XPost: soc.culture.scottish, soc.culture.irish, ie.general
From: ciaran@ciaran.com
allan connochie wrote:
> "Ciaran" wrote in message
> news:455E9F8B.9020903@ciaran.com...
>> allan connochie wrote:
>>> "Ciaran" wrote in message
>>> news:s9h6h.64485$rP1.8080@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>>>> Some form of Q-Celtic Gaelic may have been used by the Picts as on the
>>>> inscription in the Gaelic Ogham alphabet cited below. Note that
>>>> "mac"/"mic" means "son" in both Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig) and Irish
>>>> Gaelic (Gaeilge) - if you pronounce the Pictish incription "meqq" it
>>>> sounds much closer to the Gaelic version than to the P-Celtic Brythonic
>>>> version "mab"/"map" which means "son" in both Welsh (Cymraeg) and
> Breton
>>>> (Brezhoneg).
>>>
>>> This is nothing new though. It is generally accepted that the 'meqq'
> could
>>> mean son of. It could be Gaelic - which would be no surprise as the
> Picts
>>> became Gaelicised, at first probably just influenced by, then probably
>>> bi-lingual, then Gaelic speakers. However that is not the same as the
>>> Pictish language itself being Gaelic. Likewise 'meqq' could simply be
> their
>>> way of putting 'map' to print. It is also possible that 'meqq' has
> nothing
>>> to do with son of - I'd doubt that myself by the fact is we don't know.
>>> Likewise some have suggested that the inscriptions don't actually mean
>>> anything - though again I'd doubt that.
>>>
>>> What is true though is that the suggestion that 'meqq' could be the
> original
>>> Pictish 'map' Gaelicised has been public knowledge ever since people
> started
>>> looking at the inscriptions. Little things like that are what pushed
> some
>>> scholars in the 19thC to suggest that Pictish may have been Q-Celtic.
>>> However these views have ben roundly debunked for a century or so and
>>> opinion amongst those who study the subject is just about unanimous. It
> is
>>> generally accepted that the Pictish language was P-Celtic.
>>>
>>> Allan
>>>
>>>
>> Sorry, No, VERY UNLIKELY - the Ogham letter Ceirt (5 horizontal strokes
>> to the left of the line) which is transliterated as "q" represents a
>> hard "K" sound as in "Mack". There are other Ogham letters for "b/p"
>> which they would have used instead. "MAQ" is also used extensively on
>> definite Gaelic Ogham inscriptions everywhere Ogham is found.
>
> What is very unlikely? The whole post? I've given several possible reasons
> which have been put forward. It is all by the by anyway. Even if it is a
> representation of Mac actually in Gaelic, which I said would be no surprise,
> it makes no difference to the argument. No-one is denying that Gaelic didn't
> spread into Pictland, influence Pictish and eventually replace it - what is
> being said is that the Pictish language itself was P-Celtic.
>
> I take it your point is about the 'meqq' possibly being the Pictish attempt
> at puting 'map' to print? This is not my idea. I was simply giving one of
> the possible reasons. Talking about the said subject Elizabeth Sutherland in
> her book "In Search of the Picts" quotes Niall Robertson............."when
> the Picts wrote their Ogam inscriptions in P-Celtic they might have used the
> 'fid' for 'q' to represent 'p', so that inscriptions using MEQQ or MAQQ
> would have been read as MAP or MAPP"
>
> She then goes on to explain "Ogam inscriptions in the other P-Celtic areas
> such as Wales and the old district of Dumnonia used the 'cert' for 'q' if
> they used it at all, but these inscriptions are written in Irish and don't
> attempt to represent local language as the Pictish Ogams seem to do"
>
> Again I have no wish to personally put forward this particular theory. It
> was just one of the various theories around.
>
> Sutherland by the way was responsible for establishing the museum at Groam
> House in Rosemarkie as a Pictish centre. I think she knows a thing or two
> about the Picts as she has dedicated a good part of her life to studying
> them. She doesn't herself come to any conclusion about the MEQQ question,
> which is possibly sensible, as it couldn't be proved one way or the other.
> Whatever the answer is though it doesn't itself affect the overall
> acceptance of Pictish being P-Celtic and she says "the opinion generally
> held by Celtic scholars from the beginning of the 20thC is that Picts spoke
> a P-Celtic language"
>
> I could of course quote from stacks of volumes written by respected
> historians but I thought this one would do to make a point. You suggested
> that it wasn't you who has an agenda here, rather it is myself and the
> entire Scottish community of historians who have the bias. These are two
> quotes from William Ferguson's "The Identity of the Scottish Nation"
>
> "Indeed about the one fact that modern scholarship has established with
> certainty is that the Picts were P-Celts"
>
> Now according to you scholars like Ferguson are pushing this idea to forward
> their own agendas. The only problem is he makes repeated statements
> throughout the book like this
>
> "It was the Scots of Dalriada, an Irish tribe who settled in Argyll in the
> sixth century AD and gradually extended their sway over most of Scotland
> north of the Forth, who gave their name to the country; and more than their
> name, for they contributed to and, to a large extent, shaped the subsequent
> Kingdom of Scotland. For many centuries, and those the most formative, their
> language, Gaelic, was the lingua scotica of the regnum scotica"
>
> In other words your suggestion that people claim the Picts were P-Celts in
> order to knock Gaelic is utter codswallop. The Gaelic language is important
> enough that you don't need to reshape history in order to make it more so.
>
>
> Allan
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Allan, the Wiki classifies Pictish as possibly Brythonic in the context
that all Insular Celtic languages are closely related anyway and it
presents evidence of this:
Insular Celtic languages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Insular Celtic
Geographic
distribution: British Isles
Genetic
classification: Indo-European
Celtic
Insular Celtic
Subdivisions:
Brythonic
Goidelic
The Insular Celtic hypothesis concerns the origin of the Celtic
languages. The six Celtic languages of modern times can be divided into:
* the Goidelic languages (Irish, Manx, and Scottish); and
* the Brythonic languages (Breton, Cornish and Welsh).
The term "Insular" refers to the place of origin of these languages, the
British Isles, in contrast to the (now extinct) Continental Celtic
languages of mainland Europe and Anatolia. There is a theory that the
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