Theory that \'Celts\' are a myth

[authun]

The denotation is therefore entirely modern, as is the suggestion that the remnant tongues of the so-called Celtic fringes are in fact Celtic languages. How could we compare them to others that no longer exist or we have no record of - just the proposition that Gaelic, Welsh etc are all that survives of once common tongues from right across western Europe from the Bay of Biscay to the Black Sea? The fact that the Bretons settled in Brittany from Britain and not the other way around, suggests to me that their language may be rooted in the British Isles only. Other supposed Celtic groups such as the Galicians don't even speak a (supposed) Celtic tongue at all.

The linguistic theory of the development of the indo european language groups is supported by inscriptions and fragments of texts which are recognised as 'celtic', eg. Lepontic in the Golasecca culture from 6th cent. BC and Celt-Iberian from the 2nd cent. BC. The theory is that a branch of PIE entered europe via the Danube and on this branch proto celtic and proto italic developed, the italic language group being closer to the celtic language group than any other IE language, eg. Germanic or Slavic etc. Old Welsh and Old Irish sit at the end of this branch. Enough fragments exist for linguists to posit that Leptontic and Celt Iberian were similar to Gaulish. Each of these was subject to its own development and we don't know when they entered their respective areas or if they developed before or after they entered those areas. There is no reason to suppose that they could all understand each other so it is not a common celtic language, rather a group of celtic languages that developed from the same branch. To date, Lepontic was thought to be the oldest celtic language but recently Koch has proposed that the Tartessian scripts, from the 7th cent. BC are celtic.

Galicia in NW Iberia and the celtic inscriptions towards the Black Sea are different to what is seen as the expansion of celtic languages. The place name evidence in Galicia. eg. Citania de Briteiros, points to brythonic migrations there, they are not a development from Celt Iberian. Celts near the Black Sea appear to have been a migration of Central European Celtic speakers into that region, ie taking the language there rather than being developed there.

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