Indo-European Family: Celtic

Common Celtic or "Alt Keltisch" is a reconstructed language needed in linguistics to provide an ancestor to the known Celtic languages.

It may be assumed that a language like Common Celtic was spoken in the Celtic heartlands in northern and western France, on the right bank of the Rhine extending through all of Germany up to the forest barrier, and in lower Austria. With the expansion of the Celts into the Po valley, the British Isles, Iberia and Galatia the language will have begun to disintegrate.

The biggest change will have been the conversion of the Indo-European k^w sound to p. Common Celtic had lost the Indo-European initial "p", consequently the change necessitated the re-introduction of this sound. The change was not completed in the more remote and isolated speech regions (Ireland and Iberia). The Celtic languages that did not undergo this sound change are called "q" Celtic whereas those that did are known as "p" Celtic. The "p" Celtic had been established before the expansions into Italy (before 600 BCE.) and Anatolia.

Celtic survives today in the British Isles and (by migration from south western Britain and in particular Devon and Cornwall) in Brittany.

The relationship between the surviving insular Celtic languages and the defunct continental Celtic languages can be illustrated by the words for "horse". The Romance languages of France, Iberia and Italy are influenced by Celtic. German and the Slavonic show less influence.

Although new sources for the study of the Celtic languages are unlikely to be found in quantity, a major, largely unexploited, reserve of information is contained by the place-names and other surviving proper names in Europe.

Some names (of rivers, mountains etc.) found in the British Isles and on the mainland seem to have been coined by speakers of an Indo-European language (or languages) that was not Celtic. Such words are usually labelled "pre-Celtic".