Talk:History of Scottish Gaelic

Revision Reverted

Why has my addition to the opening line of 'Origins to Zenith' been removed? This theory is pretty broadly challenged today by quite a few respected historians and archaeologists, it's not niche anymore.

Per Wikipedia's verifiability policy, you must provide reliable sources for all information. Catrìona (talk) 00:08, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Okay sure, but... is kind of common knowledge for people that read about this. Okay I will go and source the sources from the other articles. It is fine to add yes with the sources? This isn't going to turn into a revert war when I do?

Your edits are likely to be reverted if they do not confirm to the verifiablitity policy or the neutrality policy. The information that you added is really a fringe theory not supported by most historians or linguists, but it is represented enough to state that it is a marginal theory that has been proposed by a few writers. Catrìona (talk) 03:31, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it's a fringe theory at all, but okay. I'll simply add it the way it appears in other articles. By the way, I think it's pretty clear Goidelic languages just represent non-Romanized or a less Romanized form of Insular Celtic which was originally spoken throughout the entire British Isles. Now that would be original research and a fringe theory, Campbell's theories are supported by a few historians now and the lack of archaeologcical and placename evidence for a migration or invasion was noted by archaeologists before him.

But yeah you're (and by you I mean academics) seriously telling me the near 500 years of Roman occupation did not have a monumental impact on the Insular Celtic languages that managed to survive within Roman provinces? The geographic dispersion of Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles even matches near perfectly the geography of Roman occupation, Ireland remaining the least Romanized place (if Romanized at all) retains pure Goidelic languages, western Scotland and the isles also retain Goidelic languages due to geographic isolation being sparsely populated islands and separated by the mountainous spine, their main trading partners and interactions being with the Goidelic tribes of Ireland also.

And this is where it gets interesting, the rest of Scotland. Brythonic dominates in the part of Scotland occupied for short periods by Rome, that between the Antonine and Hadrian's Wall. As well as the part which would have interacted most heavily with Rome and Romanized Celts, whether through trade or peace treaties or whatever else, the effect buffer state between those north of Hadrian and those south of Antonine. And what do we have with Pictish? Areas which would have had comparitively less interaction with Rome, but still some and also with the Romanizing tribes between Antonine and Hadrian's. Either a bilingual area of both Q-Celtic and P-Celtic languages, which would explain perfectly why both Brythonic and Goidelic visitors to Pictish areas needed translators according to sources, because they could have been speaking to either Goidelic or Brythonic speakers OR Pictish languages represented a sort of hybrid between the original Goidelic and Romanized Brythonic, so either Brythonic languages with heavy Goidelic vocabulary or vice versa.

It's funny also, the Ewan Campbell thing, because Irish historians use the exact same "lack of archaeological/architectural/placename evidence" argument when rejecting the theory that the Cruthin of northerastern Ireland were either descended from or had some kind of heavy connection with the Picts, who they also called Cruthin.

By the way, what do you think of my Insular Q/P Celtic split theory? Like I assume you read about this stuff and study, no? I can't believe this is never presented as a potential reason for the split, there's surely some obvious, blatant reason this is not considered to be the reason for the P/Q split in Insular Celtic languages, right?

It looks like your "theory" is better supported by Campbell's archaeology and recent DNA results for Bronze Age Britain than is the traditional position that Gaelic was brought to Britain from Ireland. It looks much more likely that Gaelic/Goidelic developed on the continent from common "Celtic" and migrated to the British Isles with Brythonic later replacing Goidelic in much of Britain and possibly parts of Ireland during the Iron Age. Of course, we'll have to wait for serious scholarship before adding this hypothesis to the article.Gortaleen (talk) 19:34, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

● What is the current status of the origin of Scottish Gaelic in academia now?

Campbell's findings that there is no evidence of an Irish invasion of Scotland is strongly supported by DNA findings (Britain is largely populated by people who crossed from the continent to Britain with Ireland being downstream of Britain).

DNA analysis of Bronze Age British skeletons indicates that Britain is primarily populated with descendants of two waves of Indo-European migration during that era. That supports Q-Celtic (or proto-Celtic) being brought to Britain with the first wave of that migration, with Ireland "downstream" of Britain, and later (largely?) replaced in Britain with P-Celtic in the second migration.

That pattern of migration allows us to discard the hard to believe development of two very different languages within the British/Irish archipelago within a very short period of time. It also allows us to discard the seemingly impossible Iron Age invasion of Ireland from Iberia (which also lacks archaeological evidence).

Fringe theory

It would seem that for five years already, an IP and two users regularly insert an outlandish fringe theory into this article, and even claiming (with zero evidence) that their fringe theory is the mainstream view. Not surprisingly, this fringe theory is absent from all main articles on Celtic languages, but it would seem the obscurity of this article makes it possible to violate WP policies (WP:OR, WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV. As my effort to remove the apparent nonsense was reverted, I'm tagging the article. Jeppiz (talk) 23:39, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Is there a good argument to be made for Scottish Gaelic originating in Scotland?

