What no one tells you about Celtic Languages!

[@frankboulton2126]

This video explained very clearly why there is such a huge difference between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic. It also makes Celtic languages all the more interesting.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you, Frank.

[@marclepihiff2339]

I'm Breton, I speak Breton and a little bit Cornish. Your video is very interesting, thank you !

[@BenLlywelyn]

Trugarez mat!

[@marclepihiff2339]

Mann 'bet !😊

[@dustinDraig]

Me ivez. Kerneveureg a zo tost-tre da brezhoneg met disheñveloc'h eo ar c'hembraeg.

[@agenda697]

I have a question, in your opinion would breton close to the gaul language ?

[@dustinDraig]

@@agenda697 Some scholars believe there may have been some influence of Gaulish on Breton, especially the southern dialects, but while I think Gaulish is closer to the P-celtic languages than the Q-celtic ones, it still was quite different

[@xenocrates2559]

Very informative and clearly presented. Thanks.

[@willhovell9019]

Very interesting explanations. The development of English with the influence of the Norse and Norman French is equally complex and fascinating. Dioch

[@BenLlywelyn]

Yn wir. It is so. Thanks.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Croeso.

[@n8nate]

Fantastic video Ben. I've learnt a lot from this. 👍🏽👍🏽

[@BenLlywelyn]

Great to help expand horizons. Thank you.

[@jongellert6971]

Thank you very much for this. It's incredibly fascinating.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you for spending the time to watch it!

[@peter_oso]

Very informative and clear, thanks

[@BenLlywelyn]

Welcome, Peter.

[@mr_jm9777]

great videos, keep up the work man👍

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you Mr.

[@taivo55]

Excellent video !!!

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you!

[@soccerchamp0511]

Wow, this is the best explanation I've seen of the history/divergence of the Celtic languages. I've been studying Celtic, and specifically British/Irish history, for a long time and have never heard anything about how long ago the language split happened until now. Thank you!

[@BenLlywelyn]

You are welcome.

[@BrockMcLellan]

Thank you. I am attempting to learn some Scottish Gaelic through Duolingo. It was the mother tongue of my grandfather, born on Cape Breton Island.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Good luck. We need more speakers.

[@servantofChristMichael]

I just wanted to say, a native English speaker who has managed to reach a B2-C1 level in "Serbo-Croatian", who is also of a mix of Celtic, Slavic and Sephardi Spanish ancestry, I really appreciate your videos, Ben. I particularly find what you said about the Slavic languages to be accurate and something I have personally experienced, for example, despite only having learned a few phrases in Polish, I am often surprised by how much I can understand of the written language and am pretty sure that if I spoke with a Native Polish speaker, as long as they spoke very slowly and clearly with hand gesticulations, we could probably establish a fair degree of mutual intelligibility between one another. I was also amazed at the universal intelligibility of "inter-Slavic" / "Međuslovenski".

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you, it does make learning at least 1 Slavic Language appealing to know you get access into others.

[@servantofChristMichael]

​​@@BenLlywelynand Serbo-Croatian of course is 4 for the price of one, depending on one's politics, plus 60% off on North Macedonian

[@aleksandarnikolic2743]

​@@servantofChristMichaelDobro opažanje u vezi Srpsko Hrvatskog jezika. Poljski je veoma sličan Srpskom jeziku.👍

[@stephensmith1118]

remind me never to play you at scrabble.... you have access to all the higher point letters.... divertete

[@davidmandic3417]

Slavic languages aren't mutually intelligible when spoken, apart from (some) neighbouring languages, or at a very basic level... but it's easier to understand written language. Especially for native speakers, who are familiar with dialects and older forms of their own language etc.

[@leviathan5377]

Awesome video! As an Irish speaker who's dabbled in a bit of Welsh, the langauges definitely still bear a stronger resemblance to one another than to other IE languages. It's possible to form sentences that are almost completely made up of cognates, though admittedly with a lot of cherry picking involved. Ex. CY: Collodd y ceffyl y ras a glanheuaist ei goes. GA: Chaill an capall an rása agus ghlanais a chos. EN: The horse lost the race and you cleaned his leg. Note the type of consonant mutation for leg are different in each langauge. 'Ghlanais' is a more archaic/dialectal form. Most speakers not from the south of Ireland would probably say 'ghlán tú.' The words for race are borrowed from English. CY: Bydd fy nheulu yma ddydd Llun. GA: Beidh mo theaghlach anseo Dé Luain. EN: My family will be here on Monday. Anseo and yma are not cognate to my knowledge but they do sound similar. The words for Monday are also Latin borrowings. Of course, most sentences don't bear much lexical resemblance with each other. CY: Wnaethon nhw weld faint o forfilod oedd yn y môr? GA: An bhfaca siad cé mhéad míolta móra a bhí san fharraige/sa mhuir? EN: Did they see how many whales were in the ocean? The only cognates in this sentence are morfil/míol mór, yn y/san, and môr/muir. The changes between the two languages do make them seem to have about 15% lexical similarity like you suggest. However, their word orders are still almost the same! I'm still learning Welsh so apologies if I made any mistakes! Diolch yn fawr am y fideo 'ma! Go raibh mìle as an físeán seo!

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you for your hardwork. Yes, I agree with you on the structure and should have noted that despite the gulf between the syntax is almost identical which helps a lot.

[@TheLibraryChamber]

Cannot tell you just how awesome this was to listen too. Thanks for the wisdom!

[@BenLlywelyn]

You are welcome.

[@ALEIJADINHOPATRIOTA]

Ben is very good informated and I wonder how celtic languages have developed their different grammars. So a great video! THANK YOU MR.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Very nice indeed. Thank you for the support.

[@greenburst1]

Ben I really enjoyed this video for the depth of understanding you have for the indo European diversity. the breaking of tribes and kingdoms can be understood and you are doing a great job of preserving that knowledge.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Kind and sincere. Thank you.

