The Celtic Languages


Book Description

This comprehensive volume describes in depth all the Celtic languages from historical, structural and sociolinguistic perspectives, with individual chapters on Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Organized for ease of reference, The Celtic Languages is arranged in four parts. The first, Historical Aspects, covers the origin and history of the Celtic languages, their spread and retreat, present-day distribution and a sketch of the extant and recently extant languages. Parts II and III describe the structural detail of each language, including phonology, mutation, morphology, syntax, dialectology and lexis. The final part provides wide-ranging sociolinguistic detail, such as areas of usage (in government, church, media, education, business), maintenance (institutional support offered), and prospects for survival (examination of demographic changes and how they affect these languages). Special Features: * Presents the first modern, comprehensive linguistic description of this important language family * Provides a full discussion of the likely progress of Irish, Welsh and Breton * Includes the most recent research on newly discovered Continental Celtic inscriptions




Arthur in the Celtic Languages


Book Description

This is the first comprehensive authoritative survey of Arthurian literature and traditions in the Celtic languages of Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish and Scottish Gaelic. With contributions by leading and emerging specialists in the field, the volume traces the development of the legends that grew up around Arthur and have been constantly reworked and adapted from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It shows how the figure of Arthur evolved from the leader of a warband in early medieval north Britain to a king whose court becomes the starting-point for knightly adventures, and how characters and tales are reimagined, reshaped and reinterpreted according to local circumstances, traditions and preoccupations at different periods. From the celebrated early Welsh poetry and prose tales to less familiar modern Breton and Cornish fiction, from medieval Irish adaptations of the legend to the Gaelic ballads of Scotland, Arthur in the Celtic Languages provides an indispensable, up-to-date guide of a vast and complex body of Arthurian material, and to recent research and criticism.




The History of the Celtic Language


Book Description

Excerpt from The History of the Celtic Language: Wherein It Is Shown to Be Based Upon Natural Principles, and Elementarily Considered, Contemporaneous With the Infancey of the Human Family If any person take up the History of the Celtic Language as about to be submitted, and expect to get through it as through a song, for that person the author has not written: "Intelligibilia non intellectum adfero." At the commencement of the present order of material things, the first sun indicated day by a faint but perceptible heraldic emanation in the East, gradually waxing stronger and stronger, till now, behold! the king of day himself gilding the summit of the mountains with the splendour of his countenance, and now gradually mounting, and diffusing stronger light - stronger intelligence - till he arrives at the goal of noon. This appears to the author no inapt emblem of the commencement of the order of things in the moral world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.







An Introduction to the Celtic Languages


Book Description

This text provides a single-volume, single-author general introduction to the Celtic languages. The first half of the book considers the historical background of the language group as a whole. There follows a discussion of the two main sub-groups of Celtic, Goidelic (comprising Irish, Scottish, Gaelic and Manx) and Brittonic (Welsh, Cornish and Breton) together with a detailed survey of one representative from each group, Irish and Welsh. The second half considers a range of linguistic features which are often regarded as characteristic of Celtic: spelling systems, mutations, verbal nouns and word order.




HIST OF THE CELTIC LANGUAGE WH


Book Description




The Origins of the Irish


Book Description

An essential new history of ancient Ireland and the Irish, written as an engrossing detective story About eighty million people today can trace their descent back to the occupants of Ireland. But where did the occupants of the island themselves come from and what do we even mean by “Irish” in the first place? This is the first major attempt to deal with the core issues of how the Irish came into being. J. P. Mallory emphasizes that the Irish did not have a single origin, but are a product of multiple influences that can only be tracked by employing the disciplines of archaeology, genetics, geology, linguistics, and mythology. Beginning with the collision that fused the two halves of Ireland together, the book traces Ireland’s long journey through space and time to become an island. The origins of its first farmers and their monumental impact on the island is followed by an exploration of how metallurgists in copper, bronze, and iron brought Ireland into increasingly wider orbits of European culture. Assessments of traditional explanations of Irish origins are combined with the very latest genetic research into the biological origins of the Irish.