Two charts and seventeen maps, showing how the languages of Britain and Ireland have changed since the Roman rule of Britannia ended 1600 years ago!
First, check out this GIF I made!
When most people think of the languages of Britain and Ireland, they probably think of English. It’s the language pretty much everybody speaks, and sadly we have a fairly monolingual reputation (especially the English). Hopefully you also think of the Celtic languages, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic. There is also Scots, considered by some to be a dialect of English, but really a separate language.
But there are many more native languages you probably haven’t heard of, and the linguistic history of Britain and Ireland is actually a very complex and interesting one. How do Cumbric, Cornish and Pictish fit in? What is Manx? Have you heard of Norn? Sercquiais? Shelta? Beurla Reagaird? Yola? Here I will try to show you how the many languages of our history are related, where they come from, and where they went, using 2 diagrams and 17 maps of British and Irish languages.
Firstly, here is a tree of all these languages, to give you some idea of the variety and complexity.
For a quick summary of all those languages, check out my other post:
Every Native British and Irish Language
This post will mainly focus on the major languages that dominated different regions of Britain and Ireland over time, rather than minority languages. Here is another chart I made showing which languages were most widely spoken in Wales, England, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ireland, since 400 AD.
This is meant to give a vague idea, rather than exact percentages, as reliable data about this is sparse. It only takes into account native speakers, and, in the case of bilingualism, I’ve shown the non-English language.
And now, the maps:
Before 400 AD
When the Romans arrived in England in 43AD, they found Britain populated with many different tribes, all speaking the Common Brittonic language. Irish tribes spoke a distantly related language called Archaic Irish. They also described a group of tribes in northern Scotland called the Picti, but we can’t be sure if their language was separate from Common Brittonic yet. The Romans then colonised the region, and British Latin became a minority language, spoken by the rulers and settlers from the mainland empire.
By 500 AD
The Roman rule of Britain ended in 410AD, and many Latin speakers were summoned back to defend Rome. British Latin, already a minority language, was eclipsed by the native Brittonic language, although it may have remained a minority language in some areas until as late as 700AD.
With the Romans gone, a new group set their sights on Britain: the Anglo-Saxons. They came from Denmark and northern Germany, and colonised the south and east coasts of Britain. They spoke a collection of Germanic dialects, which became Old English.
Meanwhile an Irish kingdom, the Dal Riata, invaded western Scotland and spread Old Irish to the Northwest of Britain.
By 600 AD
By 600 AD, Old English had spread further into England and the south east of Scotland. The Dal Riata expanded deeper into western Scotland. Pictish was very probably a different language to Common Brittonic by this point.
Irish settlement of the Isle of Man had probably begun by this time.
By 700 AD
By this time Old English had spread so far into Britain that Common Brittonic was divided into three separate regions, each with a different dialect of the language. Archaic Irish had evolved into Old Irish, and spread further into Scotland. Pictish was confirmed as a separate language by scholars of this time.
By 800 AD
By this time, Brittonic had diverged into 3 distinct forms: Old Cornish, Old Welsh, and Cumbric. The Vikings formed The Kingdom of the Isles, ruling over the Isle of Man and the Hebrides of Scotland; and Kingdom of The Northern Isles, ruling Orkney and Shetland. Vikings may have founded the Irish city of Wexford by 800AD.
By 900 AD
Old Irish replaced Pictish in most of Scotland.
The Vikings reached their peak, and the Danish ruled most of Northern England. They founded many towns, and the Norse language left a major impact on English, especially in northern English dialects. The Vikings also founded Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, which became the first large towns in Ireland. Cumbria was not directly ruled by the Danish, but many Vikings settled there.
By 1000 AD
The Vikings were finally driven out of England. Old Irish evolved into Middle Irish, and may have totally replaced Pictish in Scotland by this time. Vikings settled parts of southern Wales. The Normans annexed the Channel islands, and whatever language was spoken there (probably some dialect of Brittonic or Gauliah) began to be replaced with Norman French.
By 1100 AD
Pictish was gone, and Cumbric was on its way out. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 brought a new minority language, Anglo-Norman, used by the elite Norman rulers of the nation.
By 1200 AD
The Anglo-Norman influence on Old English caused it to evolve into Middle English, which has many borrowed words of Old French origin. The Normans also invaded Ireland and Wales, spreading Middle English and Anglo-Norman into those regions. Cornish was still being forced further west.
By 1300 AD
Middle Irish evolved into three distinct forms: Early Modern Irish, Early Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, although they all used a standard form called “Classical Irish” in writing.
The Western Isles and the Isle of Man came under Scottish rule, and Norse gradually died out in these regions.
By 1400 AD
The Black Death struck Britain and Ireland in the mid 1300s. This was devastating for the Anglo-Norman colonisation of Ireland, as they mainly lived in towns, while the native Irish were more rural. This caused Norman rule of Ireland to collapse, and Middle English became confined to 2 areas: around Dublin, and Wexford.
