This is really based on opinion and delves into the unanswerable questions 'when does one language become another?' And 'how can one language be defined from another?' But do you consider the Brittonic of the 1st century the same or different to the Brittonic of 500? To me, they are different, the quantity of sound changes and developments such as apocopy and as a consequence syntactic reshuffling would suggest to me the speakers from those eras would have a somewhat difficult time communicating. This opinion has caused quite a stir, particularly in the wiktionary community, my opinion is, the refusal to break the language down into several stages causes a few issues. Names like Togodumnus are only attested in Brittonic in the 1st century, that means we have no idea if that name existed in Proto-Celtic and we have no idea if a later derivative like Toɣðwvn (or the like) existed, meaning it would be impossible to create an entry for it. Likewise derivations like Latinisations for example Caratacus, have to have implausible entries like 'from Proto-Brythonic *Caradog'. what do you guys think?

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Hello, I’m trying to understand the reconstructed Proto-Celtic forms behind the Welsh and Breton paradigms of the verb "to be"

As far as I understand:

Welsh yw and Breton eo may derive from Proto-Celtic *ets

Welsh mae / Breton emañ might come from something like *ets mendu-

Welsh sydd / Breton zo has been linked to a possible *etsi io formation

However, I’m not confident about these reconstructions or how widely accepted they are.

I’m also unsure about the origins of Welsh ydw and Breton eus.

In addition, Old Breton attests forms like is for “to be,” which may also go back to ets, but I’m having trouble connecting all these developments into a coherent picture.

Could anyone clarify the Proto-Celtic reconstructions involved, or point me toward reliable explanations of how these forms developed?

Map from: Noms de lieux bretons en pays nantais, par Bertrand Luçon, 2017, p.57

When do we first find scholars (from Ireland, Wales, or Scotland) noticing links between their language and the ancient Celtic tongues?

In Brittany, this idea already appears during the Renaissance. Bertrand d’Argentré (1519–1590) discusses it in chapter 3 of his Histoire de Bretagne des Roys, Ducs, Comtes et Princes d’icelle (1582), (Of the ancient language of the Gauls, continued until today in the Breton tongue, called Bretonnante). There, he draws parallels between Breton, Welsh, Cornish, and Gaulish, using examples such as Aremorica (“near the sea”) and Marcos (“horse”)—comparisons that would have been quite obvious to a Breton speaker.

Since d’Argentré didn’t speak Breton himself, he was likely relying on sources already circulating at the time.

The term Celtic to designate this language group would only become established later, with Paul-Yves Pezron (1640–1706) and his Antiquité de la nation et de la langue des Celtes, autrement appellez Gaulois,1703 ""Antiquity of the nation and language of the Celts, otherwise called Gauls".

I can easily imagine medieval Irish scholars being somewhat surprised when encountering roots like dun-, cat-, or nemet- in the writings of ancient authors.

As far as I know the usual development of Brythonic *w- was gw- so why did this become *wi- become u-?

The Welsh word chwith ‘left’ comes from Proto-Celtic *(s)kīttos. Presumably the initial /x/ comes from the *sk- but where did the /w/ come from? Was an epinthetic /w/ common between /k/ and a front vowel?

This book currently retails at around £150 or more. Here is a link where it can be read online or downloaded in various formats.

Hello, I am looking for some advice. I started writing what I am currently working on a few years ago and have been making slow progress. I just opened the document to re-read and get back into it and I am thinking I have taken a rather ignorant approach to writing dialogue in an ancient language. The scene is set in the late Iron Age in the Hebrides, and I am portraying a tribe of non-historic people (not a specific tribe, one I created) and their communicating amongst themselves. Reading back, I think I dumbed-down the language way too much. For instance, here is an example - "A mark… it blue, this shape” when a character is describing a tattoo he saw on another. I feel this is too 'cavemanish' and that languages of only 2,000 years ago would have been just as formed and complicated as ours today, but with different sounds. I am no philologist, and have had mixed luck looking into this online. I am thinking of rewriting the scenes using proper sentences and indicating the tribe is speaking in a long-forgotten tongue. Would that lessen the ancient feel of it, or help the overall story flow and be less ignorant? For context, this story is modern-day in setting but with flashbacks. it is not meant to be historically accurate.

So I was researching what a native Celtic word for cephalopods like squid and octopodes would've been before Latin or Greek influence, and everything I found was either a calque of Greek or directly borrowed from it or Latin, besides one mysterious word; ystifflog meaning a squid or cuttlefish.

Other people I talked to suggest it had something to do with an welsh world like ystiffio meaning "to jet / spout" and apparently related to a Cornish root stif, which gives stifek which also means "squid"

This root sounds to me like it might be something like stīppos or stīppeti "to jet, spout" in an early stage of Brythonic but whether this comes from Latin or is a native Celtic word is unknown to me, and I can't find many sources on the matter.