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Irish Language: Celtic Languages
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Irish has its roots in the original language of the Celtic peoples who emerged in south central Europe sometime around the 5th C. BCE. Theirs is known to archeologists as the La Tène culture. The extension of this proto-Celtic culture and language into virtually every region of Europe accounts for the many branches of Celtic languages. Celts in western continental Europe spoke Gaulish; Celts in what is now called Spain spoke Celtiberian; Celts in the Balkans spoke Galatian; Celts in the region of modern Switzerland spoke Lepontic. All of these languages are now long extinct, as are most of the other branches of proto-Celtic. Celts who migrated onto the western edge of the known world spoke the Brythonic and Goidelic (... sometimes written Gaidhdelic) forms of the Insular Celtic language family.
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Irish is a Celtic language spoken in mainly Ireland (Éire). There are ... Irish speakers in the UK (Ríocht Aontaithe), the USA (Stáit Aontaithe Mheiriceá), Canada (Ceanada) and Australia (an Astráil). According to the 1996 census, 1.43 million people in Ireland claim to have some knowledge of Irish, 353,000 of whom speak it regularly. The main concentrations of Irish speakers are in the Gaeltachtaí, which are scattered mainly along the west coast of Ireland and have a total population of 82,715, 76.3% of whom speak Irish.
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Modern Irish is the direct descendant of one of the most ancient languages in Europe – Old Irish. It is a Celtic language, closely related to Scots Gàidhlig and Manx Gaelg, and ... related to Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Irish has been spoken in Ireland since at least 300 BC.
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Irish is distantly related to Welsh (Cymraeg), Cornish (Kernewek) and Breton (Brezhoneg), which form the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages... known as P-Celtic. The Celtic languages all have a similar grammatical structure, but they have very little vocabulary in common.
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Celtic Languages