Talk:Pictish language

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This needs to be expanded. Alexander 007 07:53, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 From Talk:Picts 2 A note to editors: Material removed from Picts and material not used in Picts 3 Fin? 4 Place within Celtic 5 So what is it? 6 Richard Cox and Pictish=Norse

[edit] From Talk:Picts

I'm copying this section (Talk:Picts#Pictish language) from the discussion page of Picts, as it is likely to prove useful background discussion to future editors of this page. QuartierLatin1968 17:01, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to say it, but gadzooks this all reads badly. It is particularly irritating to see Pictish discussed as a Brythonic language without a shred of linguistic data adduced. There are some interesting recent attempts to show that the language in Pictish Oghams are Norse by the way. I am not sure how to help this article, but it sure does need help. Other useful additions to this article would be about Pictish art, for instance, and Pictish Oghams. Evertype 16:34, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)

If you are unhappy with the current article please feel free to rewrite the unsatisfactory parts and add anything that is currently missing. We'd love to have a better article. -- Derek Ross | Talk 20:25, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Then you'll be even more irritated now as I have removed all references to crank language theories. In the face of the onomastic and toponymic evidence it would take a very great deal to show that Pictish was not P-Celtic. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Angus McLellan 15:27, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that removing the crank theories was a good idea, Angus. The article previously made it fairly clear that they had much less evidence and support than the P-Celtic theory. Now that they're gone we can't discount them as we were doing. Many people are vaguely aware of them and thus it's helpful if we show what a thin foundation many of them are laid on. -- Derek Ross | Talk 17:00, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

In a Pictish language article, perhaps. Argument by analogy's never convincing, but the Etruscan language article mentions the Magyar crank theory (but only that one while there are, or have been, plenty of others) while the Etruscan civilization article does not mention any alternatives. At any event, I don't really see what alternatives could be reasonably included. Has anyone addressed the matter of late ? It's not as if I'm an expert ... Angus McLellan 00:25, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

The possibility that at least some Picts spoke a non-Indo-European language is widely held, and has to be dealt with; also, it is still argued that Pictish might have been a Goidelic dialect. Arguments can actually be made for these theories, and while they aren't nearly as convincing as the P-Celtic idea (which is not necessarily the same as the Brythonic idea), they are worth discussing. - Calgacus 00:33, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't seem that it is so well supported any longer. See the introduction to the SPNS web version of Watson's old book on Scottish placenames by A.G. James & Simon Taylor (http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/INDEX2INTRO.pdf - page 7).

<quote> Jackson also proposed another 'Pictish' language that incorporated pre-Celtic elements surviving (at least for epigraphic purposes) alongside 'Pritenic'. The latter hypothesis provoked most attention: it has little support among present-day scholars, and the debate, while interesting, has proved something of a distraction as far as the study of place-names is concerned ... (for recent reviews of and contributions to the debate on 'Pictish', see Nicolaisen 1996 and Forsyth 1998). </quote>

For a second source, Price's Languages in Britain and Ireland is on Google Books and the chapter on Pictish pretty is much readable. Forsyth's paper Literacy in Pictland is also on Google Books, but not very readable. Angus McLellan 16:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A note to editors: Material removed from Picts and material not used in Picts

My sandbox User:Angusmclellan/Pictish language contains references originally in Picts concerning language (added by User:Pádraic MacUidhir, ta !). It also has some material I wrote for Picts and didn't use, and links that may be useful. The study of the Pictish language is a long story, which speaks against the usual "Whig history of science" served up on WP, and it could do with telling here. Very Kuhnian indeed. Feel free to use any, all, or none of it. Angus McLellan 22:24, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll check it out soon and see if I can help. Alexander 007 13:10, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fin?

...is also the Gaelic prefix for white, so is it really valid to claim it as a Pictish prefix?

There is also no discussion of a pre-IE component to Pictish. --MacRusgail 11:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Fir should indeed go. That section was lifted from the original Picts article. Among the Pictish place name elements listed by Glanville Price, not given here already, there are pert (hedge, Welsh perth - Perth, Larbert), carden (thicket, Welsh cardden - Pluscarden, Kincardine), pevr (shining, Welsh pefr - Strathpeffer, Peffery) (Languages of Britain and Ireland, p. 128). I have an unread copy of Nicolaisen's book lying in Scotland. When I've read it, I should be able to add more.

Feel free to add non-IE Pictish. but, given the subject matter, it would be nice to cite sources here. Have you have a chance to read any of the online material on language and place names listed at Picts ? Angus McLellan 21:32, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Place within Celtic

So what's the scholarly consensus, if there is one, about where Pictish goes within the Celtic family? Is it sistered to Insular Celtic? sistered to Brythonic and Goidelic? within Brythonic? What are the young folk saying these days? QuartierLatin1968 16:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, here's something from Angr's talk archive, back from when I was faffing around earlier. So far as I know, the experts, if you mean paleolinguists by that, have no opinions. Angus McLellan 19:36, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

.... Begins ....

