Outlander Gaelic

[OC Richard]

It's sobering, here in California.

A language in the San Francisco Bay area, last speaker died 1934.

A language along the Southern California coast, last speaker died 1965.

Another California language, last speaker died in 2013.

And on it goes. They don't even know how many languages California possessed, pre-contact.

On the left are the tribal groups (each with their own language) and on the right are the large number of different language families these are members of (seems to be following the Joseph Greenberg classification scheme)



I was enormously honoured to be blessed by the Chief of the Chumash Nation a number of years ago. He spoke some phrases in Chumash. Afterwards I asked him about it, and he expressed great regret that he hadn't learned more Chumash from his parents, both speakers, both long since lost to us. All he knew were a few phrases, he told me.

[O'Callaghan]

One other thing. You talk of Gaelic and Broad Scots. Most people don't even realise that the two are entirely unrelated. A lot of people think the words they hear in Scots that they don't recognise are Gaelic words, but they aren't. Doric, aka Scots, is related to English, and tends to exist nowadays in the form of mixtures of the two, although I think they always overlapped quite a bit. Gaelic is pretty much unrelated, apart from also being an Indo-European language.

Of course, even there you have Gaelidh (Scots Gaelic) and Gaelige (Irish), plus Manx (Isle of Man), although I'm told they are mostly mutually intelligible. I think there are three or four distinct dialects of Irish, and probably a similar number of Scots Gaelic dialects. I know a few bits and pieces of Irish, but have never seen Outlander anyway.

Brythonic dialects are quite a bit different from Gaelic, although related to Gaelic as well as to eachother. Brythonic comprises Welsh, Cornish (SW England) and Breton (Brittany in France). Cornish was reconstructed from a dead language, which was possible because written records survived, unlike say Cumbrian (NW England Brythonic) or Pictish (Scottish and thought to be Brythonic, but there's some debate over that), which I believe died out with no written records to refer to. The last speaker of Nore also died in the North of Scotland circa late 1700s, with nothing to reconstruct it from, although it was a form of Norse, and some nouns survive in modern use, at least up there. Modern Cornish must differ from the dead language, but is as close as possible without anyone having heard it.

[freep]

One other thing. You talk of Gaelic and Broad Scots. Most people don't even realise that the two are entirely unrelated. <snip>

Of course, even there you have Gaelidh (Scots Gaelic) and Gaelige (Irish), plus Manx (Isle of Man), although I'm told they are mostly mutually intelligible. I think there are three or four distinct dialects of Irish, and probably a similar number of Scots Gaelic dialects. I know a few bits and pieces of Irish, but have never seen Outlander anyway.


Brythonic dialects are quite a bit different from Gaelic, although related to Gaelic as well as to eachother. Brythonic comprises Welsh, Cornish (SW England) and Breton (Brittany in France). <snip>

I knew most of the above.

The last speaker of Nore also died in the North of Scotland circa late 1700s, with nothing to reconstruct it from, although it was a form of Norse, and some nouns survive in modern use, at least up there. <snip>

Hadn't heard of Nore. It would make sense though, given the Norse influences up there.

[OC Richard]

Brythonic dialects are quite a bit different from Gaelic, although related to Gaelic as well as to each other.

Just to bring attention to correct normal usage, Cornish, Welsh, and Breton are languages, not dialects. Each language will have a number of dialects within it.

The traditional usual deciding factor is mutual intelligibility. If two manners of speech are mutually intelligible they are dialects of a single language; if they are not mutually intelligible they are separate languages.

Of course there are numerous grey areas! For sure there are dialects of English which can be difficult to understand by people who only speak Standard English, and the same thing happens in every language.

The word "dialect" is widely misused, for example it seems to be universal in the Philippines to refer to the various languages spoken there as "dialects" when in fact they can be utterly unrelated languages, as different as English and Japanese.

Anyhow Celtic languages have two surviving language families, Brythonic or P-Celtic and Goidelic or Q-Celtic.

So "son" is map in Brythonic and mac in Goidelic. Place-names can hint at which was spoken in a particular place due to the commonness of "head" giving us Kenmare, Kintyre, Penzance, etc.

[neloon]

Alternatively,
"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy".
Alan

[freep]

It was my understanding that Manx, Cornish and Welsh were mutually intelligible and Breton was close?

[neloon]

It was my understanding that Manx, Cornish and Welsh were mutually intelligible and Breton was close?

Manx is Q-Celtic so reasonably intelligible (on the rare occasions when it is spoken) to Scots and Irish Gaelic speakers. I don't believe Welsh, Cornish and Breton could be described as mutually intelligible even though they share some words in common.
Alan