[@mihaiburloiu367]

Enjoyable videos, Ben! Thanks!

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you very much.

[@lionkaliban2237]

The information was surprising for me as for a person who has never tried to learn any Celtic languages. It seems that pop culture tends to generalise all Celts a lot. Thank you for educating

[@squeezyjohn1]

Yes ... this is an excellent video ... very clearly explained. Thank you.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you.

[@skipinkoreaable]

Thank you. This was very clear.

[@nathanaelpereira5207]

Very Clarifying. I appreciate it.

[@ricardotabone3231]

What an excellent video!

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you.

[@cargumdeu]

One of your best. I very much admire what you do.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Very kind. May ask what made it so good for you?

[@cargumdeu]

@@BenLlywelyn Certainly. I was on my 3rd G&T and I was enjoying some weed. I'd just watched an Unherd interview with a remarkable Dutch psychologist on the subject of 'Mass Formation Psychosis'. And pretty much anything you do is quality, if you dont mind me saying. You are part of my entertainment schedule whether you like it or not!

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you. Maybe we'll have a gin & tonic one day.

[@cargumdeu]

Youre a damn good chap and I both learn a lot and am entertained by your very professional videos. My answer may appear trite but if we ever meet the G&T will be on me and it'll have to be a Hendricks or a Plymouth none of your cheap stuff.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Sounds good.

[@RoboticsDIY]

Thank you, it was a wery valuable and insightful video. In spare time i like to follow history of writing systems and languages. This helped to align sime missing pueces.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Glad it helped you. Diolch / Thanks.

[@scottcjmckelviephotography]

You are absolutely right. I am studying Scots Gàidhlig, a language that was once spoken throughout most of my country and doing my part to keeping it alive, but do have a desire to learn Welsh. The branches break off from Proto Celtic to the 2 distinct groups; Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic. It was Continental Celtic where Gaulish would branch off from, whereas, Insular Goidelic and British break off into different branches. For reasons you rightly touched upon, and it is very likely the Picts probably spoke a _'conservative'_ form of Brythonic, it sadly no longer exists. The Brythonic as you rightly addressed was then heavily influenced by Latin, thus, the closest we have of it today is Welsh, partly why I have a strong desire to learn the language, and it's beautiful. Scots Gaelic breaking off from Old Irish is very different, and from the little of looking at Welsh on Duolingo I could definitely see this. I would even go as far as to state that whilst there is a crossover and same usage of words, Scots Gàidhlig that I am learning is very different from Irish Gaelic i've looked at briefly.

[@BenLlywelyn]

The Scots Gaelic case system is much less complex than Irish and the grammar almost like Welsh in places, which I think was a case of Pictish speakers learning Irish but they could not be bothered to speak a foreign language properly, so they blended it with their own for a while.

[@yuribliman8999]

Thank you Ben for another fascinating episode. Before I watched your previous video I was sure Irish was pretty similar to Welsh. I'd like to share my experience with Slavic languages. I've been exposed to most Slavic languages, Russian and Ukrainian are my native languages. The only language that is 99% intelligible to me is Belarusian. Unfortunately not many Belarusians speak Belarasin in their day-to-day life. Almost all Berussians are native Russian speakers. Ukrainian and Belarusian are probably 90-95% mutually intelligible. I read Polish quite well but I have some difficulties with spoken Polish. Poles usually understand Ukrainian better than Ukrainians understand Polish because of the specific Polish pronunciation. Ukrainian and Polish are very close languages, closer than Russian and Ukrainian. Slavic languages share a lot of common vocabulary. Also, some words that sound similar and come from the same old Slavic words have different meanings, which could cause a bit of confusion. If one's mother tongue is one of the Slavic languages he/she probably will easily pick up another Slavic language, that won't happen overnight and pronunciation could be the biggest problem.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Ласкаво просимо. Thank you for your Slavic perspective.

[@yuribliman8999]

@@BenLlywelyn Е Та нема за шо. Вам дякую. Maybe it would be interesting to you. There 3 standard ways to say you're welcome in Ukranian 1. Будь ласка - formal, means please, or would you be so kind of 2. Нема за що - informal -- it's nothing or don't mention it 3. Прошу - formal/informal mostly in the Western dialects of Ukrainian. Also means please but like the German 'bitte' I ask for. A Russian-speaking person will understand only the second phrase. A Belarussian-speaking person will understand the phrases N.1 and N.2. The second and the third phases sound very similar in Polish. The word прошу/prosze is present in all these languages, but in both Russian and Belorusin it's grammatically incorrect to use it in this context.

[@Norvaal3]

Thank you for explaining that. I chose to study Welsh because it has a relatively large number of speakers, a lot of resources for learning it, and a fascinating history in its own right. Knowing Spanish already, I am amazed at just how many Latin cognates there are.

[@kevingriffin1376]

Thanks Ben! (btw, It looks like KZbin deleted my earlier comment (probably due to it having a link to Google translate)). What I didn't note before is that before I became literate in Irish, I not only assumed Gaelic and Welsh were very similar languages--I also assumed they were lightweight patois. This is what I needed to believe in order to believe the popular history of Celtic language in Britain and Ireland (I believe was primarily based on the Book of Invasions). It's incredible that I was that ignorant considering I grew up in some of the most Irish communities in the world outside of Ireland (I can recall visiting my Irish speaking great grandparents)! Anyhow, my link to Google translate contains this sentence in Hiberno-English using core vocabulary, "My cow does be eating grass and drinking water." Toggling the translation between the available Celtic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh is rather eye opening.

[@BenLlywelyn]

You are welcome Kevin. The video is doing well so far, so your comment gave me a good idea. Thanks.

[@acanpc333]

Very interesting. That’s good to know. I didn’t realize how long ago that they had split apart, but obviously long enough ago because Welsh and Irish do not even really seem that similar. I wish there was more evidence to the Celtic languages of Iberia! Because I’m Portuguese and it would be cool to know about that. There’s a couple words that we might have inherited from our ancient Celtic ancestors but it’s pretty remote since they got Romanized around 140 BC starting.

