The Celtic languages spoken today – namely Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton – all descend from Celtic languages once spoken across Britain and Ireland in antiquity. While the modern languages are well documented from the early middle ages onwards, what came before is far more mysterious.

Only fragments of earlier evidence survive, leaving major questions about where these ancient Celtic languages came from and how they connect not only to each other, but also to related languages once spoken on the European mainland, such as Gaulish.

Much of this early linguistic story unfolded before widespread writing reached the islands. Before the Romans arrived, Britain was barely known to the literate cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. Only a handful of early travellers recorded anything about the languages spoken there.

So, we have only sparse clues as to the languages spoken in Britain, notably a handful of plausibly Celtic place names recorded by Greek voyagers such as Pytheas of Marseilles, who visited Britain around 325BC.

Once Britain became part of the Roman empire, everything changed. We have plenty of written material from and about Roman Britain. It is almost all in Latin, the official language of the empire. But scattered within it are Celtic place names and ethnic names, along with a small number of inscriptions in Celtic itself.

Of huge interest to........

© The Conversation