I've noticed that for the last few years this article has included at least some version of the hypothesis that Scottish Gaelic developed within Scotland (as opposed to having been brought over from Ireland) and I've become a little sceptical about the validity of this as a theory.

Firstly, its main proponents, Ewan Campbell, is an archaeologist and it would also seem that the majority of the other proponents are similarly historians, archaeologists and geneticists. This already means that they're making a foray outside of their field of main expertise. Would it not make more sense to deprecate these sources compared to the opinions of linguists? Especially considering how this is an article mostly pertaining to linguistics, it does not make much sense, in my opinion, to place so much weight on the thoughts and conjecture of academics who primarily participate in other fields.

Secondly, the underlying assumption behind this hypothesis is that linguistic change is correlated with change in material culture and genetics, which does not necessarily hold true in the historical record. For example, the expansion of English in Ireland in did not radically change the material culture of formerly Irish speaking communities, and neither did the Anglo-Saxon migration as a whole erase the pre-anglo-saxon genetic landscape of Britain. So while language and material culture/genetics can be correlated at times, it's shaky at best to assume that because neither Scottish material culture nor genetics changed around the time Old Irish is supposed to have expanded into Scotland, that does not necessarily provide good evidence against the traditional view that Scottish Gaelic was brought over from Ireland.

To back up the autochtonous development hypothesis it's also often asserted that the North Channel (otherwise known as the Straits of Moyle) could have served to connect the people of South West Scotland to those in the adjacent parts of Ireland in prehistoric times like how it has done since the medieval period. However, I'm unconvinced by this line of argumentation since in linguistic history we have vastly more examples of the sea being an isolating factor impeding linguistic contact than the reverse, even in communities known to have been extensive seafarers.

For example, Proto-Germanic in Jutland developed in line with mostly with continental West Germanic as opposed to Proto-Norse which would have been spoken on the Danish islands. We can also see this again with North Germanic in the western branch. Norwegian, despite being genetically closer to insular North Germanic (ie. Icelandic, Norn, and Faroese) and there having been historically deep ties between these communities, has for all intents and purposes more grammatical similarities with the neighbouring Northeast Germanic languages, Swedish and Danish.

A number of such parallels to the situation in Norwegian can, in fact, be demonstrated for Scottish Gaelic. While its vocabulary does not contain many loanwords from Brythonic (although there are still some), within the grammar, particularly the verbal complex, it shares a lot in common with the Brythonic languages. Scottish Gaelic prefers to use a periphrasistic construction in the present tense (eg. Tha mi ga fhaicinn 'I see him'), unlike Irish (Feicim é) but quite similar to Welsh (Rwy'n ei weld).

Another similarity occurs in the expression of both future events and habitual ones in the present tense. In Scottish Gaelic and at least Welsh both of these are expressed with the same form (Sg. Faicidh mi e, Lw. Gwelaf ef 'I (usually) see him/I will see him). However, in Irish the forms are different (Feicim é 'I (usually) see him' vs Feicfidh mé é 'I will see him').

In both of these regards, Scottish Gaelic shows a greater affinity to the Brythonic verbal complex than the Old irish one, whose tense and aspectual distinctions remain largely intact in modern Irish but have been mostly reworked in Scots Gaelic to conform more closely to Brythonic. This mirrors the result of Northeast Germanic on Norwegian, where its vocabulary clearly shows mostly West Norse features but its grammar has been greatly influenced by the Northeast Germanic languages.

In any case, I would recommend for the relevant sections to be rewritten to more accurately reflect the broad consensus of linguists (ie. That the ancestor of Scottish Gaelic was brought to Scotland from Ireland) and if people still deem it relevant to include the more fringe autochthonous origin hypothesis, they can give it its own paragraph and properly contextualise its reception. As opposed to as it is now, whereby it's stated almost as fact with little mention of the fact it's a controversial position and seemingly not taken seriously by academics dealing with historical linguistics. 188.129.76.117 (talk) 12:39, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@188.129.76.117

Sorry slight clarification and correction, the correct present habitual/future form in Scots Gaelic is 'chì mi e'. I wasn't paying much attention as I was writing.

And also to clarify a little, what I meant to say in my third paragraph is that it's shaky to assume that since there is no evidence of a huge change in the material culture or genetic make-up of Scotland around the proposed time of the Gaelic migration, that doesn't mean necessarily that Scottish Gaelic can't have been brought over from Ireland. 188.129.76.117 (talk) 12:58, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic "brought over from Ireland?"

How is this supposed to have happened? The best estimate of the Gaelic vernacular in the time period this is alleged to have happened is Old Irish. How do you get a whole country of illiterate pastoralists to master Old Irish? Highly motivated people struggle to learn the simplified modern Gaelic languages today.