English spread further up into Scotland, causing the Galwegian dialect of Gaelic to diverge. Galwegian probably had more in common with Manx and the Irish spoken in Ulster than with other parts of Scotland.
By 1500 AD
Middle English had undergone so many changes that it is now classified as a new language: Early Modern English. In Scotland, the far north of England, and Ireland (Wexford, Fingal), many of these changes didn’t happen, so these dialects diverged a lot from the English of southern England. Thus Scots, Yola, and Fingalian were born.
By 1600 AD
The plantations of Ireland had begun (although they remain small scale), and many settlers arrived from Scotland and England.
Scots had moved further into Scotland, and into the Northern isles.
By 1700 AD
The plantations of Ireland increased in scale, with huge areas of land being confiscated from the Irish by the British government, and granted to British settlers.
Cornish was only spoken by a few thousand people in the far west of the county.
Scots replaced Norn as the main language of most people in Orkney and Shetland. English speakers became a growing minority on the Channel Islands.
By 1800 AD
The English language was becoming more common in Ireland, but Irish still remained a majority language. English was beginning to overtake Manx as the main language of the Isle of Man. The last native speakers of the Cornish language were dead. Wales remained the spoken language of most of Wales.
Scots continued to spread, causing the Galwegian dialect of Gaelic to die out.
By 1900 AD
The 1800s was a dark century for British and Irish languages, and English came to dominate in most regions.
Exacerbated by the horrendous and wilful negligence by the British government, the Great Famine devastated Ireland, causing the death and emigration of so many people that the population of Ireland dropped by a quarter. This century also saw the introduction of schools in which students were forbidden from speaking Irish, and a general stigma created around the language by the British and the Catholic church. All these factors combined caused the Irish language to be largely replaced with English.
Yola and Fingalian, those strange descendants of 12th century Middle English spoken in Ireland, were totally replaced modern with English by 1850, although left a few words in the local dialects of their regions.
Meanwhile, Scotland suffered its own horrors. The Highland Clearances were the eviction of many mainly Gaelic speaking people from their land in the Scottish highlands, forcing many of them to emigrate to the west coast, to the lowlands, and even to America and Canada. The Highland Potato Famine also struck, further encouraging emigration. Meanwhile in the Lowlands of Scotland, Scots became seen as unfashionable by many of the gentry, and English became increasingly common. Dialects in England likely saw a similar phenomenon, as “Standard English” became the language of education and the higher classes in every region.
In Wales, the Welsh language was banned in schools, as the British government attempted to ensure every Welsh person could speak English.
By this time, less than 10% of Manx people could speak Manx, and the last Norn speaker died in 1850.
By 2000 AD
Despite attempts at reviving the language by an independent Ireland, the Irish language became increasingly rare as a native language throughout the 1900s. The number of people who speak Irish as a second language has increased, however.
Scottish Gaelic as a first language is now primarily localised to the outer Hebrides. Scots has seen a steep decline too, with the Scottish government pushing English as the more useful language.
English has overtaken Norman as the main language on every Channel Island.
In Wales, the English language is spoken by virtually everyone, although recent efforts have seen the Welsh language revived somewhat.
The last native speakers of Manx died in 1974.
By 2000, the English language was a first language of nearly every native of Britain and Ireland.
After 2000 AD
That last map looks pretty sad. But there is hope!
Irish revival efforts have seen an increase in the number of young people speaking Irish, and there are hundreds of Irish languages schools in Ireland.
The number of Welsh speakers has has been on the rise since 2000, after Welsh became compulsory in all schools.
Cornish and Manx were both dead languages (with no native speakers) at the end of the 20th century, but continued to be used as second languages. They are now the first languages (along with English) of a handful of children in Cornwall and Mann respectively. Revival efforts have actually brought those languages back from the dead!
Scots has been officially reclassified as a separate language, and it has been included in the school curriculum in lowland of Scotland. Scots continues to be used as both a household language, and one of literature and poetry.
And even though Cumbric has been gone for around 900 years, its counting system survived, and is still used by Cumbrian farmers when counting sheep today. Yan tan tethera methera pip!
It’s also worth remembering that several of the Celtic languages have spread outside the region:
An offshoot of Old Cornish is alive and well in Brittany, France: Breton has over 220,000 native speakers.
A Welsh dialect, Patagonian Welsh, is spoken natively by between 1,500 and 5000 people in Argentina.
And a dialect of Scottish Gaelic can be found all over Atlantic Canada, and is the native tongue of over 1000 Canadians, the descendent of those who emigrated during the highland clearances.
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Loved this little series, I thought it was well made, clearly set out and very informative. However, there are those who would argue your sentiments on languages such as Cornish and Manx having died out. Many scholars now recognise that Cornish actually survived it’s official death date in the last 1800s. Allegedly, certain families up until the revival would speak to each other in Cornish at home. There were also speakers in the diaspora who allegedly spoke Cornish too.
