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)