[@Karl_with_a_K]

Amazing that Ireland and Wales are so close geographically, yet the native languages diverged to such an extent and so long ago. Yet Scots-Gaelic and Gaeilge are very similar. I think Everyone in Britain should learn a few words of Welsh, a couple of sentences at least, it is a native language after all . Maith thú Ben, is breá liom é.

[@BenLlywelyn]

I suppose the sea would be quite scary in those days.

[@timflatus]

Absolutely. Learning Cornish has given me quite a lot of insight into Welsh and Breton, but Irish is a whole different world. Differences in orthography don't help, but even then you have massive sound changes Fionn = Gwynn and Seabhac = Hebog for example. It's hard to believe these words are cognates. Both languages have initial mutation but the rules are very different with just enough similarities to make it really confusing.

[@Eden.mindrenewal]

The butter shot put a smile on my face on a crappy day ❤😊🙏

[@BenLlywelyn]

Glad it made you cheery.

[@philandrews2860]

Interesting and informative. This also makes one wonder if the Old Irish Gaelic spoken 2000 years ago was at all mutually intelligible with Gaulish and Briton of that time period, since they would have been much closer to their common proto-Celtic ancestor than they are now, with less influence of Latin on the Gaulish and Briton languages. But there is probably no historical record of such a comparison, at least not one that I'm aware of. They had also most likely already acquired their P vs Q differences by then, which would have made it harder for them to understand each other, even at that point. I heard a while ago that even in the ancient Italic language family, there were similar splits in different dialects with different P vs Q consonants, and of course many scholars think that the Italic and Celtic families share a common ancestor (Proto-Italo-Celtic) after the other Centum languages split off from their common PIE ancestry. I believe the latest estimate for that proposed Italic-Celtic family split is around 2000-1500 BCE.

[@davidmandic3417]

They appear to have been similar in some way, based (for example) on how Romans transcribed various personal and place names from Ireland, Britain, Gaul... and how the Irish wrote their names in the ogham alphabet. However, some fairly complex changes affected both Irish and Brythonic in the 5th and 6th centuries, which increased the differences a lot. There was probably some mutual intelligibility between them before that.

[@fpvangel4495]

@@davidmandic3417 They have been making changes for 2000yrs and counting to hide something very sacred to us all.

[@jockhughes6258]

Diolch iawn Ben. I am at level B1 in Scottish Gaelic and continue to learn it and have recently started learning Welsh on Duolingo (since my grandson who lives in Wales might go into Welsh medium education). They are indeed very different, but knowing Gaelic does help when I'm trying to figure out the grammar of Welsh.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Croeso. Yn wir. And I hope your grandson does do Welsh medium education; those schools tend to be a bit better and you get the culture.

[@martinbennett9578]

Subscribed.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you.

[@MikePhilbin1966]

I love your insistence on CE and BCE... :)

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you, Mike.

[@danoloideain4155]

I'm fascinated by the ways Britons & the Gaels came up with vastly different strategies for employing the Latin letters to express the sounds & lexical units of their languages. Very different to the wsys the Germanics did so also, & all those within the same historical period. I'm fluent in Irish, have taught myself to read Welsh pretty well with the help of a dictionary, but interestingly I can understand say 11th c. Welsh much more easily than Irish of the same period. Also I'm interested in how orthography doesn't only follow the spoken language but influences its evolution too, as speakers visualize the spellings as they become more literate. Irish btw akso has much Latin influence but unlike Cymraeg it's mainly thru the church as opposed to things pertinent to the living of daily life, but the monasteries had a great effect on the structure & culture of Irish communities in the middle ages. So perhaps another stream but not quite as strong as the direct Roman & the Norman French ones? Also I doubt very much even well before the era of literate evidence if Goidelic & Brythonic dialects would have been mutually intelligible, except maybe in some cases when Irish colonized the north & west of Britain, could there have been sort of bridge dialects on the ground in those cases? Diolch yn fawr Ben, bainim an-sult as d'fhiseáin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇮🇪

[@BenLlywelyn]

Yes, Scots Gaelic shows evidence of Brythonic influence. The two clearly mixed a lot earlier on. Which is why Scots Gaelic is easier for a Welsh speaker than Irish. Diolch yn fawr.

[@AlltNorrOmAleArNorrland]

Fascinating!!!!

[@64-Mat]

NO on one point at least : Brittonic (your Brythonic) did not become separate incomprehensible languages until after about 1100. Authentic Cornish which survived to the early 18th century can be considered a fifth dialect of Breton up until the late Middle Ages when it and Breton began diverging. It all depends of course on what one considers a limit between language and dialect.

[@morvil73]

Breton and Cornish are close, but I wouldn’t call Cornish a fifth dialect of Breton. There are a number of sound changes an grammatical features that sets Cornish apart from all other Breton dialects. A very significant sound change is the coalescence of old short /o/ and /u/ as well as assibilation of old /d/ (and /t/ in some contexts). While there is some mutual comprehension between Breton and Cornish, it doesn’t really go beyond short simple and basic sentences that have to be pronounced slowly and clearly to be understood.

[@eloisahowell2671]

it seems to make sense to me that the language changes had much to do with mothers and baby-talk. Germanic being 30% corded ware (?) and so perhaps the p and q break had to do with a similar phenomenon. the indo-european men taking wives from pre-indoeuropean cultures, the women would teach their children both languages and over time they became patois. Cajuns know this.

[@BenLlywelyn]

I agree there would have been a lot of blending languages, which would explain why European Language families are so different to each other in phonology.