As someone of Welsh origin, I would also like to point out that the map isn’t entirely accurate in regards to Welsh. Whilst the last monoglot Welsh speakers died out quite some time ago (early 1900s I believe), Welsh has never really ceased to be spoken as a second language. My grandfather was born in the valleys north of Swansea and his first language was Welsh, having only learned English from the age of 10. He was born in 1937 and says all of his peers were the same and they would only ever speak English when they were in the presence of an Englishman or at school. Also, even in the modern age, if you meet someone from the far north west of Wales, quite often they are actually more comfortable conversing in Welsh than in English.
I do however, recognise that your map uses broad strokes in order to illustrate the bigger picture and I think that’s more than fair. I just find the vast complexities of languages very interesting.
Thank you very much!
Yes, I read about the claims for a continuously, natively spoken Cornish language. But couldn’t find any evidence for it other than stuff like “My great granny says her neighbour could speak it” and other somewhat unreliable claims. It is a possibility that native speakers never fully died out, but not a strong enough one for me to buy into I’m afraid.
And I’m sorry if my Wales map was unclear: in the last couple of maps I showed the blue and red together, labelled “Modern Welsh & English”, to show that the region became bilingual. I am well aware that the language held its own, and in many ways is has been the most successful language of the region at resisting the seemingly unstoppable tide of English. My girlfriend’s father is a native Welsh speaker, and was monolingual until he was about 6! He’s from Pembrokeshire, so even in the South West the language is still doing well.
As I recall, the opera singer Bryn Terfel is a Native Welsh speaker.
Most first language Welsh speakers (having both parents as first language Welsh speakers)are monolingual until around 6 or 7 years old. Then there are the offspring of mixed parentage where one or the other is a monolingual English speaker and the other a first language Welsh speaker. In this case, the child is often bilingual from birth.
Welsh is my second language and this meant that my daughter (now in her mid 20s) born to a first language Welsh speaker spoke only Welsh until about 6 years old – she spoke her first independent English to me when 6, whilst on a holiday in Greece.
My area of interest amidst all this is the active destruction of the Welsh language by native speakers who abandon Welsh and deliberately fail to pass it on to the next generation The reasons are legion but in the current wider Welsh speaking family I’m associated with, two sisters married monolingual English speakers and still live in Wales, yet deliberately chose not to speak Welsh to their kids because of such marriage. This means that kids born and bred in Wales cannot speak in Welsh to aunties, uncles and cousins nor even bizarrely Welsh learners because the chain was deliberately broken.
For me personally, I find this abhorrent especially when the Welsh speaking parent will speak Welsh to their own siblings and others when their kids don’t even know what is being said. Once the chain is broken, it is very difficult to restore.
Good article though. The first Germanics to arrive spoke Germanic dialects and the first recognisable English came some time later than you mention. The genesis of English saw the almost total abandonment of gender in a very short time which was I believe a major step in the evolution of English away from the earlier Germanic tongues. It was Anglian English which eventually prevailed over the other dialects. It is also possible that a base stone of Romano-British – Germanic was already established by the time the Romans departed. They didn’t just up sticks overnight. The Roman political system was collapsing in the West of the Empire for 100 years before final departure and my personal belief is that during that period, considerable numbers of Germanics settled on the east coast of what is now England and were allowed to do so providing they caused no trouble – the Romans were harassed by Germanic pirates in the North Sea. This earlier immigration and settling I’ve come to believe aided considerably the establishment of the Germanic dialects which evolved reasonably fast into the first recognisable English.
Yes, we can’t forget the diversity the Romans brought with them. As well Latin, they brought many continental Celtic mercenaries, and a couple of stone heads of supposedly Gaulish design were recently found by some family friends in my hometown.
And the early ancestors of English can probably be traced back to Anglo-Saxon mercenaries too.
My father told me of hearing a man speaking Gaelic in the Western Isles in the 1960s and complimenting him on it; he replied: “Aye, I speak Gaelic but I’m making damn sure my children don’t.” That was when it was widely considered a bacward peasant language – the revival of official support for it was still to come.
Marthys da yw an kevres ma – ober da. [marvelous good is this series]. I think you have been very generous to Cornish in Devonshire. King Athelstan ethnically cleansed Brydhonic speakers out of Exeter 936 and fix the border as the Tamar with King Huwel in 936. I am one of the small dots you can’t quite see in Cornwall 2000!
Oll an gwella
Thank you so much for this excellent combination of articles, maps and charts. Brilliantly composed. I took up your invitation to share it on my Twitter account, and I’ve book-marked it for future reference. It has already attracted many likes and retweets on Twitter. Very well done.
If you watch the Irish documentary regarding the Irish Language called “No Béarla” (No English). You will see the presenter Manchán Magan travel to the Isle of Man and you can see they are really trying to bring back the language and children are speaking it now. I found it very interesting how Manchán could converse with no problems with the Manx speaker, the two languages must be very close. It has been a while since I’ve watched it but I think they do talk about Welsh and Cornish also. I am going to watch it again tonight.
