Old British
| Common Brittonic | |
|---|---|
| Region | Great Britain south of the Firth of Forth. |
| Era | From early 5th century. Developed into Old Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish and Breton by AD 600 |
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Indo-European
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
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Linguist list
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lbd |
| Glottolog | None |
| Linguasphere | 50-AB |
Common Brittonic was an ancient Celtic language spoken in Britain. It is also variously known as Old Brittonic, British, and Common or Old Brythonic. By the 6th century, this language of the Celtic Britons had split into the various Brittonic languages: Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, Pictish and Breton.
Common Brittonic is a form of Insular Celtic, which is descended from Proto-Celtic, a hypothetical parent language that, by the first half of the first millennium BC, was already diverging into separate dialects or languages. There is some evidence that the Pictish language may have had close ties to Common Brittonic, and might have been either a sister language or a fifth branch.
Evidence from Welsh shows a great influence from Latin on Common Brittonic during the Roman period, and especially so in terms related to the Church and Christianity, which are nearly all Latin derivatives. Common Brittonic was later replaced in most of Scotland by Middle Irish (which later developed into Scottish Gaelic) and south of the Firth of Forth also by Old English (which later developed into Scots). Brittonic was gradually replaced by English throughout England; in southern Scotland and Cumbria, Cumbric disappeared as late as the 13th century and, in the south, Cornish survived until the 19th century, although modern attempts to revitalize it have met with some success.O'Rahilly's historical model suggests the possibility that there was a Brittonic language in Ireland before the arrival of Goidelic languages there, but this view has not found wide acceptance.
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