[@SionTJobbins]

Da iawn Ben, esboniad da. Good explaination. It's also complicated in that the Welsh and Irish orthography are very different, so, even cognate words can be difficult for Welsh speakers to see. It's interesting to think had the Roman Empire existed for another 50 or 100 years how different Welsh would have been. When one sees the Latin words in Welsh they are for everyday objects which is a sure sign of language death, I'm guessing another 100 years and Welsh would have been a Romance language with a strong Celtic substratum. I think the difference between Welsh, Cornish and Breton may have happened a little later, about 900CE is usually quoted as the beginning of Welsh as a distinct language, but, maybe that's what I was taught at school in the 1980s and also there's so little written evidence from the time that it's difficult to say, and naturally any written evidence would tend to be of a more conservative (thought of as prestigious) version of the language. But very interesting and clear video - diolch i ti.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Siôn. Ydy, mae'n ddiddorol iawn fod ni Cymry wedi cael ein troi i mewn i Latins fel Ffrainc aa Sbaen petai'r Ymherodraeth wedi cadw am ganrif arall. Just in the nick of time, fel maen nhw'n dweud! Welsh has been remarkably lucky a few times in its history. Rome, Bible, No English revolution, etc.

[@fics-il3qn]

Puno hvala!🤩👍💗👋

[@robertberger4203]

Slovak is said to be the most understandable Slavic language for speakers of Slavic languages of the eastern, western and southern branches of the Slavic language family . Czechs can understand it easily and Poles understand it fairly well . Among the eastern slavic languages , Slovak is closest to Ukrainian . I've heard a story somewhere on youtube, I can't recall at the moment , of a Slovak and a Slovene who happened to be sitting next to each other on a train journey and were able to carry on a conversation .

[@BenLlywelyn]

Slovak sounds like a good bargain for learning others later.

[@RobertRoberts-s7f]

As a Welshman (Cymro Cymraeg) visiting Brittany for the first time, in recent years, I was pleasantly surprised to realise that a great many Bretton place-names are not only intelligible, but virtually identical to some Welsh place-names. My comprehension of spoken Bretton is hampered by the heavy French influence - but written, it's much easier. I have the same problem with Kernewek... 😕 But with Q Celtic languages? Forget it!

[@BenLlywelyn]

Indeed.

[@SgtRocko]

Great vid. I always laugh because my Bae is from a Gaeltacht in Ireland and Gaelic is his first language (his mum is from Slovenija, so he spoke Gaelic & Slovenijan long before he started speaking English) - anyhow, I'm a Jew, and when he speaks Gaelic I'm always amazed that there IS a language that requires more phlegm than Hebrew lol

[@BenLlywelyn]

Yes, Hebrew and Celtic Languages both ask a certain love of the throat.

[@gearoiddom]

There is a video on KZbin somewhere exploring unusual ties between the “Celtic” and Semitic languages. What the strange similarities could mean historically I have no idea.

[@CarlsLingoKingdom]

Tha bhidio glè mhath an seo! Totally explains why sometimes Cymraeg and Gàidhlig are nearly identical and are SO different at other times.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Glad thiss helped you, Carl!

[@c-5541]

Thanks!

[@BenLlywelyn]

Each time I see generosity it makes my day. Thank you very much. MULTUMESC.

[@Ancient_Hoplite]

Gaeilge: Go raibh maith agat as ucht do físeán spéisiúil. D'fhoghlaim mé mórán faoi na teangacha Ceilteacha nach raibh fhios agam cheana. Maith thú. English: Thanks for the interesting video, learned a lot about the Celtic languages that I didn't know before. Good on you. Unfortunately because of the aforementioned 3000 year old language split I don't know how to translate this comment into Welsh. Go figure.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you. Two languages is well in this day and age, so keep up the Gaeilge.

[@tonyhelliar3719]

Very interesting. I know a little Irish and find it so different to English in all respects, more so than say French, or Spanish.

[@betlamed]

As a German native speaker, I always feel like I should understand Dutch or - maybe even worse - Swyzerdütsch. But when I actually hear it, I get next to nothing. Maybe a word or two every other sentence. Seems a similar scenario over here!

[@BenLlywelyn]

With a short introduction to Dutch grammar and the basic words, a German speaker will get a lot!

[@JuanAlbertoAlonso]

As far as Spanish is concerned, by the 1,000 AD mark it was already considerably different from Latin (documents from the VIII and IX centuries already show forms quite divergent from Latin both phonetically and morphologically). Arabic only had influence on the lexicon, not on the morphology, syntax or phonetics of Spanish. So, if you take Arabic apart, Spanish would be as it is today (and as far from Latin as it is today!) but without a few hundreds of Arabisms in its lexicon. The reason for that is that Spanish originated in northern Spain, where Arabic was never spoken. The bulk of Arabisms were ‘imported’ into the language as the southern Arabic speaking areas were occupied by the northern Romance speaking kingdoms.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Spanish also has considerable influence from Basque in sounds, and simplification.

[@lugo_9969]

Hi Ben, polyglot from ireland here. My opinion is that Breton has very many germanic cognates. In other words, the Saxon invasion 'linguistically got' the celts before the celts scarpered off to britanny .?circa 500 ad. Dagmad = good day....dag....saxon word. It is unlikely that those germanic words travelled landward from the netherlands through calais , paris and down into brittany. However we must also keep an open mind on viking normandy getting words into breton....circa 900 ad. Irish and breton have a very modest linguistic crossover or mutual cognates....maybe only 20 % of words. However their grammar are clearly related.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Comparing Irish and Breton would be interesting.

[@Benjamin-l2f4f]

No. DEMAT, good day, not Dagmad. Like Welsh Dydd & mad

[@muylae]

how would that translate to the continental celts ? how different would their language be ? if you look at the celts from ireland and the celts that ended up in turkey, how different would their language be ?

[@belstar1128]

from the few sources we have they were radically different

[@BenLlywelyn]

The Gauls were much closer linguistically to Brythonic. The Iberian Celts, we have no clear idea.

[@rckoala8838]

The professor who taught both Welsh and Scots Gaelic at my university said once that they were as similar to each other as English and Greek.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Amusing.