Cheers
I’ve always been confused as to how the Du Llyn got into Dublin ? Could Ireland have been more Brittonic at one time or did it go the other way ?
Great images – very helpful. Downloadable?
Having spent time in Argentina in Chubut in areas where Welsh was spoken. Today its very hard to find a Welsh speaker and numbers are well below 1000.
At least 5 native speakers of Cornish were alive at the outbreak of World War 1. The revival had begun in earnest 10 years earlier, so it’s a myth to claim that Cornish “died out”. It never did, but it was mighty close to doing so, From 5 speakers then to 5,000 now is a remarkable comeback and it’s still growing in use with at least 40 regular classes, including in Bristol and London, and (I believe) in Australia, too. Bilingual signage is appearing all over the Cornish landscape. Gen oll bolonjedh vas!
Really good presentation! I find the evolution of languages fascinating. Loved the graphics especially! Thanks!
A really interesting and thought provoking article combining history and maps. I would love to post this on my Genealogical Society group page on Facebook. Because I see no Share , is there a restriction or is there a way to Share it? Loved this and am reading for a second time ….
My website is fairly new, and I’m still working out how it all works. I will add a share button very soon though, thanks for the tip
You forget Breton among the offshoots of Brythonic in your “family tree” of languages…
Don’t forget it, its right there at the very bottom with Patagonian Welsh and Canadian Gaelic, the two other Celtic languages/dialects spoken outside the region.
But this is not a map of Celtic languages, but a map of British and Irish ones. Breton is no longer a British language.
Good stuff. Fingallian also had much borrowed from Irish Gaeilge. A dialect of Irish that came from Cork and Waterford and had long died out there was still spoken by fishing villages in Newfoundland into the 20thC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language_in_Newfoundland
You forgot the Shelta and Gammon of the Irish Travellers, and the language of the Scots Travellers. Also, the arrival of Romany to England, then Bohemian Romany.
Today, more Chinese and Polish speak their languages than Gaelic spoken by Irish, and should be included.
Also forgotten are the Palatine German settlements of Mayo, Limerick and Kilkenny.
Minority British and Irish languages are better covered in my other post:
https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-and-irish-language/
There I mention Shelta, Scottish Cant, and Anglo-Romani.
I didn’t got into recent immigrant language because I feel “native language” implies that the language evolved into a separate dialect or language in a particular region… as far as I know there are no specific Anglo-Polish dialects yet, although I’m sure within a hundred years there could be. Palatine German in Ireland is a new one for me though, so I’ll look into that , thanks.
Immigrant languages would be a good subject for another post I think.
Reference to German Palatines and French Huguenots in Ireland for the purposes of your map would be a red herring. Their numbers were small and virtually all were speaking English within one generation. They assimilated in to the Irish Protestant community with great ease. In the case of the German Palatines, many didn’t even stay long in Ireland, but moved on to North America.
Superb!
Great work. Would have been interesting to take insular French into account.
I mention Anglo-Norman here… but minority languages are better covered in my other post:
https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-and-irish-language/
Why, Normans were ‘Viking’, Danish, Norse and Swedish influences, and the written language of the Normans, referred to as Vulgar Latin.
The Norman’s didn’t speak Vulgar Latin or Norse, they spoke Norman, a dialect Old French with some borrowings from Norse.
AMAZING, and so well done! Very informative, thanks so much! I’m a writer of Viking histfic and find it so helpful to see which language influences were there at a certain time in my stories. Thinking of a Pictish/Norse clash next. 😁 Thank you for making it so visual, it helps tons to understand.
Excellent article only I’m not sure who the “Normans’s” (sic) might be.
Thanks!
I’ll correct that now
Very interesting, very well presented. I’d just like to say, though, that there are place-names in the south-east of Scotland which appear to testify to an Gaelic influence gthere gthat is not apparently reflected in these maps.
Where does Doric fit in? There are still Doricspeakers in Aberdeenshire.
Doric is a dialect of Scots
Diddorol / interesting! However, As one of the more than 1/2 a million first language welsh speakers I must disagree with your “nearly all” being first language english by 2000. Yma o hyd! 🙂
Those half a million first language Welsh speakers are basically all bilingual in English.
This is why I said “By 2000, the English language was A first language….”.
I’m well aware that Welsh is still widely spoken 🙂
Last week, local researchers discovered an 102 year old woman living in the Strathtummel area of Perthshire in the Eastern Highlands. She is a native speaker of Eastern Perthshire Scottish Gaelic, the local Gaelic of Strathtummel beside Loch Tummel, the last speakers of which were thought to have been recorded in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It turns out she was brought up by her grandparents in Strathtummel who were born in the 1840s when Gaelic was the majority language of the whole of highland Perthshire. She is without doubt the last speaker of Perthshire Gaelic alive today.
