Common Brittonic

Bath curse tablet featuring possible Common Brittonic

No documents in the tongue have been found, but a few inscriptions have been identified.[14] 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:[15] "Adixoui Deuina Deieda Andagin Uindiorix cuamenai". (Sometimes the final word has been rendered cuamiinai.) This text is often seen as: "The affixed – Deuina, Deieda, Andagin [and] Uindiorix – I have bound."[16] else, at the opposite extreme, taking into account case-marking – -rix "king" nominative, andagin "worthless woman" accusative, dewina deieda "divine Deieda" nominative/vocative – is: "May I, Windiorix for/at Cuamena defeat [or "summon to justice"] the worthless woman, [oh] divine Deieda."[17]

A tin/lead sheet retains part of 9 text lines, damaged, with likely Brittonic names.[18]

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 tongue. 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 tongue differed little from that of Gaul. Comparison with what is known of Gaulish confirms the similarity.[19]

Pritenic (also Pretanic) is a modern term to label the inhabitants' tongue of prehistoric Scotland during Roman rule further south (1st to 5th centuries). Within the disputed P-Celtic vs. Q-Celtic time division of the Celtic languages, "Pritenic" is a sister or daughter language of Common Brittonic, from a common P-Celtic language spoken around the 1st century BC.

The recorded names have been discussed by Kenneth H. Jackson, in The Problem of the Picts, who considered some of them to be Pritenic but had reservations about most. Katherine Forsyth (1997) reviewed them and considers more of them to be Celtic, still recognizing that some names of islands and rivers may be pre-Indo-European.

The rarity of survival of Pritenic names is probably due to Dál Riatan and Norse settlement.

The dialect position of Pritenic was discussed by Jackson and by Koch (1955). Their conclusions are that Pritenic and Common Brittonic had split by the 1st century. The Roman frontier between Britannia and Pictland is likely to have increased this. By the 8th century, Bede considered Pictish and Welsh/British to be separate.

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.

The Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain during the 6th century saw a much steeper decline; increasingly the tongue gave way to Old English. Some speakers migrated to Armorica and Galicia. By 700, it was mainly restricted to North West England, Southern Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Devon and Brittany. There, it evolved into Cumbric, Welsh, Cornish and Breton, respectively.

The early Common Brittonic vowel inventory is effectively identical to that of Proto-Celtic. /ɨ/ and /ʉ/ have not developed yet.

Notes:

• The central mid vowels /ə/ and /ɵ̞/ were allophonic developments of /i/ and /u/, respectively.

Notes:

• The dative dual and plural represent the inherited instrumental forms, which replaced the inherited dative dual and plural, from Proto-Celtic *toutābom, *toutābos.

Notes:

• Neuter 2nd declension stems deviate from the paradigm as such:

Notes:

• Dual is same as singular
• All other declensions same as regular 2nd declension paradigm

Examples are:

• Avon from abonā[lower-alpha 2] = "river" (cf. Welsh afon, Cornish avon, Breton aven)
• Britain cognate with Pritani = (possibly) "People of the Forms" (cf. Welsh Prydain "Britain", pryd "appearance, form, image, resemblance"; Irish cruth "appearance, shape", Old Irish Cruithin "Picts")
• Cheviot from *cev- = "ridge" and -ed, a noun suffix[20]
• Dover, as pre-medieval-Latin could did not distinguish a Spanish-style mixed b/v sound, the phonetic standard way of reading Dubrīs is as dʊβriːs. It means water(s) (cognate with old Welsh dwfr, plural phon. /dəvrʊɪð/, Cornish dowr, Breton dour, Irish dobhar, its orthography "bh" denoting v or β phonetically)
• Kent from canto- = "border" (becoming in Welsh cant(el) "rim, brim", in Breton, kant)
• Leeds in Old English Loidis, from an earlier *Lǭtẹses, from *lǭd meaning "rut, heat, ardour" (c.f. Welsh llawd)[21]
• Lothian (Lleuddiniawn in medieval Welsh) from *Lugudũn(iãnon) "Fort of Lugus"
• Severn from Sabrīna[lower-alpha 2], perhaps the name of a goddess (modern Welsh, Hafren)
• Thames from Tamesis = "dark" (likely cognate with Welsh tywyll "darkness", Cornish tewal, Breton teñval Irish teimheal, pointing to a Brittonic approximate word temeselo-)
• Thanet (headland) from tan-eto- = "bonfire/aflame" (cf. Welsh tân "fire", Cornish tanses, Old Breton tanet "aflame")
• York from Ebur-ākon[lower-alpha 2] = "yew tree stand/group" (cognate with Welsh Efrog, from efwr "cow parsnip, hogweed" + -og "abundant in", Breton evor "alder buckthorn", Scottish Gaelic iubhar "yew", iùbhrach "stand/grove of yew trees"; cognate with Évreux in France and Évora in Portugal) via Latin Eburacum > OE Eoforwīc (re-analysed by the Anglo-Saxons as eofor 'boar' with Old English wic appended at the end) > ON Jórvík

Basic words tor, combe, bere, and hele from Brittonic common in Devon place-names.[22] Tautologous, two-tongue names exist in England, such as:

• Derwentwater (for Celtic: Brittonic part see Dover above)
• Chetwood, (cognate with Welsh coed, Breton koad)[23]
• Bredon Hill