[@aleksandarnikolic2743]

Very good👍. See on internet book of professor Ranka Kuić(Crveno i belo-Srpko keltske paralele)- Red and white ,Serbian Celtic parallels. Interesting book about connection between Serbian and Celtic language...

[@cannonballbob6949]

Even with the north germanic languages, just take Swedish and Icelandic, it would take a long time to learn the other becuase they're so different, and that's a split that happened only about 1000 years ago. A lot of words are shared sure but the grammar and the words actually used can be quite different. And then you have Danish and Swedish. They are their closest sister languages. But Norwegian is way more comprehensible than Danish to a Swedish speaker, and the same goes for a Danish speaker, all tho not nearly to the same extant. And a lot of it has to do with the pronunciation. Danish merged a lot of sounds in to one sound, and Swedish merged a lot of other sounds. However in the written form of the languages DANISH is actually slightly easier to understand than Norwiegian for a Swedish speaker. This shows the difference in pronounciation and just how closly related Swedish and Danish are! It's a bit like one speaks English in the normal way, and then the other speaks in morsecode. The same words, same grammar, but a different pronounciation making them completely unintelligible! So if Danish and Swedish were pronounced as they were written, they would be A LOT more intelligible!

[@BenLlywelyn]

Being on the same landmass with Norwegian over history has probably helped Swedish and Danish stay closer to each other than Danish over time.

[@mrwelshmun]

An interesting thing about the Irish connection is that on Ancestry DNA the Breton people are classified as genetically more similar to Irish than Cornish or Welsh even though their language is more similar to Cornish and Welsh

[@BenLlywelyn]

Several reasons could be for this.

[@Benjamin-l2f4f]

Saint Ronan, famous Saint in Brittany came from Ireland. He probably didn't come alone

[@agatheherrou7333]

The relationship between Goidelic and Brythonic languages would be closer to that between Baltic and Slavic languages, which split around the same era. You can clearly see similarities between the two, but nowhere near enough to enable intercomprehension.

[@paganwarriors5340]

More accurate to say celtic broke up in Early Iron age rather than late Bronze age

[@carlosaradas5926]

Le reto al comentarista de este vídeo que me diga, por favor, qué influencias del árabe tiene el texto que estoy escribiendo que lo hagan tan diferente del italiano. Si lo leyese en voz alta, tampoco, porque el castellano no suena a árabe en absoluto, sino que tiene una fonética similar al vasco. No estoy haciendo ningún esfuerzo artificial de selección léxica para expresar lo que expongo. La principal influencia sobre el español que lo distingue del italiano es el substrato prerromano, no la influencia del árabe, que fue una lengua vecina del castellano arcaico, no un superestrato del mismo. El árabe sí fue superestrato de otra lengua romance hablada en esa época en la península en territorio musulmán: el mozárabe, pero este no es el tronco central del que deriva el español actual, que nació al norte del dominio musulmán. Hablamos, es cierto, con algunos vocablos prestados de esa lengua semítica vecina que hablaba una gente que trajo muchas innovaciones a Iberia, pero no son en absoluto tan frecuentes en la conversación normal como para que interfieran de manera especial en la mutua inteligibilidad entre el italiano y español, ni estas representan el factor más importante que diferencia estas dos lenguas. Una abuelita italiana y una abuelita española o portuguesa sin destreza lingüística o conocimiento alguno se pueden entender entre sí mucho mejor de lo que lo harían ninguna de los dos con otra abuelita francesa o rumana, con o sin préstamos del árabe. No sé, es que por mucho que me esfuerce, todavía no consigo introducir una palabra árabe en mi razonamiento para que al menos haya una excepción en lo que digo. A no ser que, por algún motivo extraño, me entre una urgencia terrible para comerme una berenjena con aceite y azúcar y tomar una bebida alcohólica al lado de la alberca (this last word I never use) o algo similar. Please note that aubergine, sugar and alcohol are Arabic loans in English, and in Italian too. Fue un poco artificial este salto contextual arabizante, ¿no? Lo que no es artificial es que si sigo hablando y fuera de ciertos ámbitos léxicos, los préstamos del árabe estarían ausentes en mi discurso casi por completo. Este texto, le aseguro que cualquier italiano lo lee y comprende casi a la perfección y encuentra en él cognados en su lengua. Lo que acaba de decir usted equivaldría a declarar que el irlandés y el galés serían más parecidos si no fuese por la influencia del latín en este último: una soberana tontería.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Si. La principal influencia prerromana del español es de un sustrato similar al vasco. Pero el árabe cambió su dirección.

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

Sono d'accordo. L'influenza dell'arabo sullo spagnolo è supravvaluata. Per le lingue nordgermaniche, lo stesso. Non penso che lui sappia molto di linguistica...

[@carlosaradas5926]

@@BenLlywelyn Sinceramente, no lo veo. El español no miró hacia la Mecca. Miró hacia Roma, miró hacia Francia, miró hacia Europa. También lo hace ahora y hacia América, y le digo lo que lo está cambiando y qué dirección marca la aguja de su brújula 🧭 (palabra árabe, por cierto): los calcos semánticos del inglés, mucho y muy rápido. Sí es cierto que utilizamos préstamos del árabe en nuestro vocabulario cotidiano en un porcentaje ligeramente mayor al de otras lenguas de nuestro entorno, como es natural resultado de nuestra historia, pero se queda ahí, en influencia léxica. Ni fonética, ni morfológica, ni sintáctica. Si usted hace un análisis del lenguaje utilizado un día al "azar" (palabra árabe, pero también lo es "hazard" en inglés) en un periódico, el número de palabras árabes estaría entre el uno y el dos por ciento. Yo tuve una conversación con un licenciado en Cambridge inglés, lingüista, que se pensaba que los artículos definidos del español (el, la, lo) venían del árabe y no de los demostrativos del latín... Le sonaban campanas y no sabía dónde. Había escuchado sobre la frecuencia y significado original de los términos comenzados en "al-", así que le tuve que explicar que palabras tipo "alcalde" son ahora un "blending" y que no las entendemos como "artículo + nombre". Incluso la mayoría de los préstamos del árabe que tenemos están tan cambiados que un marroquí y un argelino no los reconocen. Se lo digo porque me ha pasado varias veces en mis clases de castellano: les menciono que cierta palabra o cierta otra son de origen árabe y les lleva bastante tiempo pensar en cuál es la palabra original. Me ocurrió, por ejemplo, con "barrio", que significa otra cosa distinta a "zona en una ciudad". En fin, que como dice la persona que comentó en italiano, "la influenza dell'arabo sullo Spagnolo e supravvaluata".

