Brittonic languages in the context of "Britons (historical)"

The Britons (*Pritanī, Latin: Britanni, Welsh: Brythoniaid), also known as Celtic Britons or ancient Britons, were the Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons (among others). They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.

The earliest written evidence for the Britons is from Greco-Roman writers and dates to the Iron Age. Ancient Britain was made up of many tribes and kingdoms, associated with various hillforts. The Britons followed an ancient Celtic religion overseen by druids. Some of the southern tribes had strong links with mainland Europe, especially Gaul and Belgica, and minted their own coins. The Roman Empire conquered most of Britain in the 1st century AD, creating the province of Britannia. The Romans invaded northern Britain, but the Britonnic tribes such as the Caledonians and Picts in the north remained unconquered, and Hadrian's Wall which bisects modern Northumbria and Cumbria became the edge of the empire. A Romano-British culture emerged, mainly in the southeast, and British Latin coexisted with Brittonic. It is unclear what relationship the Britons had with the Picts, who lived outside of the empire in northern Britain; however, most scholars today accept the fact that the Pictish language was closely related to Common Brittonic.

Welsh (Cymraeg [kəmˈraːiɡ] or y Gymraeg [ə ɡəmˈraːiɡ]) is a Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales by about 18% of the population, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut Province, Argentina).

Historically, it has also been known in English as "British", "Cambrian", "Cambric" and "Cymric".

Cornish (Kernewek or Kernowek [kəɾˈnuːək]) is a Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Cornish people and their homeland, Cornwall. Along with Welsh and Breton, Cornish descends from Common Brittonic, a language once spoken widely across Great Britain. For much of the medieval period Cornish was the main language of Cornwall, until it was gradually pushed westwards by the spread of English. Cornish remained a common community language in parts of Cornwall until the mid-18th century, and there is some evidence for traditional speakers persisting into the 19th century.

Cornish became extinct as a living community language in Cornwall by the end of the 18th century; knowledge of Cornish persisted within some families and individuals. A revival started in the early 20th century, and in 2010 UNESCO reclassified the language as critically endangered, stating that its former classification of the language as extinct was no longer accurate. The language has a growing number of second-language speakers, and a very small number of families now raise children to speak revived Cornish as a first language.

The settlement of Great Britain by Germanic peoples from continental Europe led to the development of an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity and a shared Germanic language—Old English—whose closest known relative is Old Frisian, spoken on the other side of the North Sea. The first Germanic speakers to settle in Britain permanently are likely to have been soldiers recruited by the Roman administration in the 4th century AD, or even earlier. In the early 5th century, during the end of Roman rule in Britain and the breakdown of the Roman economy, larger numbers arrived, and their impact upon local culture and politics increased.

There is ongoing debate about the scale, timing and nature of the Anglo-Saxon settlements and also about what happened to the existing populations of the regions where the migrants settled. The available evidence includes a small number of medieval texts which emphasize Saxon settlement and violence in the 5th century but do not give many clear or reliable details. Linguistic, archaeological and genetic information have played an increasing role in attempts to better understand what happened. The British Celtic and Latin languages spoken in Britain before Germanic speakers migrated there had very little impact on Old English vocabulary. According to many scholars, this suggests that a large number of Germanic speakers became important relatively suddenly. On the basis of such evidence it has even been argued that large parts of what is now England were clear of prior inhabitants, perhaps due to mass deaths from the Plague of Justinian. However, a contrasting view that gained support in the late 20th century suggests that the migration involved relatively few individuals, possibly centred on a warrior elite, who popularized a non-Roman identity after the downfall of Roman institutions. This hypothesis suggests a large-scale acculturation of natives to the incomers' language and material culture. In support of this, archaeologists have found that, despite evidence of violent disruption, settlement patterns and land use show many continuities with the Romano-British past, despite profound changes in material culture.

A menhir (/ˈmɛnhɪər/; from Brittonic languages: maen or men, "stone" and hir or hîr, "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be found individually as monoliths, or as part of a group of similar stones. Menhirs' size can vary considerably, but they often taper toward the top.

Menhirs are found across Europe, Africa, and Asia, with a concentration in Western Europe, notably in Ireland, Great Britain, and Brittany. Theories concerning their purpose remain speculative, with hypotheses ranging from druidic rituals to territorial markers or elements of an ideological system. Some menhirs feature engravings, including anthropomorphic figures and symbols, and are often associated with ancient religious ceremonies and burial chambers.

Pictish was the extinct Brittonic Celtic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and early medieval records in the area controlled by the kingdoms of the Picts. Such evidence, however, shows the language to be an Insular Celtic language – possibly a variant of the Brittonic language once thought to be spoken in most of Great Britain.

The prevailing view in the second half of the 20th century was either that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language isolate, or that there coexisted not one but two Pictish languages: one Indo-European (Brittonic Celtic branch) and the other non-Indo-European.

The Goidelic (/ɡɔɪˈdɛlɪk/ goy-DEL-ik) or Gaelic languages (/ˈɡeɪlɪk/ GALE-ik; Irish: teangacha Gaelacha; Scottish Gaelic: cànanan Goidhealach; Manx: çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.

Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from Ireland through the Isle of Man to Scotland. There are three modern Goidelic languages: Irish (Gaeilge), Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig), and Manx (Gaelg). Manx died out as a first language in the 20th century but has since been revived to some degree.

Common Brittonic (Welsh: Brythoneg; Cornish: Brythonek; Breton: Predeneg), also known as British, or Proto-Brittonic, is the reconstructed Celtic language thought to be historically spoken by the Celtic Britons in Britain and Brittany. It is the common ancestor of the later Brittonic languages.

It is a form of Insular Celtic, descended from Proto-Celtic, a theorized parent language that, by the first half of the first millennium BC, was diverging into separate dialects or languages. Evidence from early and modern Welsh shows that Common Brittonic was influenced by Latin during the Roman period, especially in terms related to the church and Christianity. By the sixth century AD, the languages of the Celtic Britons were swiftly diverging into Neo-Brittonic: Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, Breton. Pictish may either have been a sister language or a descendant branch.

The Caledonians (/ˌkælɪˈdoʊniənz/; Latin: Caledones or Caledonii; Ancient Greek: Καληδῶνες, Kalēdōnes) or the Caledonian Confederacy are believed to be a Brittonic-speaking (Celtic) tribal confederacy in what is now Scotland during the Iron Age and Roman eras. The Greek form of the tribal name gave rise to the name Caledonia for their territory. The Caledonians were considered to be a group of Britons, but later, after the Roman conquest of the southern half of Britain, the northern inhabitants were distinguished as Picts, thought to be a related people who would have also spoken a Brittonic language. The Caledonian Britons were thus enemies of the Roman Empire, which was the state then administering most of Great Britain as the Roman province of Britannia.

The Caledonians, like many Celtic tribes in Britain, were hillfort builders and farmers who defeated and were defeated by the Romans on several occasions. The Romans never fully occupied Caledonia, though several attempts were made. Nearly all of the information available about the Caledonians is based on predominantly Roman sources, which may be biased.