that are clearly Celtic and others that in our opinion are not Celtic. The former we shall group, for the moment, under the label northwestern Hispano-Celtic. The latter are the same features found in well-documented contemporary inscriptions in the region occupied by the Lusitanians, and therefore belonging to the variety known as LUSITANIAN, or more broadly as GALLO-LUSITANIAN. As we have already said, we do not consider this variety to belong to the Celtic language family." Jordán Colera 2007: p. 750 Lepontic, part of Continental Celtic languages, the oldest attested Celtic language (from the 6th century BC). Anciently spoken in Switzerland and in Northern-Central Italy. Coins with Lepontic inscriptions have been found in Noricum and Gallia Narbonensis.MORANDI 2004, pp. 702–703, n. 277 Gaulish languages, once spoken in a wide arc from Belgium to modern-day Turkey, but all extinct since 7-8th centuries AD. Transalpine Gaulish, spoken in the modern area of France, Switzerland and parts of Germany. Cisalpine Gaulish, a proposed language documented in inscriptions, distinct from Transalpine Gaulish and closer to Lepontic, spoken in Northern Italy until the 1st century BC. Galatian, spoken in central Anatolia potentially for as long as 6th century AD. Brittonic, spoken in Great Britain and Brittany. Including the living languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, and the lost Cumbric and potentially Pictish.Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that there were two Pictish languages, a pre-Indo-European one and a Pritenic Celtic one. This has been challenged by some scholars. See Katherine Forsyth's "Language in Pictland: the case against 'non-Indo-European Pictish . See also the introduction by James & Taylor to the "Index of Celtic and Other Elements in W. J. Watson's 'The History of the Celtic Place-names of Scotland . Compare also the treatment of Pictish in Price's The Languages of Britain (1984) with his Languages in Britain & Ireland (2000). Before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, the island may have spoken a Brythonic language. The theory of a Brittonic Ivernic language predating Goidelic speech in Ireland has been suggested, but is widely rejected. Pritenic, spoken in most of Scotland - a hypothetical subfamily of Insular Celtic from which Pictish language descended from, potentially related to Brittonic, but distinct. Some earlier theories consider Pictish a pre-Indo-European language, but the theory is not widely supported.Forsyth, K. (1997), Language in Pictland: the case against 'non-Indo-European Pictish (PDF), Utrecht: de Keltische Draak Goidelic, including the extant Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic, spoken in modern Scotland, Ireland and Isle of Man.
Continental/Insular Celtic and P/Q-Celtic hypotheses Scholarly handling of Celtic languages has been contentious owing to scarcity of primary source data. Some scholars (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) posit that the primary distinction is between Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic, arguing that the differences between the Goidelic and Brittonic languages arose after these split off from the Continental Celtic languages. Other scholars (such as Schmidt 1988) make the primary distinction between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages based on the replacement of initial Q by initial P in some words. Most of the Gallic and Brittonic languages are P-Celtic, while the Goidelic and Hispano-Celtic languages are Q-Celtic. The P-Celtic languages (also called Gallo-Brittonic) are sometimes seen (for example by Koch 1992) as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. According to Ranko Matasović in the introduction to his 2009 Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic: "Celtiberian ... is almost certainly an independent branch on the Celtic genealogical tree, one that became separated from the others very early."
The Breton language is Brittonic, not Gaulish; though there may be some input from the latter, having been introduced from Southwestern regions of Britain in the post-Roman era. In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was Gaelic. It has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages (see Schmidt). In the Insular/Continental classification schema, the split of the former into Gaelic and Brittonic is seen as being late.
The distinction of Celtic into these four sub-families most likely occurred about 900 BC according to Gray & Atkinson but, because of estimation uncertainty, it could be any time between 1200 and 800 BC. However, they only considered Gaelic and Brythonic. A controversial paper by Forster & Toth included Gaulish and put the break-up much earlier at 3200 BC ± 1500 years. They support the Insular Celtic hypothesis. The early Celts were commonly associated with the archaeological Urnfield culture, the Hallstatt culture, and the La Tène culture, though the earlier assumption of association between language and culture is now considered to be less strong.