1.
Great Britain
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Great Britain, also known as Britain, is a large island in the north Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of 209,331 km2, Great Britain is the largest European island, in 2011 the island had a population of about 61 million people, making it the worlds third-most populous island after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan. The island of Ireland is situated to the west of it, the island is dominated by a maritime climate with quite narrow temperature differences between seasons. Politically, the island is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, most of England, Scotland, and Wales are on the island. The term Great Britain often extends to surrounding islands that form part of England, Scotland, and Wales. A single Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the union of the Kingdom of England, the archipelago has been referred to by a single name for over 2000 years, the term British Isles derives from terms used by classical geographers to describe this island group. By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a name for the British Isles. However, with the Roman conquest of Britain the Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain, the oldest mention of terms related to Great Britain was by Aristotle, or possibly by Pseudo-Aristotle, in his text On the Universe, Vol. III. To quote his works, There are two large islands in it, called the British Isles, Albion and Ierne. The name Britain descends from the Latin name for Britain, Britannia or Brittānia, Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The French form replaced the Old English Breoton, Breoten, Bryten, Breten, Britannia was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together. It is derived from the writings of the Pytheas around 320 BC. Marcian of Heraclea, in his Periplus maris exteri, described the group as αἱ Πρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι. The peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Πρεττανοί, Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain, Britain, which has the same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic-speaking inhabitants of Ireland. The latter were later called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans, the Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain and to Ireland as little Britain in his work Almagest. The name Albion appears to have out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Britain. After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a term only. It was used again in 1604, when King James VI and I styled himself King of Great Brittaine, France, Great Britain refers geographically to the island of Great Britain, politically to England, Scotland and Wales in combination
2.
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
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The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain describes the process which changed the language and culture of most of England from Romano-British to Germanic. The Germanic-speakers in Britain, themselves of diverse origins, eventually developed a cultural identity as Anglo-Saxons. This process occurred from the mid 5th to early 7th centuries, the settlement was followed by the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the south and east of Britain, later followed by the rest of modern England. The available evidence includes the scanty contemporary and near-contemporary written record, the few literary sources tell of hostility between incomers and natives. They describe violence, destruction, massacre and the flight of the Romano-British population, also, it has long been supposed that the influence of Celtic languages on Old English was slight. These points have suggested a very large-scale invasion by various Germanic peoples, in this view, held by the majority of historians until the mid to late twentieth century, much of England was cleared of its prior inhabitants. If this traditional viewpoint were to be correct, the genes of the later English people would have been inherited from Germanic migrants. Another view, probably the most widely today, is that the migrants were relatively few. They then dominated a process of acculturation to Germanic language and material culture, consistent with this theory, archaeologists find that settlement patterns and land-use show no clear break with the Romano-British past, though there are marked changes in material culture. This view predicts that the ancestry of the people of Anglo-Saxon, the uncertain results of genetic studies tend to support this prediction. There are also two less well-supported theories, held by a minority of scholars, both originating from population genetics studies, first, Stephen Oppenheimer has argued that Germanic peoples, language and culture existed in eastern regions of Britain, even in pre-Roman times. This idea has been very actively challenged by a number of linguists, second, that the early settlers may have arrived in considerable numbers but represented a minority relative to the natives. If these incomers established themselves as an elite, this could have allowed them enhanced reproductive success. In this case, the genes of later Anglo-Saxon England could have been derived from moderate numbers of Germanic migrants. By 400, the Roman provinces in Britain were a part of the Roman Empire, occasionally lost to rebellion or invasion. That cycle of loss and recapture collapsed over the next decade, the history of this period has traditionally been a narrative of decline and fall. However, evidence from Verulamium suggests that urban-type rebuilding, featuring piped water, was continuing late on in the 5th century, at Silchester, there are signs of sub-Roman occupation down to around 500, and at Wroxeter new Roman baths have been identified as Roman-type. There are also signs in Gildas works that the economy was thriving without Roman taxation, as he complains of luxuria and this is the 5th century Britain into which the Anglo-Saxons appear
3.
Brittonic languages
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The Brittonic, Brythonic or British Celtic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other is Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, the name Brittonic derives ultimately from the name Prettanike, recorded by Greek authors for the British Isles. Some authors reserve the term Brittonic for the modified later Brittonic languages after about AD600, the Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic language, spoken throughout Great Britain south of the Firth of Forth during the Iron Age and Roman period. In addition, North of the Forth, the Pictish language is considered to be related, it is possible it was a Brittonic language, in the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia. During the next few centuries the language began to split into several dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric is extinct, having been replaced by Goidelic and English speech, the Isle of Man and Orkney may also have originally spoken a Brittonic language, later replaced with a Goidelic one. Due to emigration, there are communities of Brittonic language speakers in England, France. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as British, Brythonic was coined in 1879 by the Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython. Brittonic, derived from Briton and also earlier spelled Britonic and Britonnic and it became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in Kenneth H. Jacksons highly influential 1953 work on the topic, Language and History in Early Britain. Jackson noted that by that time Brythonic had become a term. Today, Brittonic often replaces Brythonic in the literature, rudolf Thurneysen used Britannic in his influential A Grammar of Old Irish, though this never became popular among subsequent scholars. Comparable historical terms include the Medieval Latin lingua Britannica and sermo Britannicus, some writers use British for the language and its descendants, though due to the risk of confusion, others avoid it or use it only in a restricted sense. Jackson, and later John T. Koch, use British only for the phase of the Common Brittonic language. However, subsequent writers have tended to follow Jacksons scheme, rendering this use obsolete, knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. For the early information is obtained from coins, inscriptions and comments by classical writers as well as place names. For later languages there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, the names recorded in the Roman period are given in Rivet and Smith. The Brittonic branch is referred to as P-Celtic because linguistic reconstruction of the Brittonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme *kʷ is p as opposed to Goidelic c. Other major characteristics include, The retention of the Proto-Celtic sequences am and an, Proto-Celtic *wassos servant, young man became Welsh, Cornish and Breton gwas
4.
Pictish language
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Pictish is the extinct language, or dialect, spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. Such evidence, however, points to the language being closely related to the Brittonic language spoken prior to Anglo-Saxon settlement in what is now southern Scotland, England and Wales. A minority view held by a few claims that Pictish was at least partially non-Indo-European or that a non-Indo-European. Pictish was replaced by Gaelic in the centuries of the Pictish period. During the reign of Caustantín mac Áeda, outsiders began to refer to the region as the kingdom of Alba rather than the kingdom of the Picts. However, though the Pictish language did not disappear suddenly, a process of Gaelicisation was clearly underway during the reigns of Caustantín, by a certain point, probably during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become fully Gaelicised Scots, and Pictish identity was forgotten. Bede states that Columba, a Gael, used an interpreter during his mission to the Picts, a number of competing theories have been advanced regarding the nature of the Pictish language, Pictish was an Insular Celtic language allied to the P-Celtic language Brittonic. Pictish was an Insular Celtic language allied to the Q-Celtic languages and this theory, while favoured by some in the 19th century, is now rejected. Pictish was a Germanic language allied to Old English, the predecessor to the Scots language and this theory, advanced in the 18th century, has long been rejected. Pictish was a Pre-Indo-European language, a relic of the Bronze Age and this theory was favoured in the mid to late 20th century but is less favoured now. Most scholars agree that Pictish was a branch of the Brittonic language, Pictish came under increasing pressure and influence from Old Irish spoken in Dál Riata from the 5th century until its eventual replacement. Pictish is thought to have influenced the development of modern Scottish Gaelic, the evidence of place names and personal names demonstrates that an Insular Celtic language related to the more southerly Brittonic languages was formerly spoken in the Pictish area. The view of Pictish as a P-Celtic language was first proposed in 1582 by George Buchanan, a compatible view was advanced by antiquarian George Chalmers in the early 19th century. Celtic scholar Whitley Stokes, in a study of the Irish annals. This conclusion was supported by philologist Alexander MacBains analysis of the place, william Forbes Skene argued in 1837 that Pictish was a Goidelic language, the ancestor of modern Scottish Gaelic. He suggested that Columbas use of an interpreter reflected his preaching to the Picts in Latin, forsyth speculates that a period of bilingualism may have outlasted the Pictish kingdom in peripheral areas by several generations. Scottish Gaelic, unlike Irish maintains a substantial corpus of Brittonic loan-words and, moreover, john Rhys, in 1892, proposed that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language. This opinion was based on the apparently unintelligible ogham inscriptions found in historically Pictish areas, a modified version of this theory was advanced in an influential 1955 review of Pictish by Kenneth Jackson
5.