Section header: reverting Celtic languages (pictish)

You beat me to it. Hmmph. :P

→ P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 18:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

And I just put it back. I can readily find, and have added, sources supporting Celtic Pictish. It shouldn't be difficult, if it remains controversial, to find some published support for non-Celtic Pictish since the turn of the millennium using recent research. The best I could find was Marija Gimbutas in The Living Goddesses (1999), not exactly an uncontroversial work and not post-millennial. Sure, I found more, but they relied on positively ancient research. Lehmann's Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics (2005) is a good example of this sort of thing. Angus McLellan 12:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

It's always difficult finding sources arguing against fringe theories like this, because while supporters publish lots, the majority who don't believe them just ignore the issue and don't bother publishing arguments against them. If Pictish is generally omitted from lists of Celtic languages compiled by modern scholars, then the implication is that they do not consider it to be a Celtic language, even if they don't discuss it explicitly. --Angr (tɔk) 12:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I confess to zero expertise in the matter - I only read the end results - but it seems to me that e.g. Price, Nicolaisen and Forsyth are not cranks. That being so, I don't see how the current orthodoxy can be any more of a fringe theory than Jackson's theory which preceded it. I understood that "P-Celtic Pictish" was also the long-accepted theory before Jackson proposed a non-IE Pictish alongside the Pretenic/Brythonic one. Re Jackson's theory on the Picts page, where you added a (fact) template, I know where he wrote about this, but I haven't read it myself. Wearing your Wiki-admin hat, is it considered the done thing for me to put in a ref to something I have not actually seen myself (i.e. Glanville Price says Kenneth Jackson says, so I can add "see Jackson, K.H. whatever") ? Thanks in advance ! Angus McLellan 00:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it (wearing my Celticist hat), the current orthodoxy is neither that Pictish is Brythonic, nor that it is non-IE, but that too little is known about Pictish to know what it is. That's what Ball & Fife say in the introduction to The Celtic Languages, and also what my professors said when I was studying Indo-European linguistics in graduate school. In the introduction to a different book also called The Celtic Languages Donald MacAulay has a diagram making Pictish a sister branch to Brittonic under the heading "P-Celtic" (itself a sister to "Q-Celtic" under "Insular Celtic") but in the text never discusses this. Paul Russell's An Introduction to the Celtic Languages never discusses Pictish at all. Wearing my admin hat, I think it's fine to give the bibliographical information of a source you haven't read, though you should probably be careful not to put words in Jackson's mouth before reading him yourself. I also want to make it clear that I'm all in favor of saying that there are people who have argued that Pictish is Brythonic, and citing those sources, but I don't think it's NPOV to present that as the current communis opinio. --Angr (tɔk) 09:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Belated thanks for the info. FWIW, MacAulay discusses Pictish at the bottom of page 2. ISTM that I could have written that. Angus McLellan 00:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

.... Ends ....

[edit] So what is it?

The sentence "The problem of classification of the Pictish language was largely solved in 1582, by humanist scholar (and native Gaelic-speaker) George Buchanan, who expressed the view that Pictish was similar to Gaelic" is certainly going to lead the casual reader to believe the current communis opinio is that Pictish is Goidelic, which AFAIK is the one thing Pictish almost certainly is not. The "Glossary of Pictish words" lists only apparent loanwords from Norse, Old Irish, and Brythonic, so we're still left with nothing that's verifiably Pictish. The sentence "The evidence of placenames and personal names argue strongly that the Picts spoke Insular Celtic languages related to the more southerly Brythonic languages" is disingenuous since in general placenames and personal names are extremely unreliable indicators of genetic affiliation. (If place names and personal names were all we had of the Dravidian languages, we'd think they were descended from Sanskrit.) Angr (talk • contribs) 14:05, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

If I may say so, the remark "lists only apparent loanwords" is puzzling. Clearly the Norse stuff is rubbish, but what else should supposedly Pictish words resemble but Insular Celtic ones ? The list is, in large part, that done by Jackson fifty years ago, and still accepted by Price and Nicolaisen recently. Angus McLellan (Talk) 16:17, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, "crosc possibly derived from the Old Irish word for 'cross'" has to be a loanword somehow since the Old Irish word for "cross" is itself a loanword from Latin. Angr (talk • contribs) 17:59, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. But since the word list was unsourced, I have deleted it, leaving the five roots identified by Jackson and Bede's supposedly Pictish placename. There is considerable discussion of place-names in Watson, and also in Nicolaisen's revised Scottish Place-Names, but that's for some other time. Angus McLellan (Talk) 09:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Richard Cox and Pictish=Norse

The article should certainly discuss the text of the "pictish" inscriptions to some extent. Richard Cox's "Norse" theory should also be at least mentioned, whether or not you find it persuasive. Thoughts? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CecilWard (talk • contribs) 13:07, 4 April 2007 (UTC).