Linguists start compiling first ever complete dictionary of ancient Celtic | Language

It is unlikely to be a large volume, as the vast majority of the material has been lost to the mists of time. But the remains of a language spoken in parts of the UK and Ireland 2,000 years ago are being collected for what is being billed as the first complete dictionary of ancient Celtic.

The dictionary won’t be huge because relatively few words survive, but experts from Aberystwyth University say they expect to eventually have more than 1,000 words.

Sources for the dictionary will range from Julius Caesar’s account of his conquest of parts of northern Europe to ancient monumental stones. It will include words from approximately 325 BC to 500 AD.

Senior lecturer in Gaelic and Celtic studies at Aberystwyth Simon Rodway said it was exciting to be involved in compiling the first dictionary of its kind.

He said: “Never before have these disparate sources been brought together in a way that offers such an understanding of the nature of the Celtic languages ​​spoken on these islands at the beginning of history.

“The picture of the linguistic landscape of Britain and Ireland will be of interest not only to linguists but also to historians, archaeologists and archaeogeneticists.”

Elements of modern languages ​​such as Gaelic, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Breton and Cornish have some roots in their ancient Celtic counterparts.

The team that compiled the dictionary says that although modern Celtic languages ​​are mostly different from each other, similarities can be seen between the words.

For example, the Gaelic and Old Irish words for sea – môr and muir – correspond to the Celtic noun “Mori”; for example, Moridunum, meaning “sea fortress” and the ancient name of Carmarthen in south-west Wales.

Rodway said: “With the exception of a very small number of inscriptions in Celtic languages ​​from Roman Britain, we depend on documents written in Latin or Greek that contain the names of places, ethnic groups or individuals that we can tell are Celtic.

“People have worked on place names and a few inscriptions before, but we’ll try to put everything together and see what patterns emerge.”

Besides Caesar’s writings, there are also Celtic fragments in the administrative records made by the Romans upon their arrival in Britain.

“We have quite a bit of material from Roman Britain, including letters from soldiers who served there. It’s almost all in Latin, but you get the odd Celtic word in there,” Rodway said.

He said most of the material would come from the Roman period in Britain, from the 1st to the 4th centuries AD, and from the mid-2nd century in Ireland. He said: “There is much less from Ireland from that period because it was never part of the Roman Empire.”

Another source is inscriptions on stones in places such as Cornwall and Ireland that use the Ogham alphabet, a system of straight lines designed to be carved on stone, metal, bone or wood.

“In northwestern Europe, we don’t have a lot of early written history. If you’re in the Mediterranean, there are Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans and Etruscans who were constantly writing things down.”

“When you go to the north of France and Britain you don’t have much left. We have place names and personal names and you can try to reconstruct some kind of narrative from those.”

The plan is to produce online and print versions of the dictionary.