Common Brittonic

Sources No documents in the language have been found, but a few inscriptions have been identified. The Bath curse tablets, found in the Roman feeder pool at Bath, Somerset (Aquae Sulis), bear about 150 names – about 50% Celtic (but not necessarily Brittonic). An inscription on a metal pendant (discovered there in 1979) seems to contain an ancient Brittonic curse: "". (Sometimes the final word has been rendered .) This text is often seen as: 'The affixed – Deuina, Deieda, Andagin [and] Uindiorix – I have bound'; else, at the opposite extreme, taking into account case-marking – 'king' nominative, 'worthless woman' accusative, 'divine Deieda' nominative/vocative – is: 'May I, Windiorix for/at Cuamena defeat [or 'summon to justice'] the worthless woman, [oh] divine Deieda.' A tin/lead sheet retains part of nine text lines, damaged, with probable Brittonic names. Local Roman Britain toponyms (place names) are evidentiary, recorded in Latinised forms by Ptolemy's Geography discussed by Rivet and Smith in their book of that name published in 1979. They show most names he used were from the Brittonic language. Some place names still contain elements derived from it. Tribe names and some Brittonic personal names are also taken down by Greeks and, mainly, Romans. Tacitus's Agricola says that the language differed little from that of Gaul. Comparison with what is known of Gaulish confirms the similarity. Pictish and Pritenic Pictish, which became extinct around 12-13th century AD, was the spoken language of the Picts in Northern Scotland. Some scholars criticise Pritenic hypothesis. In 2015, linguist Guto Rhys concluded that most proposals that Pictish diverged from Brittonic before were incorrect, questionable, or of little importance, and that a lack of evidence to distinguish Brittonic and Pictish rendered the term Pritenic "redundant". Diversification and Neo-Brittonic Common Brittonic vied with Latin after the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD, at least in major settlements. Latin words were widely borrowed by its speakers in the Romanised towns and their descendants, and later from church use. By 500–550 AD, Common Brittonic had diverged into the Neo-Brittonic dialects: Cornish fell out of use in the 1700s but has since undergone a revival. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct and today spoken only in the form of loanwords in English, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic. ==Phonology==

Consonants Vowels The early Common Brittonic vowel inventory is effectively identical to that of Proto-Celtic. and have not developed yet. By late Common Brittonic, the New Quantity System had occurred, leading to a radical restructuring of the vowel system. Notes: • One development apparently confined to the West British precursor of Welsh was the change of short pretonic and to rounded and unrounded mid central schwa vowels and respectively. ==Place names==

Brittonic-derived place names are scattered across Great Britain, with many occurring in the West Country; however, some of these may be pre-Celtic. The best example is perhaps that of each (river) Avon, which comes from the Brittonic , "river" (transcribed into Welsh as , Cornish , Irish and Scottish Gaelic , Manx , Breton ; the Latin cognate is ). When river is preceded by the word, in the modern vein, it is tautological. Examples of place names derived from the Brittonic languages Examples are: • Avon from = 'river' (cf. Welsh , Cornish , Breton ) • Britain, cognate with = (possibly) 'People of the Forms' (cf. Welsh 'Britain', 'appearance, form, image, resemblance'; Irish 'appearance, shape', Old Irish 'Picts') • Cheviot from * = 'ridge' and , a noun suffix • Dover: as pre-medieval Latin did not distinguish a Spanish-style mixed - sound, the phonetic standard way of reading is as . It means 'water(s)' (cognate with old Welsh , plural phonetically , Cornish , Breton , and Irish ). • Kent from = 'border' (becoming in Welsh 'rim, brim', in Breton, ) • Lothian, ( in medieval Welsh) from * 'Fort of Lugus' • Severn from , perhaps the name of a goddess (modern Welsh, ) • Thames from = 'dark' (probably cognate with Welsh 'darkness', Cornish , Breton , Irish , pointing to a Brittonic approximate word ) • Thanet (headland) from = 'bonfire', 'aflame' (cf. Welsh 'fire', Cornish , Old Breton 'aflame') • York from = 'yew tree stand/group' (cognate with Welsh , from 'cow parsnip, hogweed' + 'abundant in', Breton 'alder buckthorn', Irish An Lúraigh ''stand/grove of yew trees'; cognate with Évreux in France, Évora in Portugal and Newry, Northern Ireland) via Latin > OE (re-analysed by English speakers as 'boar' with Old English appended at the end) > Old Norse Basic words , , , and from Brittonic are common in Devon place-names. Tautologous, hybrid word names exist in England, such as: • Derwentwater (for Brittonic part see Dover above) • Chetwood (cognate with Welsh , Breton ) • Bredon Hill ==Notes==