Goidelic languages
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The Goidelic /ɡɔɪˈdɛlɪk/ or Gaelic languages form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from Ireland through the Isle of Man to Scotland, there are three modern Goidelic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, the last of which died out in the 20th century but has since been revived to some degree. The word Gaelic by itself is used to refer to Scottish Gaelic and is thus ambiguous. The names used in the languages themselves are derived from Old Irish Goídelc, the medieval mythology of the Lebor Gabála Érenn places its origin in an eponymous ancestor of the Gaels, and inventor of the language, Goídel Glas. Medieval Gaelic literature tells us that the kingdom of Dál Riata emerged in western Scotland during the 6th century, the traditional view was that Dál Riata was founded by Irish migrants, but this is no longer universally accepted. Dál Riata grew in size and influence, and Gaelic language, the oldest written Goidelic language is Primitive Irish, which is attested in Ogham inscriptions from about the 4th century. The forms of speech are very close, and often identical, to the forms of Gaulish recorded before. Classical Gaelic, otherwise known as Early Modern Irish, covers the period from the 13th to the 18th century and this is often called Classical Irish, while Ethnologue gives the name Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic to this standardised written language. As long as written language was the norm, Ireland was considered the Gaelic homeland to the Scottish literati. Later orthographic divergence has resulted in standardised pluricentristic orthographies, Manx orthography, which was introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries, was based on English and Welsh practice and so never formed part of this literary standard. Irish is one of the Republic of Irelands two official languages along with English, historically the predominant language of the island, it is now mostly spoken in parts of the south, west, and northwest of Ireland. At present, the Gaeltachtaí are primarily found in Counties Cork, Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, in the Republic of Ireland 1,774,437 regard themselves as able to speak Irish. Of these,77,185 speak Irish on a daily basis outside school, the 2001 census in Northern Ireland showed that 167,487 people had some knowledge of Irish. Combined, this means that one in three people on the island of Ireland can understand Irish to some extent, although a large percentage of these do not speak it fluently. The Irish language has been recognised as an official and working language of the European Union, Irelands national language was the twenty-third to be given such recognition by the EU and previously had the status of a treaty language. Some people in the north and west of mainland Scotland and most people in the Hebrides still speak Scottish Gaelic, but the language has been in decline. There are now believed to be approximately 60,000 native speakers of Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and its historical range was much larger. For example, it was the language of most of the rest of the Scottish Highlands until little more than a century ago
6.
Celts
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The history of pre-Celtic Europe remains very uncertain. According to one theory, the root of the Celtic languages, the Proto-Celtic language, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe. Thus this area is called the Celtic homeland. The earliest undisputed examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions beginning in the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names, Insular Celtic languages are attested beginning around the 4th century in Ogham inscriptions, although it was clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century, coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge, survive in 12th century recensions. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a cohesive cultural entity. They had a linguistic, religious and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities. By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use, Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels and the Celtic Britons of the medieval and modern periods. A modern Celtic identity was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival. The first recorded use of the name of Celts – as Κελτοί – to refer to a group was by Hecataeus of Miletus, the Greek geographer, in 517 BC. In the fifth century BC Herodotus referred to Keltoi living around the head of the Danube, the etymology of the term Keltoi is unclear. Possible roots include Indo-European *kʲel ‘to hide’, IE *kʲel ‘to heat’ or *kel ‘to impel’, several authors have supposed it to be Celtic in origin, while others view it as a name coined by Greeks. Linguist Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel falls in the group. Yet he reports Celtic peoples in Iberia, and also uses the ethnic names Celtiberi and Celtici for peoples there, as distinct from Lusitani, pliny the Elder cited the use of Celtici in Lusitania as a tribal surname, which epigraphic findings have confirmed. Latin Gallus might stem from a Celtic ethnic or tribal name originally and its root may be the Proto-Celtic *galno, meaning “power, strength”, hence Old Irish gal “boldness, ferocity” and Welsh gallu “to be able, power”. The tribal names of Gallaeci and the Greek Γαλάται most probably have the same origin, the suffix -atai might be an Ancient Greek inflection. Proto-Germanic *walha is derived ultimately from the name of the Volcae and this means that English Gaul, despite its superficial similarity, is not actually derived from Latin Gallia, though it does refer to the same ancient region
7.
British Iron Age
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The parallel phase of Irish archaeology is termed the Irish Iron Age. The Iron Age is not a horizon of common artefacts. The British Iron Age lasted in theory from the first significant use of iron for tools, the Romanised culture is termed Roman Britain and is considered to supplant the British Iron Age. The Irish Iron Age was ended by the rise of Christianity, at a minimum, Celtic is a linguistic term without an implication of a lasting cultural unity connecting Gaul with the British Isles throughout the Iron Age. However it cannot be assumed that particular cultural features found in one Celtic-speaking culture can be extrapolated to the others. At present over 100 large-scale excavations of Iron Age sites have taken place, dating from the 8th century BC to the 1st century AD, hundreds of radiocarbon dates have been acquired and have been calibrated on four different curves, the most precise being based on tree ring sequences. In parts of Britain that were not Romanised, such as Scotland, the geographer closest to AD100 is perhaps Ptolemy. Pliny and Strabo are a bit older, but Ptolemy gives the most detail, during the later Bronze Age there are indications of new ideas influencing land use and settlement. Extensive field systems, now called Celtic fields, were being set out and settlements were becoming more permanent, long ditches, some many miles in length, were dug with enclosures placed at their ends. These are thought to indicate territorial borders and a desire to control over wide areas. By the 8th century BC, there is increasing evidence of Great Britain becoming closely tied to continental Europe, especially in Britains South and East. New weapon types appeared with clear parallels to those on the continent such as the Carps tongue sword, phoenician traders probably began visiting Great Britain in search of minerals around this time, bringing with them goods from the Mediterranean. At the same time, Northern European artefact types reached Eastern Great Britain in large quantities from across the North Sea, defensive structures dating from this time are often impressive, for example the brochs of Northern Scotland and the hill forts that dotted the rest of the islands. Some of the most well-known hill forts include Maiden Castle, Dorset, Cadbury Castle, Somerset and Danebury, hill forts first appeared in Wessex in the Late Bronze Age, but only become common in the period between 550 and 400 BC. The earliest were of a simple form, and often connected with earlier enclosures attached to the long ditch systems. Few hill forts have been excavated in the modern era, Danebury being a notable exception. However, it appears that forts were also used for domestic purposes, with examples of food storage, industry. Many hill forts are not in fact forts at all, the development of hill forts may have occurred due to greater tensions that arose between the better structured and more populous social groups
8.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
9.