[@carlosaradas5926]

@@matteo-ciaramitaro Certo.

[@jboss1073]

A more appropriate division of the Celtic languages based on shared features would be: Brythonic, Gaelic, Ancient Celtic (encompassing Gaulish, Celtiberian, Gallaecian, Galatian, and maybe Lusitanian). Celtic and Germanic were mutually intelligible for 2,000 years, most of the time they existed. 32% of Celtic PIE roots and 22% of Germanic PIE roots are shared only among Celtic and Germanic. For comparison, only 8% of Celtic PIE roots are shared with Italic, which makes up only 6% of Italic PIE roots. Source: Celto-Germanic. Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West. John Koch. Maybe do a video on Celto-Germanic and how much they share and what that means for them? They share PIE roots in specific cultural semantic groups.

[@BenLlywelyn]

I am of the opinion it was Italo-Celtic, and that Germanic was closer to Baltic (at least earlier on before shifts).

[@jboss1073]

@@BenLlywelyn "[...] a close relationship between Celtic and Italic is widely recognized. Going back to August Schleicher (1861/1862), many linguists have argued for Italo-Celtic as a primary subgrouping (i.e. a node on the family tree) of Indo-European.42 On the other hand, Watkins (1966) argued strongly against an Italo-Celtic proto-language, countered by Cowgill (1970). More recently Mallory and Adams (2006, 78) accept Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic as Post-Proto-Indo-European unified languages, but favour treating Italo-Celtic as a contact phenomenon. Similarly, Clackson and Horrocks conclude: ‘Latin shares more features with Celtic than any other IE language branch outside Italy. The links to Celtic do not, however, seem sufficiently close to allow us to reconstruct an “Italo-Celtic” proto-language…’ (2007, 32-4) We may be coming close to the proverbial ‘distinction without a difference’ in attempting to decide whether the evidence for Italo-Celtic is better explained as Post-Proto-Indo-European unity or intense contact between mutually intelligible dialects before the sound laws of Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic had operated. For most purposes, recognizing that Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic were close sisters at a very early stage will suffice. However, a general reluctance to accept common nodes between Proto-Indo-European and the ten branches presents challenges in any attempt to align the linguistic evidence with that for archaeological cultures and genetic populations." Proto-Italic is famously difficult to reconstruct, with few experts agreeing on the most important intermediary stages; there is really only Latin to help in that reconstruction, which makes it an impossible task. Hence, trying to connect Celtic, or any other language, with a ghost such as Proto-Italic, is not really saying much. I think Italo-Celtic proponents should first focus on reconstructing Proto-Italic in a way that more experts can agree on. Where do you think is the Proto-Italic homeland? And where do you think it had contact with Proto-Celtic? I will agree, however, that the Proto-Celts and the Proto-Italics had the same genetics, namely Iron Age Iberian (30-35% Yamnaya). But Etrucans and Rhaetians shared the same genetics and spoke non-Indo-European languages. Pannonians in the East also had the same genetics and again spoke completely different languages.

[@davidmandic3417]

@@jboss1073 I'd say it's impossible to know whether there was a Proto-Italo-Celtic or not. Apart from Latin, old Italic and Celtic languages are far from being well attested, there are some other possibly closely related languages we know very little about (for example, Venetic and Lusitanian), and there were probably some other similar languages that are completely unknown to us. So it's hard to say. If there was such a proto-language, it might have been spoken somewhere in central Europe, but who knows. On the other hand, looking at Old Irish and Latin, I think there are some fairly obvious similarities between them, which probably aren't the result of later contacts. However, that isn't surprising really, since there must have been a Late PIE dialect continuum, and both Celtic and Italic were in more or less the same part of that continuum. Germanic, however, appears quite different from Celtic, for example the verb morphology is fairly different etc. Germanic might be closer to Balto-Slavic.

[@jboss1073]

@@davidmandic3417 Nevertheless, Celtic and Germanic branches share more PIE cognates with each other than any other pair of branches and much more than would be expected. But the die-hards keep pressing on that Italo-Celtic button because they just want it to be true in the fact of all contrary evidence.

[@acarbonellpersonal4662]

​@@jboss1073I agree with the opinion that the Italo Celtic connection is something special; moreover, I think that Q-Celts lived near Rome, in Tuscany (the villanovans, intermixed with the etruscans) and influenced Old Roman population and language, but this matter has not been studied until today

[@masterdon3821]

How can I find the background music

[@BenLlywelyn]

Uppbeat is the site. Brock Hewitt, Cory Alstad, Revo, Jonny Easton. And Pixabay music some.

[@TreforTreforgan]

Whatever books people are reading to gain their information about Celtic languages i feel it would be remiss, if not a bit silly, to look passed the works of Andrew Koch and Barry Cunliffe. They are the most researched works in the present age and present fascinating theories therein. Cunliffe’s theory is that Celtic Languages developed in the British Isles primarily. The Irish brought to mainland Britain the knowledge of turning ore to metal and that a Celtic lingua franca emerged to facilitate this trade. Of course this language was based on PIE. Consider the etymology of the word ‘generate’ coming from PIE ‘gene’; to give birth to. We have almost the exact same word in modern Welsh usage having the exact same meaning, ‘geni’. There are many such examples in Welsh if we go looking for them. The likelihood is that Celtic languages formed here then moved outwards into Europe and were hugely influential on other European languages from the beginning of the Bronze Age. Latin being no exception.

