Re: Q- and P- Celtic

Ciao, Luca!

Sgrìobh thu...

> I'm working on a short paper about the languages
> of Scotland and the way they relate to Scottish
> identity/-ies.
I'd be very interested to see this paper when it's done! This is
something I have a big interest in, having gone to university in
Scotland and knowing Scottish people of all different linguistic
backgrounds (Gaelic, Scots, and English).

> I'm now writing a couple of lines about the
> evolution of Gaelic, and I was thinking of inserting
> a hint to the differences between the Goidelic (Q) and
> Brythonic (P) branches of insular Celtic.
It might be worth pointing out that while many people consider
P-Celtic to be synonymous with Brythonic and Q-Celtic to be
synonymous with Goidelic, this is not the case. It is true that
all the surviving P-Celtic languages are Brythonic and all the
surviving Q-Celtic languages are Goidelic, but there used to be
P-Celtic languages which were not Brythonic, and Q-Celtic
languages which were not Goidelic. In other words, Brythonic and
Goidelic are sub-classes of P-Celtic and Q-Celtic, respectively.

>  I wanted to include an example showing how the two different
> branches handle PIE *kw, just to explain why they are called
Q-
> and P-Celtic, and I've chosen Latin _quattuor_ vs. Sc.Gaelic
> _ceithir_ (or _a' ceithir_?)
Just _ceithir_.

> vs. Welsh _pedwar_. So far so good. But how are these last two
> words actually pronounced? I suppose something like [kheir;]
and
> ['pedwar]... can anybody suggest me an IPA trascription?
Eww. I'm not good with real *phonetic* (rather than phonemic)
transcription. Attempting to use X-SAMPA, my best guess would be
something like ["k_h'ehI4] or ["k_h'ehID]. The initial _c_ is
both aspirated and palatalised; the final _r_ may be realised in
a variety of ways, ranging from a tap to a voiced interdental
fricative, depending on the dialect. The _i_ in the second
syllable may vary from [@] to [I] to [i] too.

BTW, the _th_ in _ceithir_ was originally [T]; the sound was
lost sometime during the Early Modern Gaelic period (roughly
1200-1650) and merged with [h].

Spero che questo ti aiuta!

Thomas

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