Anyway, really interesting blog. I could quibble a bit about your 1500AD to 1800AD maps where Scots is more predominantly shaded in around Inverness, Black Isle, Muir of Ord, Tain and so on. That was definitely not the case before thee 1800s as Easter Ross was predominantly Gaelic until the late 19th century. Also it seems my grandparents’ Gaelic-speaking area of Reay just west of Thurso has been shaded in for Scots/English too early *i.e. before the late 19th century) but all in all these graphics seem to tell the story well. I am also not sure about Scotland “invading” the Western Isles, and driving out the Norse. The Norse settled around the coasts and I think through resettling by Gaelic speakers and intermarriage they became Gaelicised like in Ireland.
Fascinating! And unusual for someone to be found so much later than the accepted date of death for the language. The idea of someone alive today being raised by people born 170 years ago, around the time of the Irish Famine, is very bizarre.
Yes, a couple of people have pointed out my little error there with Scots in the eastern highlands.
The bit about Scotland invading the western Isles its a reference to the fleets of Alexander II and III, and the battle of Largs that followed, which eventually resulted in the Treaty of Perth, and the end of Norwegian rule.
But you are right, it looks like I over simplified and over stated the effect war had on the shift in language. More likely it was a gradual replacement of Norse clan-chiefs with Gaelic ones, and resettling and gradual Gaelicising, as you say. I will edit that part now, thank you.
I too would gently query your use of phrasing such as “invaded” and “driven out”. As with the Norse settlers in the Western Isles, many of those in Ireland and the Danelaw appear to have melded into the newly-dominant local culture. Localised versions of Norse names continue to appear in the chronicles, for instance, while the “last English king” King Harold II Godwinson was half-Danish.
Very interesting! One thing I have noticed since being a child growing up in Wales during the rescue of the language is that the Welsh spoken now as a living language by younger people has changed from what was taught in schools then. It uses lots of new contractions and idioms that we didn’t know then! If I listen to BBC Radio Wales I can mostly follow what is being said, but modern Welsh TV programmes like ‘Hinterland’ leave me floundering. So maybe late 20thC Welsh is now ‘Post-modern’ Welsh?
Interesting! And a good sign I’m sure, that the language is still widely spoken enough by young people that they are evolving it!
Caledonians, pre Picts, in Caledonia (Albion)
I hope the manner of thinking unique to each speech has time and is indeed amalgamated into English usage. Unfortunately with the world wide media I can not envision a successful long term primary language other than English as it morphs into a world wide language. How can anything else on the local level succeed long term. There are great and historic thinkers from all the areas discussed above but in the wake of a world wide trend so strong in the wake of technology, will the energetic peoples not be heard in the world forum for the sake of a local communication. While I love and respect, what men can resist such a tidal wave. it would be interesting to compare the above results to the advancement of English as a world language. Then we can admire the diligent effort to resist this change, but one has to ask can a brick wall actually be resisted.
My husband’s ancestors came to Canada (Cape Breton) from Skye, Barra & Harris before the first Highland clearances speaking Gaelic. His parents generation were the last in his family who spoke Gaelic as their first language and his grandmother never spoke English at all. I think calling the Gaelic they spoke as Canadian Gaelic is a good description as I discovered Acadian French words were spoken whilst speaking Gaelic. Probably also included Mic-Mac. I enjoyed this article.
Who were the Latin speakers who went back to Rome? Latin was probably the dominant language in much of what was later to become England, following the same trends in Gaul which led there to the adoption of Romance languages and the latest evidence we have of Celtic languages surviving there was the 4th century AD. The Celts we know about from Gaul (e.g. Rufinus, Sidonius Apollinaris) spoke Greek or Latin as their main language in the 4th – 5th century AD. The idea that the ‘Romans’ ‘left’ England is a common misconception. The upper classes of Britons and probably many others who had citizenship would have considered themselves to be Romans as well as being Britons. Ethnicity is not ‘either – or’ but can be multiple according to context. The ‘Romans’ who are documented as leaving Britain are the army, mainly to bolster the defence of Gaul which was more important to the people claiming to be emperors than was Britain. But rather than going to defend Rome, they went to attack it. Magnus Maximus got as far as the River Save before being defeated, and Constantine III was captured and executed in southeast Gaul,
It certainly remained a minority, elite language after 410, but I’ve seen no evidence that is was widely spoken by the masses as it came to be in Gaul, never mind as the dominant language
Maith thú Ryan, ann seimiuil ar fad. Really enjoyed that. I wonder have you any thoughts on the very obvious connection between Galicia and the amount of place names echoing a long lost Gaelic language
So we know northern Spain once spoke a Celtic language called Gallaecian. This language has some similarities to Irish, such as retaining some features of Proto-Celtic that other Celtic languages lost.
