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To: secret garden
Among other languages, that’s true. Welcome to WFTD!

Europe had FOUR indigenous languages: Greek, Latin, Celtic (pronounced with a "k" sound) and German. All the European languages came from them. English came primarily from the Germanic language. Go ahead and look it up if you don't believe me.

The Scandinavian languages came from German too. German was also the root of the Slavic languages...and Russian got its roots from the Slavic languages.

From the Internet:
YAHOO ANSWERS

Gaelic is Celtic but it belongs to a different branch of Celtic than neighboring Welsh.

Gaelic belongs to a branch of Celtic called "Goidelic" while " "Welsh" belongs to a branch of Celtic called "Brythonic."

Manx is the only other member of the "Goidelic" branch of Celtic. Its last speaker died in either 1957, 1962 or 1965 depending on whose accounts you go by.

The Brythonic group to which Welsh belongs to is much larger. It includes Cornish (extinct since 1777), the ancient Gaulish of France, Belgium and Switzerland (extinct since the 7th century A.D.), the Celtiberian of ancient Spain and Portugal and the Galatian of Asia Minor spoken near modern day Ankara, Turkey (extinct probably since the 8th century A.D.).

Breton is a Brythonic Celtic language still spoken by a few hundred thousand people in Western France, however linguists are not certain whether it is descendant of ancient Gaulish or an offshoot of Welsh and Cornish.

The Celts originally lived in southern Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Germany but were forced out of Central Europe by their Germanic neighbors beginning around 300 B.C. The Germanic tribes in turn, were under pressure from the Slavs who were under pressure from the Huns. So you had an entire chain reaction of events going on here at that time.

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The Study of languages is very interesting, isn't it?

58 posted on 03/06/2014 7:38:39 PM PST by cloudmountain
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To: cloudmountain

Agreed. Linguistics are fascinating, because they are intermingled with history and who can resist a good story?


59 posted on 03/06/2014 7:41:49 PM PST by secret garden (Why procrastinate when you can perendinate?)
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