Scottish Gaelic is a descendant of the Indo-European language spoken by the Indo-Europeans who settled in Britain and Ireland 4500 years ago. This is the most likely estimate of its history by far (there is other supporting evidence beyond the difficulty in learning Gaelic from areas such as genetics, archaeology, military history, etc.). Gortaleen (talk) 16:25, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@Gortaleen I think what most people mean when they Gaelic was brought over from Ireland they mean that proto-Goidelic was spoken in Ireland before some of its speakers migrating to Scotland. The way this article has presented it at times you'd think it's a proven fact that Proto-Goidelic was from the get-go present in Scotland which doesn't really seem to be favoured by linguists as pointed out above. Galloglach21 (talk) 05:35, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Gortaleen I also just realised that you're the main contributor seemingly pushing this point into the article and I'd like to make a bit of a point as to why I think the way it's currently phrased has no place here. The theory of an autochthonous development since proto-Celtic times for Scottish Gaelic is mostly backed up by archaeological and genetic data and the territorial spread of varies archaeological cultures and put forward by archaeologists and geneticists from what I can tell. So already there's a major issue in that this is using evidence from a different field being used to derive conclusions in another, which is almost always leads to fairly weak hypotheses because simply the people pushing these ideas have little experience within historical linguists (in this particular case).

This doesn't mean you can't include the existence of this hypothesis, I actually encourage it to be kept, but you can't just say that it's academic consensus now because a few authors in fields outside of linguistics said so, the researchers involved don't have a) the expertise to really make that call since they all work primarily in other fields, and b) even if they were in linguistics it doesn't matter what they have to say about it, things don't become consensus because like 3 guys said so, you actually have to examine a lot more of the current literature on the subject.

So what I'm saying is I'm all for keeping it, just this needs to be reworded because it's just frankly put not accurate to state it confidently like it's academic consensus in linguistics when all your sources are from other fields. In my opinion, you'd be better saying something like 'In addition to the traditional hypothesis there's also a theory of autochthonous development within Scotland from the Proto-Celtic period'. That's already a much more honest and unbiased framing of the situation Galloglach21 (talk) 05:50, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not saying we should add some new hypothesis to the article. I am saying we should make as few assumptions as possible. The mythology that somehow Gaelic spread from Ireland to Scotland in the Middle Ages is just that: mythology. If it's going to be in the article, it should be noted as being mythology. The 20th century conjecture of Indo-European languages migrating without human migration has been disproven by DNA findings--not that we needed DNA to note that Gaelic spreading from Ireland to Scotland was always questionable. Someone who uses the sobriquet Galloglach should understand that very well. Gortaleen (talk) 16:49, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Gortaleen Like Sionnach said, I'd like a linguistic source on this. You make very many assertions but have done relatively little to counter the actual arguments put forward against you. I'd also caution against just handwaving medieval sources as pure myth since there are plenty of historical truths recorded in primarily mythological texts. Are we supposed to pretend that Troy, for example, is a mythical place since it's primarily mentioned in Homeric poetry rather than the historical record? No because that's silly, we have an archaeological site that matches the criteria for what Troy would look like.

Same thing here, we know that post 6th century that northeast Ireland and Scotland are very well connected and to this day speak fairly mutually intelligible dialects. We also know there's a Brythonic substrate in Scots Gaelic that is not present in northeast Ireland based largely of toponyms and words describing the Scottish landscape as well as culture. For Scottish Gaelic to have developed in-situ we'd need to assume they didn't have words for their own surroundings and cultural practices until some helpful Britons came and pointed it out to them which is just ridiculous.

On the topic of DNA, the average Hungarian is genetically in distinct from their neighbouring slavic populations, materially even less so since they all have a very similar traditional way of life, and yet they speak a completely unrelated language from their neighbours. Even in an Irish context Belfast is majority native English speaking and has been for centuries, meanwhile the Glens of Antrim had Irish speakers until the early 2000s and yet the two populations are basically identically on a genetic level. So DNA is pretty weak evidence here to support any conclusions about linguistics.

On top of that we know historically that there were deep ties between northeast Ireland and Scotland, we know people were travelling, so how is it a stretch to posit that due to political changes Irish language in culture could expand and assimilate previously Brythonic speaking Scots. We certainly know at the polity level that's what happened, Dáil Riada shows up first in Ireland, expands into Scotland and successor kingdoms increase their territory and presumably serve as a vehicle for the expansion of Gaelic culture among indigenous Britons there. It's the exact same model of language shift as attested in the Roman Empire, or is that also mythological or something? Galloglach21 (talk) 08:57, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

@Gortaleen

What are your sources for this? Linguistic ones, not archeologists or historians. Because two of the most prominent historical Gaelic researchers disagree entirely. Also resorting to genetics to describe linguistic realities is just wrong; they can inform, but shouldn't do anything more. We have examples of both population change without language change and language change without population change. And material culture is even less linked; many prehistorical material cultures would've been home to multiple language groups and you can't correlate it to just one.

If you wish to push a fringe theory like this, you should acknowledge what it is. You should also have plenty of sources for it, instead of just citing one person who's not even a linguist and insisting that we must accept genetics and material culture when they're only tangentially related to linguistic reality, at best, and can't inform of us of it. Sionnachnaréaltaí (talk) 13:11, 8 November 2024 (UTC)