Welsh people
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The Welsh people or the Welsh are a nation and ethnic group native to, or otherwise associated with, Wales and the Welsh language. Prior to the 20th century, large numbers of Welsh people spoke only Welsh, the term Welsh people applies to people from Wales and people of Welsh ancestry perceiving themselves or being perceived as sharing a cultural heritage and shared ancestral origins. Over 300,000 Welsh people live in London, the same etymological origin is shared by the names of various other Celtic or Latin peoples such as the Walloons and the Vlachs, as well as of the Swiss canton of Valais. The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales and these words are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning fellow-countrymen. They thus carry a sense of land of fellow-countrymen, our country, the word came into use as a self-description probably before the 7th century. It is attested in a poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan c. 633. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh, until c.1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland. During their time in Britain, the ancient Romans encountered tribes in present-day Wales that they called the Ordovices, the Demetae, the Silures and the Deceangli. The people of what is now Wales were not distinguished from the rest of the peoples of southern Britain, all were called Britons and spoke the common British language, a Brythonic Celtic tongue. Celtic language and culture seems to have arrived in Britain during the Iron Age, the claim has also been made that Indo-European languages may have been introduced to the British Isles as early as the early Neolithic, with Goidelic and Brythonic languages developing indigenously. The genetic evidence in this case would show that the change to Celtic languages in Britain may have occurred as a cultural rather than through migration as was previously supposed. The assumed genetic imprint of Neolithic incomers is seen as a cline, with stronger Neolithic representation in the east of Europe, when the Roman legions departed Britain around 400, a Romano-British culture remained in the areas the Romans had settled, and the pre-Roman cultures in others. According to Stephen Oppenheimer 96% of lineages in Llangefni in north Wales derive from Iberia, Genetic marker R1b averages from 83–89% amongst the Welsh. The people in what is now Wales continued to speak Brythonic languages with additions from Latin, the surviving poem Y Gododdin is in early Welsh and refers to the Brythonic kingdom of Gododdin with a capital at Din Eidyn and extending from the area of Stirling to the Tyne. John Davies places the change from Brythonic to Welsh between 400 and 700, offas Dyke was erected in the mid-8th century, forming a barrier between Wales and Mercia. The genetic tests suggested that between 50% and 100% of the population of what was to become England was wiped out. In 2001, research for a BBC programme on the Vikings suggested a strong link between the Celts and Basques, dating back tens of thousands of years. The UCL research suggested a migration on a huge scale during the Anglo-Saxon period and it appears England is made up of an ethnic cleansing event from people coming across from the continent after the Romans left, said Dr Mark Thomas, of the Centre for Genetic Anthropology at UCL
10.
Cornish people
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Many in the county today continue to assert a distinct identity separate from or in addition to English or British identities. Cornish identity has been adopted by migrants into Cornwall, as well as by emigrant and descendant communities from Cornwall, although not included as an explicit option in the UK census, the numbers of those claiming Cornish ethnic and national identity are officially recognised and recorded. The name Cornwall and its demonym Cornish are derived from the Celtic Cornovii tribe, the Anglo-Saxon invasion and settlement of Britain in the 5th to 6th centuries pushed Celtic culture and some Celtic peoples to the northern and western fringes of Britain. The Cornish people, who shared the Brythonic language with the Welsh, the Battle of Deorham between the Britons and Anglo-Saxons is thought to have resulted in a loss of landlinks with the people of Wales. The Cornish people and their Brythonic Cornish language experienced a process of anglicisation and attrition during the Medieval, by the 18th century, and following the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Cornish language and identity had faded, replaced by the English language and British identity. A Celtic revival during the early-20th century enabled a cultural self-consciousness in Cornwall that revitalised the Cornish language, in the 2011 census, the population of Cornwall, including the Isles of Scilly was estimated to be 532,300. Weighting of the 2001 Census data gives a figure of 154,791 people with Cornish ethnicity living in Cornwall, the Cornish have been described as a special case in England, with an ethnic rather than regional identity. The British are the citizens of the United Kingdom, a people who by convention consist of four national groups, meanwhile, another international rugby union player, Josh Matavesi, describes himself as Cornish-Fijian and Cornish not English. A survey by Plymouth University in 2000 found that 30% of children in Cornwall felt Cornish, a 2004 survey on national identity by the finance firm Morgan Stanley found that 44% of respondents in Cornwall saw themselves as Cornish rather than British or English. A2008 study by the University of Edinburgh of 15- and 16-year-old schoolchildren in Cornwall found that 58% of respondents felt themselves to be either ‘Fairly’ or ‘Very much’ Cornish, the other 42% may be the result of in-migration to the area during the second half of the twentieth century. A2010 study by the University of Exeter into the meaning of contemporary Cornish identity across Cornwall found that there was a west-east distance decay in the strength of the Cornish identity. The study was conducted amongst the community as they were deemed to be the socio-professional group most objectively representative of Cornishness. All participants categorised themselves as Cornish and identified Cornish as their ethnic group orientation. Those in the west primarily thought of themselves as Cornish and British/Celtic, all participants in West Cornwall who identified as Cornish and not English described people in East Cornwall, without hesitation, as equally Cornish as themselves. Those who identified as Cornish and English stressed the primacy of their Cornishness, ancestry was seen as the most important criterion for being categorised as Cornish, above place of birth or growing up in Cornwall. This study supports a 1988 study by Mary McArthur that had found that the meanings of Cornishness varied substantially, both studies also observed that the Cornish were less materialistic than the English. The Cornish generally saw the English, or city people, as being friendly and more aggressively self-promoting. The Cornish saw themselves as friendly, welcoming and caring, a campaign for the inclusion of a Cornish tick-box in the nationality section of the 2011 census failed to win the support of parliament in 2009
11.
Bretons
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The Bretons are an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France. They trace much of their heritage to groups of Brittonic speakers who emigrated from southwestern Great Britain including Cornwall to avoid the invading Germanic peoples and they also descend from the Gauls and in some parts from Vikings. They migrated in waves from the third to ninth century into Armorica, the main traditional language of Brittany is Breton, spoken in Lower Brittany. Today, Breton is spoken by less than 200,000 people, the other principal minority language of Brittany is Gallo, Gallo is spoken only in Upper Brittany, where Breton is less dominant. As one of the Brittonic languages, Breton is related closely to Cornish and more distantly to Welsh, currently, most Bretons native language is standard French. Brittany and its people are counted as one of the six Celtic nations, ethnically, along with the Cornish and Welsh, the Bretons are Celtic Britons. The actual number of ethnic Bretons in Brittany and France as a whole is difficult to assess as the government of France does not collect statistics on ethnicity, the population of Brittany, as of a January 2007 estimate, was 4,365,500. It is said that, in 1914, over 1 million people spoke Breton west of the boundary between Breton and Gallo-speaking regions – roughly 90% of the population of the half of Brittany. In 1945, it was about 75%, and today, in all of Brittany, Brittany has a population of roughly 4 million, including the department of Loire-Atlantique, which the Vichy government separated from historical Brittany in 1941. Three-quarters of the estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Breton speakers using Breton as an everyday language today are over the age of 65, many Breton families have also emigrated to the Americas, predominantly to Canada and the United States. In the late century, large numbers of British auxiliary troops in the Roman army may have been stationed in Armorica. The ninth-century Historia Brittonum states that the emperor Magnus Maximus, who withdrew Roman forces from Britain, nennius and Gildas mention a second wave of Britons settling in Armorica in the following century to escape the invading Anglo-Saxons and Scoti. Modern archaeology also supports a two-wave migration and it is generally accepted that the Brittonic speakers who arrived gave the region its current name as well as the Breton language, Brezhoneg, a sister language to Welsh and Cornish. The Bretons are known for their participation in the Hunt of the Apple of Eden and this took place between 400 and 600 AD. These legends were discovered in Poullia in Italy but have unfortunately been marked as improvable history, as in Cornwall, many Breton towns are named after these early saints. The Irish saint Columbanus was also active in Brittany and is commemorated accordingly at Saint-Columban in Carnac, in the Early Middle Ages, Brittany was divided into three kingdoms — Domnonia, Cornouaille, and Bro Waroch — which eventually were incorporated into the Duchy of Brittany. The first two kingdoms seem to derive their names from the homelands of the tribes in Britain. Neither language has official status under French law, however, some still use Breton as an everyday language, in modern times, a number of schools and colleges have emerged with the aim of providing Breton-medium education or bilingual Breton/French education
12.