I’ve heard a couple of ideas for why
The first was popular in the last century, but is now less widely accepted :
1) The Irish language originally came to Ireland from northern Spain, and therefore is a relative of Gallaecian the language spoken in Galicia 2000 years ago.
This idea is based on the idea that there are two main branches of the Celtic family: q-Celtic and p-Celtic. q-Celtic includes Irish and Gallaecian, p-Celtic includes Brittonic and Gaulish.
The second idea is probably more widely accepted by modern scholars, although there is still much debate:
2) Both the Irish and Brittonic languages come from a common ancestor that came to the islands around 2800 years ago, and then split into two groups. This categorises the two language as “Insular Celtic”, and explains the similarities between them, contrasted the the Continental Celtic languages. The similarities with Gallaecian are attributed to both Irish and Gallaecian both retaining older features of Celtic, while Brittonic and Gaulish evolved the newer features.
Like I said, there is still a lot of debate, and pre-historic languages in Europe are a very vague area without enough evidence to make many strong claims.
Apologies for being so late to the party! And what a party; well done. Love it. The potential linguistic links between Ireland and Northern Spain have now been further confirmed by genetic links between the two current populations. It is theorised that after the last ice-age Western Europe was recolonised by migrants moving up the west coast (of France) and settling in Ireland. There’s even a species of edible snail found only in the Basque Country and the west of Ireland (early Pret A Manger!).
Thank you!!
I have taught this kind of material for some years, but have had far more fragmentary maps to use with my students than you have provided here; I wish I had had these years ago.
I should add that, sadly, your figures for current-day speakers of Celtic languages (your chart near the top) are, in nearly every case, overly optimistic. How I wish it were otherwise….
Again — thank you so much!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you!
I heard Norn being used in Lerwick in 1999. The speakers (60-80 years old) were both local Councillors and one had been a whaler. They both spoke good English (not Scots though of course accented and with much dialect) as well. They held quite a chat in it. They both told me it was Norn, and I do not believe they were lying as they spoke for a good five minutes! So not necessarily first language but certainly used and enjoyed – and fluent.
Interesting! It is quite widely accepted that the language died in 1850, or soon after, so this is an incredible claim. The languages was already close to extinction in the late 1700s.
It doesn’t really seem possible that these men were some native speakers of the Norn language.
My theories: for what you heard:
1) they were speaking something else, possibly a relative of Norn like Norwegian or Faroese, and claiming it was Norn. This would kind off makes sense, as you said one of them was a whaler. Whaling is illegal in Britain, but not in the nearby Faroe Islands, or Norway.
2) They were speaking Shetlandic Scots, which is very different from Lowland Scots, and contains several Norn loanwords, so could be mistaken for Norn to someone totally unfamiliar with it. It might be that they said it was Norn because they see it as the nearest thing to Norn now.
3) They are attempting to reconstruct and revive the Norn language by learning it in the modern day. I found a website dedicated to creating a “Nynorn” (new Norn) language, but it doesn’t seem substantial enough that there would be people actually conversing in it. Maybe they are speakers of it though? Unlikely but not impossible.
This is incredible, thank you so much for all your hard work and research. As an Irishman of Cambro-Norman/Norse Heritage with a keen interest in history/genealogy it’s fascinating to see how language has followed conquest in the British Isles.
Great article by the way. In Ireland, as usual, native languages are being politicised, which may help or hinder them in the long term – i dont really know.
Also I read an article recently which stated that the last Yola speaker only died in the 1990s. I cant remember if the article stated it was their first language or if they only knew it. I have have a look to see if i can find some veracity to my statement.
Interesting! I read a bit about Yola leaving an imprint on the English dialect in the area, and I’m sure it was a gradual fading away rather than a sudden death, but 1990 seems very late!
I think you should perhaps clarify that “Brittonic”, e.g. Brythonic, are Gaelic languages, like Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, although a different branch. Of course, the winners write the history, especially where no written language existed previously, and there is quite a bit of room for discussion regarding the Picts, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Vikings, etc. based on archaeological evidence.
The Brittonic Languages are not Gaelic. They are two separate branches of the Celtic family. However, they may both be descended from a common ancestor that was spoken on both islands though, sometimes called Proto-Insular Celtic.
Fascinating, is there is also a connection between long forgotten languages and modern accents (as opposed to dialects). Are modern accents sometimes echoes of how long lost languages actually sounded?
I can’t help hearing the Man Utd Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer speak with a mixture of Mancunian and Brummie but perhaps there are even deeper roots than those two relatively recent places? I appreciate that his accents, like other foreign footballers, will be influenced by his language teachers, including those in the dressing room and of course fans, but it seems a bit more than that.
I also hear a similar sound between some UK accents, for example the the use of the ‘R’ after a vowel in ‘lover’ and ‘car’ in Lancashire and the West Country and the accent of a North American speaker, especially in Texas I think!
Does this suggest that accents can survive languages – rather like an ancient DNA?
