Britonnic - Celtic Pictish

Most modern authorities class Celtic Pictish as a dialect of Northern Britonnic and not as a separate language.

Its affinities with Gaulish (a language about which we know a little more) has led some to classify it as "a third dialect of the p-Celtic family, neither Gaulish nor Brittonic". There are three sources for the language of the Picts, contemporary and later documents, place-names, and folk traditions and legends. All three are extremely sparse. Consequently what type of language was spoken, and even how many languages were in use, has been a source of controversy and disagreement for many years.

Although the Pictish inscriptions using the Ogham alphabet in the north east of Scotland can be read letter by letter, the resulting texts are incomprehensible. No satisfactory explanation of this has yet been proposed unless Jackson's proposal that these sequences of letters are not texts is accepted.

Celtic Pictish is known to have been spoken in the same area as that covered by the stone monuments. In addition its seems to have extended over most if not all of what is now Scotland.

Classical writers used names of places and people that could be p-Celtic.

Sixteen names on Ptolemy's map (2nd century CE) could be Celtic Pictish. Two of them, Bannatia and Decantae, certainly are.

Personal names found in other classical texts could be either p-Celtic or q-Celtic. Later documents date from the twelfth century but may contain material as early as the ninth century.

The list of Pictish kings (earliest manuscript from the tenth century) gives information that can be cross-checked from about 550 CE onward.

Before this the list cannot be relied upon. The names of the kings are of primary interest for the question of language. They fall into two groups, those that are clearly P Celtic and those that cannot be classified.

Place names provide further evidence.

In particular, the area between the Firth of Forth and Sutherland contains many place names starting with "pitt". This is cognate with Welsh and Cornish "peth" (thing), but seems to be used with the meaning "a small piece of land". This element occurs only four times south of the "Pictish area". Gaulish had "petia" also meaning "a piece of land".

Drostan	Tristran
Uuen	Owen
Tarain	thunder
Lutrin	vigor
Onuist	ash tree