English Channel
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The English Channel, also called simply the Channel, is the body of water that separates southern England from northern France, and links the southern part of the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. It is about 560 km long and varies in width from 240 km at its widest to 33.3 km in the Strait of Dover and it is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some 75,000 km2. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the English Channel as follows, a line joining Isle Vierge to Lands End. The southwestern limit of the North Sea, the IHO defines the southwestern limit of the North Sea as a line joining the Walde Lighthouse and Leathercoat Point. The Walde Lighthouse is 6 km east of Calais, and Leathercoat Point is at the end of St Margarets Bay. The Strait of Dover, at the Channels eastern end, is its narrowest point and it is relatively shallow, with an average depth of about 120 m at its widest part, reducing to a depth of about 45 m between Dover and Calais. Eastwards from there the adjoining North Sea reduces to about 26 m in the Broad Fourteens where it lies over the watershed of the land bridge between East Anglia and the Low Countries. It reaches a depth of 180 m in the submerged valley of Hurds Deep,48 km west-northwest of Guernsey. The eastern region along the French coast between Cherbourg and the mouth of the Seine river at Le Havre is frequently referred to as the Bay of the Seine. There are several islands in the Channel, the most notable being the Isle of Wight off the English coast. The coastline, particularly on the French shore, is indented, several small islands close to the coastline, including Chausey. The Cotentin Peninsula in France juts out into the Channel, whilst on the English side there is a parallel channel known as the Solent between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. The Celtic Sea is to the west of the Channel, the time difference of about six hours between high water at the eastern and western limits of the Channel is indicative of the tidal range being amplified further by resonance. It was never defined as a border and the names were more or less descriptive. It was not considered as the property of a nation, strangely, before the development of the modern nations, British scholars very often referred to it as Gaulish and the French one as British or English. The name English Channel has been used since the early 18th century. In modern Dutch, however, it is known as Het Kanaal, later, it has also been known as the British Channel or the British Sea having been called the Oceanus Britannicus by the 2nd-century geographer Ptolemy. The same name is used on an Italian map of about 1450, the Anglo-Saxon texts often call it Sūð-sǣ as opposed to Norð-sǣ
13.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
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Trans-cultural diffusion
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It is distinct from the diffusion of innovations within a specific culture. Examples of diffusion include the spread of the war chariot and iron smelting in ancient times, and this can include hierarchical, stimulus, and contagious diffusion. Relocation diffusion, an idea or innovation that migrates into new areas, hierarchical diffusion, an idea or innovation that spreads by moving from larger to smaller places, often with little regard to the distance between places, and often influenced by social elites. Contagious diffusion, an idea or innovation that spreads based on contact within a given population. Stimulus diffusion, an idea or innovation that spreads based on its attachment to another concept, inter-cultural diffusion can happen in many ways. Migrating populations will carry their culture with them, ideas can be carried by trans-cultural visitors, such as merchants, explorers, soldiers, diplomats, slaves, and hired artisans. Technology diffusion has occurred by one society luring skilled scientists or workers by payments or other inducement. Trans-cultural marriages between two neighboring or interspersed cultures have also contributed, among literate societies, diffusion can occur through letters, books, and, in modern times, through electronic media. There are three categories of diffusion mechanisms, Direct diffusion occurs when two cultures are very close to other, resulting in intermarriage, trade, and even warfare. Forced diffusion occurs when one culture subjugates another culture and forces its own customs on the conquered people, indirect diffusion happens when traits are passed from one culture through a middleman to another culture, without the first and final cultures being in direct contact. An example could be the presence of Mexican food in Canada, Direct diffusion was common in ancient times, when small groups of humans lived in adjoining settlements. Indirect diffusion is common in todays world because of the mass media and this concept was invoked with regard to the independent development of calculus by Newton and Leibnitz, and the inventions of the airplane and of the electronic computer. Early theories of hyperdiffusionism can be traced to ideas about South America being the origin of mankind, the work of Grafton Elliot Smith fomented a revival of hyperdiffusionism in 1911, he asserted that copper–producing knowledge spread from Egypt to the rest of the world along with megalithic culture. Smith claimed that all major inventions had been made by the ancient Egyptians and were carried to the rest of the world by migrants and his views became known as Egyptocentric-Hyperdiffusionism. William James Perry elaborated on Smiths hypothesis by using ethnographic data, another hyperdiffusionist was Lord Raglan, in his book How Came Civilization he wrote that instead of Egypt all culture and civilization had come from Mesopotamia. Hyperdiffusionism after this did not entirely disappear, but it was abandoned by mainstream academia. Historians have questioned recently whether Europe really owes the development of such inventions as gunpowder, the compass, while the concept of diffusion is well accepted in general, conjectures about the existence or the extent of diffusion in some specific contexts have been hotly disputed. Heyerdahls theory of Polynesian origins has not gained acceptance among anthropologists, major contributors to inter-cultural diffusion research and theory include, Franz Boas Anne Walbank Buckland James Burnett, Lord Monboddo Leo Frobenius Cyrus H. Gordon Fritz Graebner A. C
15.