I’m sure old language are a part of the reason for some of the accent differences in the region. Welsh phonology has had a clear influence of Welsh English, and so has Irish on Hiberno-English.
I’ve long suspected that some of the unique aspects of the Northumbrian accents can be traced back to Norse, just as many of the dialectal words are, although there is not much evidence of this.
But the most obvious relics are the words, the dialectal differences that makes English in Britain and Ireland such a varied and fascinating language. Cumbria still counts in Old Cumbric, Cornish-English has many Cornish words, Shetlandic Scots is full of Norn words, Wexford English has Yola words, and Pictish left a huge impact on the Scottish Gaelic language. The dead languages live on, at least in a few words here and there.
I found the article interesting. I think the figure titled Native Languages of Britain and Ireland over time, gives a distorted picture of the languages and their use. The population of the Isle of Mann is today is minuscule less than 90,000 compared with England of about 56 million.
Prior to the industrial revolution population densities may have similar across most of the British isles. Since then the growth of cities has proportions of the populations in various geographic areas in a very significant way.
If I had scaled the regions to the number of speakers, the isle of man would have virtually disappeared! Besides, I don’t think anyone will see the image and assume they mean Mann and England have the same population.
I remember attending a Welsh language course at Nant Gwrtheyrn, Penllyn in the early ’90’s. We were addressed by a local man who was possibly in his 70’s or even older. He recalled that in his youth a Professer of Irish interviewed people in the village and concluded that their intonation indicated that their ancestors must have spoken Irish in the distant past. Penllyn could be translated as Tip of Leinster and fits in, just about, with the legend of Cunedda who came from the Gododdin to confront the Irish.
Great maps. Good to see THE LEID(Scots) given its proper place and fascinating to see the split of the Brythonic TAVAS; Cornish, Welsh and Cumbric around 600. IAround the time of the Battles of Dyrham in the south and Catraeth in the North.
I just want to his a “LOVE THIS!” button, but since there is no button I guess I’ll just leave a message.
Love this!
Hi Eljay, if you really want to show your love, make sure to like my Facebook page 🙂
I appreciate you’ve slightly updated the article, I do.
But it’s still factually incorrect about Manx.
“Cornish and Manx, both dead languages at the end of the 20th century,” is provably incorrect, I was speaking manx in 1991… I learnt from people who spoke Manx from the 70s until the 90s… there has been NO time in the Isle of Man when Manx was not known and spoken fluently as a language. Not a first language, but not dead in any linguistic or social sense.
Heck, I literally spoke to the Grandchild of Ned Maddrell, purely in Manx in my Co Op last week.
To say it died only helps perpetuate a myth that it’s not worth learning, either for linguistic or cultural reasons. Please please don’t do that, if you care about it as I sincerely believe you do.
Sincere kind regards, Martin.
Hi Martin,
The definition of a “dead language” is one with no native speakers. Latin, for example, is a dead language, even though there has never been a time when there were no Latin speakers alive.
So Manx and Cornish both died. They did not become extinct like Cumbric and Norn however, thanks to people like you, who kept speaking them as second languages.<
I think you use of that term is both cruel and factually invalid -and isn’t the purpose of that term at all in language or linguistics..
Latin has had no native speakers for centuries… Manx had no *documented* native speakers for maybe about a week, sometime in the 70s.. YOU weren’t here. I was. My father learnt from a native born speaker in the 70s who didn’t die until the 80s… As I say, the last documented native speaker – who manx as a first language – died in 1974, but there’s 100% definitely no gap in history where “it” as a language gave up, died, pined, sat upside down in its cage. Again, I know personally the family of the last “native speaker” that you use as evidence. They speak manx and have done since they were able to learn languages.
To say that something is “dead” in that situation, is part of the problem – a divisive term created by those who like to see other languages dying and becoming worthless.
apologies for further post [no need to authorise this into your site]
but for completeness, as in – for scientific method 🙂 here’s a link to the 2001 census of the Isle of Man
https://www.gov.im/media/207874/2001censusreportvolume2.pdf
Being one of that 2.2% the government cite [and the 0.9% on 1991] is a proud thing for me as I’m sure you appreciate.
I’ve failed to say, in my “concerns” how good these images and animations are, please don’t take my comments as against those… this is brilliant work, and after my own heart.
Lhiats,
Martin. [given email address is active if you wish to check any discrepancies or counter without corrupting your comment section 🙂 ]
[ side note, my domain name is manx for “Water” – and as you may recognise, is therefore cognate with Uisce/ Whiskey 🙂 ]
This is really wonderful, but as a Manx speaker, and one of many thousand Manx speakers, Many of whom are infants with Manx speaking parents. It’s rather insulting to the work done over the past 30 years by The Manx Language Society, Culture Vannin, and Yn Greineydeyr [Manx Language Officer] to now raise the population of Manx speakers here to well over 2000, out of a population of only 80,000 .
for further information on this, please have a good look at learnmanx.com and all the work there done since the last hereditary native speaker died in 1974, but that’s not when the language stopped, it’s been continuous.