[@TreforTreforgan]

Addendum: the word Goidelic is actually a Brythonic term for the Irish. Its meaning is given as ‘wild man’ or some such. Although i have no formal qualifications in linguistics (nor anything else for that matter) i am however a first language Welsh speaker and had a father from Ireland who was bilingual Irish and English, and i feel i can dispute the definition we have become used to. The Welsh Gwyddel does not suggest gwyllt/wild to me. Rather the element Gwydd- suggests knowing or knowledge. This is backed up in theory by PIE research. So knowing as we do now that the Irish brought knowledge of smelting to the Brythonic peoples i think someone should suggest an update of the origin of the term Gwyddel.

[@BenLlywelyn]

True.

[@TreforTreforgan]

@@BenLlywelyn cheers👍

[@TreforTreforgan]

There are words in both Welsh and Irish that bear uncanny resemblances to Semitic languages also. No surprise being as the Phoenicians traded extensively with the souther Britons for well over a thousand years

[@BenLlywelyn]

We don't know how extensively Phoenecians traded to Britain, but we do know that it would have largely been through several middle men between.

[@boxsterman77]

Who can be blamed for thinking these languages, all Celtic, should be similar if they exist in such close proximity as well?

[@BenLlywelyn]

Indeed so.

[@FenceThis]

0:50 that’s not exactly cutting butter either

[@BenLlywelyn]

🙂

[@arpadtatar5052]

From the XVIII. century, the Romanians took over many-many French words. That's how they rejuvenated their language.

[@arpadtatar5052]

Of coruse, they took over also Italian and German words too.

[@KerrikkiLurgan]

During the bronze age, there was a far amount of international trade for tin in the Welsh area. I am not sure if that existed in Ireland. Based on the prevalence of English in today's economy, I would assume that Welsh would pick up words from the traders from the Mediterranean. That could have been the start of the language divergence. Then in the ce, when Vikings settled in Ireland, that could have increased the divergence. Manx would have been overwhelmed by the Vikings settling there, so the divergence could have been greater. Whereas, in Ireland, the Irish tribes outnumbered the settlers; who concentrated in the Dublin area. In truth, I am not a scholar on this subject, just an interested "layman"

[@BenLlywelyn]

It is true that trade up from the south would have been more frequent in Wales. As for Manx, it is almost a Celto-Norse language. It is impressive for being Celtic at all after so much Norse influence.

[@AnBreadanFeasa]

Irish Gaelic was also influenced by loan words from Latin... in particular relating to religion... Eaglais - church - ecclesia ; cathaoir - chair - cathedra - cathedral ; sagart - priest - sacerdote. The fundamental structure is not dissimilar to Latin in the way that verbs are conjugated and nouns are declined, but in general grammar has not been impacted. Both Gaelic and Welsh are Verb - Subject - Object, while Latin is Subject - Object - Verb.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Italic and Celtic are closer to each other than Germanic

[@gcanaday1]

By this timeline, I would guess that the Goidelic languages could be considered the older branch?

[@BenLlywelyn]

More conservative, not necessarily older.

[@resourcedragon]

It seems to me that there are arguments for regarding the Brythonic and Goidelic languages as separate language groups in the way that (say) the Romance and Germanic languages are separate. They may not be quite as different as the Romance and Germanic groups but they're different enough that they shouldn't be grouped together.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Irish Celtic and British Celtic are almost as far apart as Baltic and Slavic. So you may be right.

[@davidmandic3417]

No, I don't think so... if you look at Old Irish and Middle Welsh (there isn't much of Old Welsh left to us) you can see obvious similarities. The difference between Romance and Germanic is way more considerable, and much older too.

[@corriemooney9812]

Could the split be older? Early Bronze Age? 2200 BC?

[@BenLlywelyn]

Probably not.

[@davidowen9070]

Da iawn ben . Diddorol iawn!

[@grovergrandle3018]

I wonder if maybe the difference between welsh and goidelic is like the difference between baltic and slavic

[@BenLlywelyn]

Fascinating idea.

[@davidmandic3417]

I think the differences between Baltic and Slavic are much more considerable, especially in their verb systems where the differences seem to be very old. The medieval forms of Irish and Welsh, however, have many things in common. The most important differences are in pronunciation (the evolution of sounds) and in the fact that Welsh had lost its case system before the earliest written records (but even that seems to have happened as late as the Late Antiquity).

[@jessegomes6366]

Irish and scots gaelic AND welsh still all sound extremely similar to eachother. Just like Italian to Spanish or Portuguese.

[@BenLlywelyn]

You think they sound similar. How so? Which sounds?

[@jessegomes6366]

@@BenLlywelyn Just all of it in general. It's like Italian/Spanish/Portuguese

[@fpvangel4495]

My decodings will show you we all carried the same knowledge, given that the information relates to the Creators glory has it always been that there is an entity trying to hide this knowledge and messing with the languages? This is still ongoing today.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Messed with what knowledge, and same knowledge of what?

[@fpvangel4495]

@@BenLlywelyn You would have to watch that video to understand what has been stolen from us all.

[@christopherellis2663]

This shows a profoundly dysfunctional education system if this distinction has not been made. It's almost as uncanny as not knowing about the various Romance tongues in the Balkans ( four). Nowadays, it's an inability to use the Internet. 😢

[@BenLlywelyn]

The way Celtic Languages are classified reflect a 19th century scan of the world. We have learned a lot since then about language and our own lands.

[@nigelwiseman8644]

nice

[@OutsidersRo]

❤👍👍👍

[@violenceislife1987]

ASMR butter & voice

[@BenLlywelyn]

Pure talent.

[@debshenley]

You have an unusual accent. I’m curious to know where you are from. Obviously your last name is Welsh but your accent is difficult to place. Irish?