Roman conquest of Britain
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The Roman conquest of Britain was a gradual process, beginning effectively in AD43 under Emperor Claudius, whose general Aulus Plautius served as first governor of Roman Britain. Great Britain had already frequently been the target of invasions, planned and actual, by forces of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. Between 55 BC and the 40s AD, the status quo of tribute, hostages, augustus prepared invasions in 34 BC,27 BC and 25 BC. The first and third were called off due to revolts elsewhere in the empire, by the 40s AD, the political situation within Britain was apparently in ferment. Modern historians are unsure if that was meant to be a punishment for the soldiers mutiny or due to Caligulas derangement. Certainly this invasion attempt readied the troops and facilities that would make Claudius invasion possible three years later, for example, Caligula built a lighthouse at Bononia that provided a model for the one built soon after at Dubris. Three years later, in 43, possibly by re-collecting Caligulas troops, Claudius mounted a force to re-instate Verica. Aulus Plautius, a senator, was given overall charge of four legions, totalling about 20,000 men. The legions were, Legio II Augusta Legio IX Hispana Legio XIV Gemina Legio XX Valeria Victrix The II Augusta is known to have been commanded by the future emperor Vespasian. Three other men of rank to command legions are known from the sources to have been involved in the invasion. Cassius Dio mentions Gnaeus Hosidius Geta, who led the IX Hispana. He wrote that Sabinus was Vespasians lieutenant, but as Sabinus was the brother and preceded Vespasian into public life. Eutropius mentions Gnaeus Sentius Saturninus, although as a former consul he may have been too senior, the main invasion force under Aulus Plautius crossed in three divisions. The port of departure is usually taken to have been Boulogne, neither of these locations is certain. Richborough has a natural harbour which would have been suitable. However, Dio says the Romans sailed east to west, some historians suggest a sailing from Boulogne to the Solent, landing in the vicinity of Noviomagus or Southampton, in territory formerly ruled by Verica. An alternative explanation might be a sailing from the mouth of the Rhine to Richborough, British resistance was led by Togodumnus and Caratacus, sons of the late king of the Catuvellauni, Cunobeline. A substantial British force met the Romans at a river crossing thought to be near Rochester on the River Medway, the battle raged for two days
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Romano-British culture
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Romano-British culture is the culture that arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons and it survived the 5th century Roman departure from Britain. Roman troops, mainly from nearby Germanic provinces, invaded Brythonic-Celtic land in AD43, in what is now part of England, over the next few years the province of Britannia was formed, eventually including the whole of what later became England and Wales and parts of Scotland. Thousands of Roman businessmen and officials and their families settled in Britannia, Roman troops from across the Empire as far as Spain, Syria, and Egypt, but mainly from the Germanic provinces of Batavia and Frisia were garrisoned in Roman towns, and many married local Britons. This diversified Britannias cultures and religions, while the populace remained mainly Celtic, later, Britain was independent of the rest of the Roman Empire for a number of years, first as part of the Gallic Empire, then 20 years later under the usurpers Carausius and Allectus. Christianity came to Britain in the 3rd century, one early figure was Saint Alban, who was martyred near the Roman town of Verulamium, on the site of the modern St Albans, during the reign of Emperor Decius. One aspect of Roman influence seen in British life was the grant of Roman citizenship, some of the local Brittonic kings, such as Togidubnus, received citizenship in this manner. The number of citizens steadily increased, as people inherited citizenship, eventually in 212, everybody except slaves and freed slaves were granted citizenship by the Constitutio Antoniniana. The other inhabitants of Britain, who did not enjoy citizenship, the principal handicaps were that they could not own land with a Latin title, serve as a legionary in the army, or, in general, inherit from a Roman citizen. But for the majority of British inhabitants, who were tied to the soil. Britannia became one of the most loyal provinces of the Empire until its decline, eventually emperor Honorius ordered Roman troops back home to help fight the invading hordes. Constantine III initially rebelled against Honorius and took further troops to Gaul, after the Roman departure from Britain, the Romano-British were commanded by Honorius to look to their own defences. Two factions may have emerged, a faction and an independence faction. The one leader at this time known by name is Vortigern, the depredations of the Picts from the north and Scotti from Ireland forced the Britons to seek help from pagan Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who then decided to settle in Britain. Some of the Romano-British people migrated to Brittany, the Kingdom of the Suebi, the Anglo-Saxons obtained control of eastern England in the 5th century. In the mid-6th century they started expanding into the Midlands, then in the 7th century they expanded again into the south-west, the unconquered parts of southern Britain, notably Wales, retained their Romano-British culture, in particular retaining Christianity. Some Anglo-Saxon histories refer to the Romano-British people by the blanket term Welsh, the term Welsh is derived from an Old English word meaning foreigner, referring to the old inhabitants of southern Britain. Historically, Wales and the peninsula were known respectively as North Wales
17.
British Latin
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British Latin or British Vulgar Latin was the Vulgar Latin spoken in Great Britain in the Roman and sub-Roman periods. While Britain formed part of the Roman Empire, Latin became the language of the elite, especially in the more Romanized south. However, it never replaced the Brittonic language of the indigenous Britons, especially in the less Romanized north. In recent years, scholars have debated the extent to which British Latin was distinguishable from its continental counterparts, which developed into the Romance languages. With the end of Roman rule, Latin was displaced as a language by Old English in most of what became England during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of the fifth and sixth centuries. It survived in the remaining Celtic regions of western Britain until about 700, at the inception of Roman rule in AD43, Great Britain was inhabited by the indigenous Britons, who spoke the Celtic language known as Brittonic. Particularly in the zone, Latin became the language of most of the townspeople, of administration and the ruling class, the army and, following the introduction of Christianity. Brittonic remained the language of the peasantry, which was the bulk of the population, in the highland zone, there was only limited attempts at Romanization, and Brittonic always remained the dominant language. Throughout much of western Europe, from Late Antiquity, the Vulgar Latin of everyday speech developed into locally distinctive varieties which ultimately became the Romance languages. But in Britain, following the end of Roman rule in the early 5th century, Vulgar Latin died out as an everyday spoken language. The time by which Vulgar Latin died out as a vernacular in Britain, an inherent difficulty in evidencing Vulgar Latin is that, as an extinct spoken language form, no source provides a direct account of it. There is, therefore, reliance on sources of evidence such as errors in written texts. These are held to be reflective of the spoken language. Of particular linguistic value in this regard are private inscriptions made by people, such as epitaphs and votive offerings. In relation to Vulgar Latin specifically as it was spoken in Britain, Kenneth H. Jackson put forward in the 1950s what became the established view, Jackson drew conclusions about the nature of British Latin from examining Latin loan-words which had passed into the British Celtic languages. From the 1970s John Mann, Eric P. Hamp and others used what Mann called the sub-literary tradition in inscriptions to identify spoken British Latin usage, Kenneth Jackson argued for a form of British Vulgar Latin, distinctive from continental Vulgar Latin. In fact, he identified two forms of British Latin, a variety of the language not significantly different from continental Vulgar Latin. This latter variety, Jackson believed, could be distinguished from continental Vulgar Latin by 12 distinct criteria, in particular, he characterised it as a conservative, hypercorrect school Latin with a sound-system was very archaic by ordinary Continental standards
18.
Picts
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The Picts were a tribal confederation of peoples who lived in what is today eastern and northern Scotland during the Late Iron Age and Early Medieval periods. They are thought to have been ethnolinguistically Celtic, where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from the geographical distribution of brochs, Brittonic place name elements, and Pictish stones. Picts are attested to in records from before the Roman conquest of Britain to the 10th century. Picts are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii, Pictland, also called Pictavia by some sources, gradually merged with the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata to form the Kingdom of Alba. Alba then expanded, absorbing the Brittonic kingdom of Strathclyde and Northumbrian Lothian, Pictish society was typical of many Iron Age societies in northern Europe, having wide connections and parallels with neighbouring groups. Archaeology gives some impression of the society of the Picts, what the Picts called themselves is unknown. The Latin word Picti first occurs in a written by Eumenius in AD297 and is taken to mean painted or tattooed people. Their Old English name gave the modern Scots form Pechts and the Welsh word Fichti and it is generally accepted that this is derived from *Qritani, which is the Goidelic/Q-Celtic version of the Britonnic/P-Celtic *Pritani. From this came Britanni, the Roman name for those now called the Britons and it has been suggested that Cruthin referred to all Britons not conquered by the Romans—those who lived outside Roman Britannia, north of Hadrians Wall. A Pictish confederation was formed in Late Antiquity from a number of tribes—how, some scholars have speculated that it was partly in response to the growth of the Roman Empire. Pictland had previously described by Roman writers and geographers as the home of the Caledonii. These Romans also used names to refer to tribes living in that area, including Verturiones, Taexali. But they may have heard these other names only second- or third-hand, from speakers of Brittonic or Gaulish languages, Pictish recorded history begins in the Dark Ages. It appears that Picts were not the dominant power in Northern Britain for that entire period, the Gaels of Dál Riata controlled what is present day Argyll for a time, although they suffered a series of defeats in the first third of the 7th century. The Angles of Bernicia overwhelmed the adjacent British kingdoms, one of which, the Picts were probably tributary to Northumbria until the reign of Bridei mac Beli, when, in 685, the Anglians suffered a defeat at the Battle of Dun Nechtain that halted their northward expansion. The Northumbrians continued to dominate southern Scotland for the remainder of the Pictish period, a later Pictish king, Caustantín mac Fergusa, placed his son Domnall on the throne of Dál Riata. Pictish attempts to achieve a dominance over the Britons of Alt Clut were not successful. The Viking Age brought great changes in Britain and Ireland, no less in Scotland than elsewhere, in a major battle in 839, the Vikings killed the king of Fortriu, Eógan mac Óengusa, the king of Dál Riata Áed mac Boanta, and many others
19.
