The History of British Celtic and Latin between the First and Seventh centuries AD (Briefly)

Introduction

From 43 AD to about 410 - 425 AD¹ the Romans occupied Britain. However Rome's influence lingered even after the occupation ended. The appearance of Latin loanwords in British Celtic is strong evidence of this influence. In Britain, the Roman language left a lasting mark on British Celtic that we can still find in Welsh today. The question is what is the history of Latin and British Celtic. What did the people of Britain speak between the fi rst and seventh centuries AD, and how did this eff ect British Celtic? This is what will be briefly covered in this blogpost.

Latin and British Celtic

After the Romans invaded in 43 AD, we fi rst see Latin loan words used in conjunction with terms concerning the upper class. This only seems logical,as some of the things of the new ruling class were unique to Roman civilization and had not yet made an appearance in the Celtic world. We also see that some Latin load words are taken, even though there existed a Celtic word already. As Jackson so aptly puts it:

"In other instances, though the Britons probably had a similar
object, the Latin word expressed a better or at least a di erent
variety. So pontem drove out briva, perhaps because the Roman
bridge was an impressive work of engineering whereas the Celtic
one would be a rough a air, and all the main bridges on roads
and in cities would be of Roman construction."²

This suggests that as Roman constructions became more abundant in Britain, the Latin word was adopted in to the Celtic lexicon. However, these two explanations do not help explain why common objects that had perfectly serviceable Celtic words were eventually replaced with Latin loan words. If Latin was only being spoken by the upper classes and British Celtic was the vernacular of the lower classes, than common words would not become Latinized.³ The Latinization of common words leads one to believe that many of the lower class people spoke Latin in their day to day lives. On the other hand, while we see a number of nouns that are Latin loan words, there is little Latin structure.

However, by the very nature of the geography of Britain, it would seem
that the Lowland Zone, described by Jackson as

"roughly south and east of a line drawn from the Vale of York past to the southern end of the Pennines and along the Welsh border to the fringes of the hilly country of Devon and Cornwall, including most of the comparatively low-lying, fertile, easily cultivated land, and wide open to invasion from the continent."⁴

was more Latinized than the Highland areas. It was here the most contact was made with Latin, and here where Latin left most of it's influence while the Roman Empire was still in existence.

With this revelation, we begin to see an outline of how Latin came in to Britain. First with the new ruling class of Romans, where it gradually spread outward and downward amongst the population. The use of Latin grew with new, abundant, construction through the country. Afterwards it starts to infiltrate the daily lives of the Celtic population and more than likely becomes their primary language. However, the Roman Empire collapsed before the Celtic language of the entirety of Britain could be wholly subsumed by Latin. As the Roman Empire's power withdrew, Latin would slowly lose it's place as a language of the upper class.

While the Lowlands seemed to be far more Latinized while the Roman Empire existed, the Highland areas seem to have undergone Latinization later, between the fifth and seventh centuries.⁵ The number and type of changes in the Highlands corresponds with the changes Latin was undergoing across the continent. This suggests that it was an influence of the more Latinized people of the Lowlands migrating and settling on the lands of the Celtic-speaking people of the Highlands. It further implies that it was Celtic that was being influenced by Latin, not Latin being influenced by Celtic.⁶ That does not mean, however, that those who remained in the Lowlands did not speak Latin when the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain.⁷ Indeed, it is probably because of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons that a large number of British Latin speakers moved to the Highland areas, bringing their Latin accent to British Celtic.

Conclusion

When the Romans came, they brought much change to Britain. Some of this change was to the physical appearance of Britain, roads, homes, and bridges. Some of this change was to the language itself. While it seems that a good number of people in Lowland Britain started to adopt Latin as their language, the Roman Empire collapsed before the Latinization of the Celtic people was complete, leaving only traces of loan words in its place. The Latinization of the Highlands occured only after the collapse of the Roman Empire and encourages the idea that it was a shift of people from the Lowlands bringing Latin and Latin-accented Celtic to the Highland Celtic speakers, due to the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons.

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¹ Kenneth Jackson, Languages and History in Early Britain (Four Courts Press, 2000) 77.
² Jackson 77-78.
³ Peter Schrijver,"The rise and fall of British Latin: Evidence from English and Brittonic", The Celtic Roots of English, ed. Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Pitknen, Studies in Languages 37, University of Joensuu (Joensuu: Joensuu University Library, 2002) 99.
⁴ Jackson 96.
⁵ Peter Schrijver, "What Britons Spoke Around 400 AD", Britons in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. N.J. Higham, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 7 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007) 166.
⁶ Schrijver, "What Britons Spoke Around 400 AD" 167.
⁷ Schrijver, "What Britons Spoke Around 400 AD" 170.