I’ve really enjoyed all this. I’m in a less usual position being part of the detritus of WWII with a Polish father. My English uncles were amused by me replying to Dad in Polish, if so addressed. When I was about 3 he started thinking in English and I forgot most of my language. Dad was very grateful to England for giving him sanctuary, and Mum, and chance to continue the war. He was keen to integrate and if there were a hundred Poles in a room and one Englishman he would have considered it his duty to speak English. I never thought it would be an advantage to speak Polish here. Then 2003 arrived along with a million migrants!
Not really relevant – just a view from a different perspective. I’m amazed you managed to avoid mentioning Basque unless there was a veiled reference in the ‘ two types of Celtic’.
Carry on the good work, Mick
My wife and I were just talking about this topic this past weekend. Very interesting read, great job! Thank you! Could you add your sources for this information at the bottom of your post? I don’t care what format, MLA, APA, Chicago, etc. If you did already, I missed it, and I apologize.
Very interesting article. I am currently learning Scottish Gaelic as a second language. I would love to learn more about Pictish. Thank you for this fascinating work
Excellent visual history
Sean
Great article, thank you so much for sharing
I’m chilean and have none of british blood. But i love languages and their history, and your charts were amazing. I’d love to have the knowledge of others here to ve able to locate well some places on the map. Increíble job though.
I enjoyed this very much. I notice you didn’t mention Ullans. Any thoughts on that?
Brilliant! Thanks, Ryan. I always think it should be a requirement for New Irish to have a basic grasp of the language before getting Citizenship as would be the case in any other country. Some Asian Children I have met are brilliant and can chat away As Gaeilge an mhaith ar fad! If you could slow the flow chart video to give time to follow it would be even better! But Thanks for the excellent work.
Go raibh Míle Maith Agat
Seán Breathnach
I get sad looking at that map of Ireland all red, “England’s cruel red”. It should be more of a checkerboard, or somehow visually acknowledge the number of bilingual speakers of Irish. 38% by one count. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-mini-revival-of-the-irish-language-1.2186677?mode=amp
I am 76 yearsold; was born to parents who were 1st language Welsh, but who were totally bi-lingual. We spoke Welsh at home and with ALL our relatives. We played in Welsh, read in Welsh, wrote in welsh, recited the welsh alphabet, recited our ‘times-tables’ in Welsh, counted in welsh sang in Welsh. When we reached the age of around 5-6 we began to re-learn certain things in English eg counting, alphabet, and easy English text were read. But Welsh was still the primary language of everyday conversation and socalising. The ‘English teaching was done in the local school. Gradually we became bi-lingual; novels and comics were read in English and Welsh. I cannot accurately remember whether the lessons ( in primary school) were done in English or Welsh. I read Enlish at University, taught English throughout my working life; married a monoglot Englishman, but did not have children!
Today, when conversing with my siblings, we do so naturally in Welsh, and only use English when we need to include non-welsh speakers into the conversation. I do not write in Welsh though. I CAN, BUT THE SKILL and fluency had atrophied slightly.
~65,000K speakers of Modern English?
Sounds about right.
Is that 65,000 x 1000? Ohhhh, that makes my head spin. Whatever, big number. Makes sense, what with the US and all, there must be a lot of speakers of Modern English. So yeah spot on.
Between c. 900 and c. 1500 the Gaelic language in Scotland was called Scottis (Scots). In truth, Scots-Gaelic should be called the Scottish language today.
“In the late 15th century the best poetry in English came from Scotland. This kingdom, united under Malcolm Canmore in the late 11th century, had four tongues: Highland Gaelic, lowland English, clerkly Latin, and lordly Anglo-Norman French. Since the 7th century, English had been spoken on the east coast from the River Tweed to Edinburgh. Its speakers called the tongue of the Gaels, who since the 5th century had come into Argyll from Ireland, Scottis. A Gael was in Latin Scotus, a name then extended to Lowlanders, who called the northern English they spoke Inglis. After the 14th century, a century of war with England, the Lowlanders called their speech Scottis, and called the Gaelic of the original Scots Ersche, later Erse (Irish).”
(Source: A History of English Literature by Michael Alexander, 2007).
https://abdn.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=04d12a4e-5adb-4412-9dcc-abb400a94eb0&fbclid=IwAR0sZertmpBhqKsi1a0pCgraVSQ4_zAMx3q69lk2sxNWv4Sdx-ZYu26ENLk
This is a superb piece, may I clarify, based on the research that seems to be coming out, am i right in assuming that the language of the western Anglo-Scottish Borders evolve from Brythonic (progressive Cumbric) into the Anglo Saxon tongue, and again leading through Middle English to the Scots dialects that we have today was simply through transition rather than the decline of an indigenous population. And as I understand it, Gaelic was never really spoken in the Borders, is that correct ?
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