[@BenLlywelyn]

I am Texan Welsh.

[@celteuskara]

Nice, shame about the BCE/CE cuckery, though.

[@BenLlywelyn]

In my faith Jesus is a false Messiah.

[@henkvandervossen6616]

The difference between spanish and italian is akso heavily influenced by the basque language

[@BenLlywelyn]

YES.

[@Inquisitor_Vex]

I thought Gaelic was closer to Gaulish than Brythonic?

[@BenLlywelyn]

No.

[@AlltNorrOmAleArNorrland]

Wait… are you Welsh or Romanian? Or maybe both?

[@BenLlywelyn]

What if I were Korean?

[@idiosyncraticmushroom3030]

I think that it's also worth noting that, between Brythonic and Goidelic, there is a very big difference in the alphabets used, since the Goidelic languages have such intense mutations.

[@michaelhalsall5684]

I've always wondered why their was so much difference between the spelling of Welsh and Irish perhaps that explains it. Regarding spelling the two revived Celtic languages, (Goidelic) and Cornish (Brythonic) used spelling based on English spelling conventions. Breton (Brythonic) has a seperate spelling system😊

[@ApollonianShy18]

And when ppl talk Romanian & Italian are so very similar - i just dont understand that 😂 ... ive read some italian words to which if no translation would have shown i wouldnt have understood, id have been like wtf that cute words w a monkeyish accent... 😂 ... my gods, that's tough & still Romanian & Italian are said to be closest... in Romanian/Moldavian diaspora there, sure - id joke 😅 they're even influencing nowadays 😂 Ps: sry, that italian d be closest to Romanian (& i mean standard Italian)

[@ApollonianShy18]

Sry, that italian s the closest to Romanian... my English s lazy, cs the cold & eye tiring...

[@BenLlywelyn]

It is the substrates in my opinion that make Italian and Romanian sound so different.

[@Jefff72]

American ov vy, hag os vy trigys yn Almaen. My a vyn dyski kernewek. Yth esov vy ow mos dhe Kernow an hav vyu a dheu. I hope I got that right. I had to use my notes to write that. Resources to learn Cornish seem to be limited. ChatGPT helped me but I found that isn't always right.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Amazing how much Cornish I can get with Welsh. Trigo (Welsh) means to reside in. Dysgu is to learn. Yw, is he / she.

[@Jefff72]

@@BenLlywelyn I don't know how accurate it is. ChatGPT once told me Gernow for Kernow. when I mentioned that, it responded like a human. It said something like, I mistyped that.

[@Jefff72]

@@BenLlywelyn I wonder if Cornish & Welsh are closer or farther apart like Dutch & German. I speak German as a 2nd language and noticed that I can read some Duch.

[@TineBeo]

Togha fir. An obair.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Chan eil an ciall cinnteach.

[@johnkirke8356]

Go raibh maith agat as ucht an léiriú seo.

[@Benjamin-l2f4f]

Diolch. Dwi wedi dysgu rhywbeth am hanes yr ieithoedd Celtaidd. Dwi'n siarad Llydaweg a Chymraeg. Ond yn defnyddio'r Gymraeg fel arfer.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Diolch yn fawr iawn.

[@sterlingdafydd5834]

Cyfarchion oddi wrth Houston…mae’r awyr yn ffresh ac yn braf

[@BenLlywelyn]

Cyfarchion llu! Tywydd gwell yno nac yma dw i'n siŵr.

[@robtbarton9]

Good God. Thought it was meant to discuss Celtic Languages but it seems to bang on about everything but. Think I'll get out now and stop wasting time with this before the discussion of Klingon and the languages of Middle Earth. Here is a hint. If you are half way through a video and have not even started to discuss the subject in the title, change the name of the video.

[@BenLlywelyn]

Thank you for watching.

[@MrResearcher122]

There is a lot more placed on presentation than the subject at hand. I'd prefer a direct approach but his fan base seems to love the music, the background etc.

[@robtbarton9]

I guess. Just really poor signal to noise ratio. ​@@MrResearcher122

[@wtfamiactuallyright1823]

Are you trying to put yourself, out of the job? 😕

[@BenLlywelyn]

Why?

[@wtfamiactuallyright1823]

Because all this made me think. What would be the point in ever learning such languages? I mean no offence, it's just what went on in my head.

[@BenLlywelyn]

You cannot understand another culture through English.

[@wtfamiactuallyright1823]

You can, but, there's an increased likelihood that things will be missed. I think you've answered my question. Do you enjoy the history, more than the language itself?

[@janetcox4873]

The hands, .....stop, .....can't watch.

[@BenLlywelyn]

🙌

[@Thebattler86]

Unfounded bulls crap. The Irish came from Scythia. The Britons and Gauls came from Troy. Nothing to do with eachother.

[@petertromans5599]

Cachu ychen!

[@Thebattler86]

@@petertromans5599 YOU ARE TOO STUPID TO LOOK AT THE FACTS SO YOU BELIEVE AN AMERICAN WHO KNOWS NOTHING. LOOK UP WILSON AND BLACKETT

[@morvil73]

😂🤣😂🤣😂

[@mardroidmk1393]

I've read those stories where Britons came from Troy too. According to that, the leader of the Trojan settlers was Brutus and our island, Britain, is derived from his name. I think that's a lot of rubbish. How similar are the words 'Brutus' and 'Britain' really? They share the first two letters and are both two syllables. Britain is more likely derived from the prettani. No 😊doubt the writers of the myths just wanted to link Britain to the classical Greek myths... but it's interesting rubbish.

[@bantorio6525]

... I couldn't care less ... !!! ... who cares ... ???

[@BenLlywelyn]

You cared enough to watch, thank you.

[@paulohagan3309]

Who cares about linguistics and history? Leaving other considerations aside, the number of videos on either of these subjects on KZbin suggests that there are a considerable number of people interested in both subjects.

[@bantorio6525]

@@paulohagan3309 ... Iol ... !!!