Firth of Forth
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The Firth of Forth is the estuary of the River Forth in Scotland, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north and Lothian to the south. It was known as Bodotria in Roman times, in the Norse sagas it was known as the Myrkvifiörd. Geologically, the Firth of Forth is a fjord, formed by the Forth Glacier in the last glacial period, the Kincardine Bridge, the Clackmannanshire Bridge, the Forth Road Bridge and the Forth Bridge carry traffic across the firth. Queensferry Crossing, alongside the Forth Road Bridge, was expected to open in 2016 but has since been delayed until May 2017. From 1964 to 1982, a tunnel existed under the Firth of Forth, the shafts leading into the tunnel were filled and capped with concrete when the tunnel was closed, and it is believed to have filled with water or collapsed in places. In July,2007, a passenger service completed a two-week trial between Portobello, Edinburgh and Kirkcaldy, Fife. The trial of the service was hailed as an operational success. It was estimated the service would decrease congestion for commuters on the Forth road, despite the initial success, the project was cancelled in December,2011. Historic villages line the Fife shoreline, Limekilns, Charlestown and Culross, established in the 6th century, the firth is important for nature conservation and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The Firth of Forth Islands SPA is home to more than 90,000 breeding seabirds every year, there is a bird observatory on the Isle of May. The youngest person to swim across the Firth of Forth was 13-year-old Joseph Feeney, in 2008, a controversial bid to allow oil transfer between ships in the firth was refused by Forth Ports. SPT Marine Services had asked permission to transfer 7.8 million tonnes of oil per year between tankers, but the proposals were met with determined opposition from conservation groups
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Gaels
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The Gaels are an ethnolinguistic group native to northwestern Europe. They are associated with the Gaelic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages comprising Irish, Manx, historically, the ethnonyms Irish and Scots referred to the Gaels in general, but the scope of those nationalities is today more complex. Gaelic language and culture originated in Ireland, extending to Dál Riata in western Scotland, in antiquity the Gaels traded with the Roman Empire and also raided Roman Britain. In the Middle Ages, Gaelic culture became dominant throughout the rest of Scotland, there was also some Gaelic settlement in Wales and Cornwall. In the Viking Age, small numbers of Vikings raided and settled in Gaelic lands, in the 9th century, Dál Riata and Pictland merged to form the Gaelic Kingdom of Alba. Meanwhile, Gaelic Ireland was made up of several kingdoms, with a High King often claiming lordship over them, in the 12th century, Anglo-Normans conquered parts of Ireland, while parts of Scotland became Anglo-Normanized. However, Gaelic culture remained strong throughout Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, in the early 17th century, the last Gaelic kingdoms in Ireland fell under English control. In the following centuries most Gaels were gradually anglicized and Gaelic language mostly supplanted by English, however, it continues to be the main language in Irelands Gaeltacht and Scotlands Outer Hebrides. The modern descendants of the Gaels have spread throughout Britain, the Americas, Gaelic society traditionally centered around the clan, each with its own territory and chieftain, elected through tanistry. The Gaels were originally pagans who worshipped the Tuatha Dé Danann, venerated the ancestors and their four yearly festivals – Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasa – continued to be celebrated into modern times. The Gaels have an oral tradition, traditionally maintained by shanachies. Inscription in the Gaelic ogham alphabet began in the 1st century and their conversion to Christianity accompanied the introduction of writing, and Irish Gaelic has the oldest vernacular literature in western Europe. Irish mythology and Brehon law were preserved, albeit Christianized, Gaelic monasteries were renowned centres of learning and played a key role in developing Insular art, while Gaelic missionaries and scholars were highly influential in western Europe. In the Middle Ages, most Gaels lived in roundhouses and ringforts, the Gaels had their own style of dress, which became the belted plaid and kilt. They also have music, dance, and sports. Gaelic culture continues to be a component of Irish, Scottish. Throughout the centuries, Gaels and Gaelic-speakers have been known by a number of names, the most consistent of these have been Gael, Irish and Scots. The latter two have developed more ambiguous meanings, due to the modern concept of the nation state
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Scottish people
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The Scottish people, or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century, and are thought to have been ethnolinguistically Celts. Later, the neighbouring Cumbrian Britons, who spoke a Celtic language, as well as Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons. In modern usage, Scottish people or Scots is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, the Latin word Scotti, originally the word referred specifically to the Gaels, but came to describe all inhabitants of Scotland. Considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also used for Scottish people. John Kenneth Galbraith in his book The Scotch documents the descendants of 19th-century Scottish pioneers who settled in Southwestern Ontario and he states the book was meant to give a true picture of life in the community in the early decades of the 20th century. People of Scottish descent live in countries other than Scotland. Scottish emigrants took with them their Scottish languages and culture, large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. Canada has the highest level of Scottish descendants per capita in the world, Scotland has seen migration and settlement of many peoples at different periods in its history. The Gaels, the Picts and the Britons have their origin myths. The Venerable Bede tells of the Scotti coming from Spain via Ireland, Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxons, arrived beginning in the 7th century, while the Norse invaded and colonized parts of Scotland from the 8th century onwards. In the High Middle Ages, from the reign of David I of Scotland, there was emigration from France, England. Some famous Scottish family names, including bearing the names which became Bruce, Balliol, Murray. Today Scotland is one of the countries of the United Kingdom, culturally, these peoples are grouped according to language. Most of Scotland until the 13th century spoke Celtic languages and these included, at least initially, the Britons, as well as the Gaels and the Picts. Germanic peoples included the Angles of Northumbria, who settled in south-eastern Scotland in the region between the Firth of Forth to the north and the River Tweed to the south. They also occupied the south-west of Scotland up to and including the Plain of Kyle and their language, south-east of the Firth of Forth, then in Lothian and the Borders, a northern variety of Old English, also known as Early Scots, was spoken. The Northern Isles and some parts of Caithness were Norn-speaking, from 1500 on, Scotland was commonly divided by language into two groups of people, Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and the Inglis-speaking Lowlanders
22.
Brittany
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Brittany is a cultural region in the north-west of France. Brittany has also referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain. It is bordered by the English Channel to the north, the Celtic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and its land area is 34,023 km². Since reorganisation in 1956, the administrative region of Brittany comprises only four of the five Breton departments. The remaining area of old Brittany, the Loire-Atlantique department around Nantes, at the 2010 census, the population of historic Brittany was estimated to be 4,475,295. Of these, 71% lived in the region of Brittany, while 29% lived in the Loire-Atlantique department, in 2012, the largest metropolitan areas were Nantes, Rennes, and Brest. Brittany is the homeland of the Breton people and is recognised by the Celtic League as one of the six Celtic nations. A nationalist movement seeks greater autonomy within the French Republic, the word Brittany, along with its French, Breton and Gallo equivalents Bretagne, Breizh and Bertaèyn, derive from the Latin Britannia, which means Britons land. This word had been used by the Romans since the 1st century to refer to Great Britain and this word derives from a Greek word, Πρεττανικη or Βρεττανίαι, used by Pytheas, an explorer from Massalia who visited the British Islands around 320 BC. This term probably comes from a Gallic word, aremorica, which close to the sea. Another name, Letauia, was used until the 12th century and it possibly means wide and flat or to expand and it gave the Welsh name for Brittany, Llydaw. Later, authors like Geoffrey of Monmouth used the terms Britannia minor, breton-speaking people may pronounce the word Breizh in two different ways, according to their region of origin. Breton can be divided into two dialects, the KLT and the dialect of Vannes. KLT speakers pronounce it and would write it Breiz, while the Vannetais speakers pronounce it, the official spelling is a compromise between both variants, with a z and an h together. In 1941, efforts to unify the dialects led to the creation of the so-called Breton zh, on its side, Gallo language has never had a widely accepted writing system and several ones coexist. For instance, the name of the region in that language can be written Bertaèyn in ELG script, or Bertègn in MOGA, Brittany has been inhabited by humans since the Lower Paleolithic. This population was scarce and very similar to the other Neanderthals found in the whole of Western Europe and their only original feature was a distinct culture, called Colombanian. One of the oldest hearths in the world has found in Plouhinec
23.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
24.
Britonia
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Britonia is the historical, apparently Latinized name of a Celtic settlement, presently Santa Maria de Breto, in the Province of Lugo, autonomous community of Galicia, Spain. Britonia is therefore similar to Brittany in Gaul in that it was settled by expatriate Britons at roughly the same time, what little is known of Britonia is deduced from its religious history. The British settlements were recognised at the First Council of Lugo in 569, Mailoc was nominated Bishop of Britonia and signed the acta at the Second Council of Braga in 572. The diocese was suppressed in 716, the line of bishops of Britonia nevertheless existed at least until 830, when the area was attacked by the Vikings, it may have continued as late as the Council of Oviedo in 900. It was finally restored as or merged into the Diocese of Mondoñedo-Ferrol in 866, being assigned territories split off from the Diocese of Oviedo and from the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Lugo. Known bishops of the ecclesia Brittaniensis include, Mailoc Metopius Sonna Susa Bela No longer a residential bishopric, the diocese was nominally restored in 1969 as Titular bisopric of Britonia / Britonien. Tovar, António, Un obispo con nombre británico y los orígenes de la diócesis de Mondoñedo, Habis, III,1972, vives, J. Concilios visigóticos e hispano-romanos, Madrid,1963. The Bishops of the medieval diocese of Britonia. Young, Simon, Note on Britones in Thirteenth-century Galicia, Studia Celtica, XXXV, young, Simon, The Forgotten Colony, History Today, L, oct. Young, Simon, Britonia, Camiños Novos, Noia,2002, ISBN 84-95622-58-0. org - Present Latin Catholic titular see of Britonia
25.
Galicia (Spain)
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Galicia is an autonomous community of Spain and historic nationality under Spanish law. It had a population of 2,718,525 in 2016 and has an area of 29,574 km2. Galicia has over 1,660 km of coastline, including its islands and islets, among them Cíes Islands, Ons, Sálvora, Cortegada. Galicia was incorporated into the Roman Empire at the end of the Cantabrian Wars in 19 BC, in 410, the Germanic Suebi established a kingdom with its capital in Braga, this kingdom was incorporated into that of the Visigoths in 585. The Governor also presided the Real Audiencia do Reino de Galicia, from the 16th century, the representation and voice of the kingdom was held by an assembly of deputies and representatives of the cities of the kingdom, the Cortes or Junta of the Kingdom of Galicia. This institution was forcibly discontinued in 1833 when the kingdom was divided into four provinces with no legal mutual links. During the 19th and 20th centuries, demand grew for self-government and this resulted in the Statute of Autonomy of 1936, soon frustrated by Francos coup detat and subsequent long dictatorship. After democracy was restored the legislature passed the Statute of Autonomy of 1981, approved in referendum and currently in force, the interior of Galicia is characterized by a hilly landscape, mountain ranges rise to 2,000 m in the east and south. The coastal areas are mostly a series of rías and cliffs. The climate of Galicia is usually temperate and rainy, with drier summers. Its topographic and climatic conditions have made animal husbandry and farming the primary source of Galicias wealth for most of its history, allowing for a relative high density of population. With the exception of shipbuilding and food processing, Galicia was based on a farming and fishing economy until after the mid-20th century, in 2012, the gross domestic product at purchasing power parity was €56,000 million, with a nominal GDP per capita of €20,700. There are smaller populations around the cities of Lugo and Ourense. The political capital is Santiago de Compostela, in the province of A Coruña, Vigo, in the province of Pontevedra, is the most populous municipality, with 292,817, while A Coruña is the most populous city, with 215,227. 56% of the Galician population speak Galician as their first language and these Callaeci were the first tribe in the area to help the Lusitanians against the invading Romans. The Romans applied their name to all the tribes in the northwest who spoke the same language. In any case, Galicia, being per se a derivation of the ethnic name Kallaikói, the name evolved during the Middle Ages from Gallaecia, sometimes written Galletia, to Gallicia. This coincides with the spelling of the Castilian Spanish name, the historical denomination Galiza became popular again during the end of the 19th and the first three-quarters of the 20th century, and is still used with some frequency today
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Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
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Hen Ogledd
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Yr Hen Ogledd, in English the Old North, is the region of Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands inhabited by the Celtic Britons of sub-Roman Britain and the Early Middle Ages. Its denizens spoke a variety of the Brittonic language known as Cumbric, smaller kingdoms or districts included Aeron, Calchfynydd, Eidyn, Lleuddiniawn, and Manaw Gododdin, the latter three were evidently parts of Gododdin. The Angle kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia both had Brittonic-derived names, suggesting they may have been Brittonic kingdoms in origin, the legacy of the Hen Ogledd remained strong in Wales. Welsh tradition included genealogies of the Gwŷr y Gogledd, or Men of the North, a number of important early Welsh texts were attributed to the Men of the North, such as Taliesin, Aneirin, Myrddin Wyllt, and the Cynfeirdd poets. Heroes of the such as Urien, Owain mab Urien, and Coel Hen and his descendants feature in Welsh poetry. Almost nothing is known of Central Britain before c. By 550, the region was controlled by native Brittonic-speaking peoples except for the coastal areas. To the north were the Picts, themselves also called Manau with the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata to the northwest, all of these peoples would play a role in the history of the Old North. From a historical perspective, wars were frequently internecine, and Britons were aggressors as well as defenders, as was true of the Angles, Picts. However, those Welsh stories of the Old North that tell of Briton fighting Anglian have a counterpart, the interests of kingdoms of this era were not restricted to their immediate vicinity. Alliances were not made only within the ethnic groups, nor were enmities restricted to nearby different ethnic groups. An alliance of Britons fought against another alliance of Britons at the Battle of Arfderydd, Áedán mac Gabráin of Dál Riata appears in the Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd, a genealogy among the pedigrees of the Men of the North. The Historia Brittonum states that Oswiu, king of Northumbria, married a Briton who may have had some Pictish ancestry, a marriage between the Northumbrian and Pictish royal families would produce the Pictish king Talorgan I. Áedán mac Gabráin fought as an ally of the Britons against the Northumbrians, cadwallon ap Cadfan of the Kingdom of Gwynedd allied with Penda of Mercia to defeat Edwin of Northumbria. Conquest and defeat did not necessarily mean the extirpation of one culture and its replacement by another. For Celtic peoples, this organisation was still in effect hundreds of later, as shown in the Irish Brehon law, the Welsh Laws of Hywel Dda. The Germanic Anglo-Saxon law had different origins, but with many similarities to Celtic law. Like Celtic law, it was based on tradition, without any perceivable debt to the Roman occupation of Britain
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Welsh language
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Welsh is a member of the Brittonic branch of the Celtic languages. It is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, historically it has also been known in English as the British tongue, Cambrian, Cambric and Cymric. The United Kingdom Census 2011 counted 3.1 million residents of Wales, 27% of whom had been born outside Wales, and 73% of whom reported having no Welsh language skills. Of residents of Wales aged three and over, 19% reported being able to speak Welsh, and 77% of these were able to speak, read and this can be compared with the 2001 Census, in which 20. 8% of the population reported being able to speak Welsh. 787,854 of residents in Wales aged three and over had one or more skills in Welsh, in surveys carried out between 2004 and 2006, 57% of Welsh speakers described themselves as fluent in the written language. An estimated 110,000 to 150,000 people speak Welsh in England, Welsh emerged in the 6th century from Common Brittonic, the common ancestor of Welsh, Breton, Cornish and the extinct language known as Cumbric. The Middle Welsh period is considered to have lasted from then until the 14th century, when the Modern Welsh period began, the name Welsh originated as an exonym given to its speakers by the Anglo-Saxons, meaning foreign speech. The native term for the language is Cymraeg, and for the name of the country of Wales it is Cymru, Welsh evolved from Common Brittonic, the Celtic language spoken by the ancient Celtic Britons. Classified as Insular Celtic, the British language probably arrived in Britain during the Bronze Age or Iron Age and was spoken throughout the island south of the Firth of Forth. During the Early Middle Ages the British language began to fragment due to increased dialect differentiation, evolving into Welsh and it is not clear when Welsh became distinct. Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that the evolution in syllabic structure and sound pattern was complete by around 550, Jackson, however, believed that the two varieties were already distinct by that time. The earliest Welsh poetry – that attributed to the Cynfeirdd or Early Poets – is generally considered to date to the Primitive Welsh period. However, much of this poetry was composed in the Hen Ogledd, raising further questions about the dating of the material. An 8th century inscription in Tywyn shows the language already dropping inflections in the declension of nouns, the next main period, somewhat better attested, is Old Welsh, poetry from both Wales and Scotland has been preserved in this form of the language. Both the works of Aneirin and the Book of Taliesin were in this era, Middle Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh of the 12th to 14th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This is the language of all surviving early manuscripts of the Mabinogion. It is also the language of the existing Welsh law manuscripts, Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker. The famous cleric Gerald of Wales tells, in his Descriptio Cambriae, during one of the Kings many raids in the 12th century, Henry asked an old man of Pencader, Carmarthenshire whether the Welsh people could resist his army
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Cumbric
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Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or Old North in what is now Northern England and southern Lowland Scotland. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brittonic languages, place name evidence suggests Cumbric may also have been spoken as far south as Pendle and the Yorkshire Dales. The prevailing view is that it became extinct in the 12th century, dauvit Broun sets out the problems with the various terms used to describe the Cumbric language and its speakers. The people seem to have called themselves *Cumbri the same way that the Welsh call themselves Cymry and it is likely that the Welsh and the Cumbric speaking people of what are now southern Scotland and northern England felt they were actually one ethnic group. Old Irish speakers called them Britons, Bretnach or Bretain, in Medieval Latin, the English term Wales and the term Cumbri were Latinised as Wallenses of Wales and respectively Cumbrenses of Cumbria. The usual English usage was to call them Welsh, in Scots, a Cumbric speaker seems to have been called Wallace, from the Scots Wallis/Wellis Welsh. In Cumbria itaque, regione quadam inter Angliam et Scotiam sita – Cumbria, Kenneth Jackson describes Cumbric as the Brittonic dialect of Cumberland, Westmorland, northern Lancashire, and south-west Scotland. And goes on to define the region further as being bound in the north by the Firth of Clyde, in the south by the river Ribble and in the east by the Southern Scottish Uplands and the Pennine ridge. The evidence from Cumbric comes to us almost entirely through secondary sources, the majority of evidence comes from place names of the extreme northwest of England and the south of Scotland. Although the language is long extinct it is arguable that traces of its vocabulary have persisted into the era in the form of counting scores. From this scanty evidence, little can be deduced about the characteristics of Cumbric. What is generally agreed upon by linguists is that Cumbric was a Western Brittonic language closely related to Welsh and, more distantly, to Cornish and Breton. Kenneth Jackson concludes that the majority of changes that transformed British into Primitive Welsh belong to the period from the middle of the fifth to the end of the sixth century and this involved syncope and the loss of final syllables. If the poem dates to this time, it would have written in an early form of Cumbric. Jackson suggested the name Primitive Cumbric for the dialect spoken at the time, Cumbric place names are found in Scotland south of the firths of Forth and Clyde. Brittonic names north of line are Pictish. They are also commonly in the historic county of Cumberland. They are less common in Westmorland, with some in Lancashire, as we approach Cheshire, late Brittonic placenames are probably better described as being Welsh rather than Cumbric
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Cornish language
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Cornish is a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language native to Cornwall. The language has undergone a revival in recent decades and is considered to be an important part of Cornish identity, culture and heritage. It is a minority language of the United Kingdom, protected under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Along with Welsh and Breton, Cornish is descended directly from the Common Brittonic language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate. A process to revive the language was begun in the early 20th century, in 2010 UNESCO announced that its former classification of the language as extinct was no longer accurate. Since the revival of the language, many Cornish textbooks and works of literature have been published, recent developments include Cornish music, independent films, and childrens books. A small number of people in Cornwall have been brought up to be native speakers. The first Cornish language crèche opened in 2010, Cornish is one of the Brittonic languages, which constitute a branch of the Insular Celtic section of the Celtic language family. Brittonic also includes Welsh, Breton and the Cumbric language, the last is extinct, scottish Gaelic, Irish and Manx are part of the separate Goidelic branch of Insular Celtic. Cornish evolved from the Common Brittonic spoken throughout Britain south of the Firth of Forth during the British Iron Age, as a result of westward Anglo-Saxon expansion, the Britons of the southwest were separated from those in modern-day Wales and Cumbria. Some scholars have proposed that this took place after the Battle of Deorham in about 577. The area controlled by the southwestern Britons was progressively reduced by the expansion of Wessex over the few centuries. The earliest written record of the Cornish language comes from period, a 9th-century gloss in a Latin manuscript of De Consolatione Philosophiae by Boethius. The phrase means it hated the gloomy places, a much more substantial survival from Old Cornish is a Cornish-Latin glossary containing translations of around 300 words. The manuscript was thought to be in Old Welsh until the 1700s when it was identified as Cornish. The Cornish language continued to flourish well through the Middle Cornish period, reaching a peak of about 39,000 speakers in the 13th century and this period provided the bulk of traditional Cornish literature, which was used to reconstruct the language during its revival. Most important is the Ordinalia, a cycle of three plays, Origo Mundi, Passio Christi and Resurrexio Domini. Together these provide about 20,000 lines of text, various plays were written by the canons of Glasney College, intended to educate the Cornish people about the Bible and the Celtic saints
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Breton language
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Breton /ˈbrɛtən/ is a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Brittany. Breton is most closely related to Cornish, both being Southwestern Brittonic languages, Welsh and the extinct Cumbric are the more distantly related Brittonic languages. The other regional language of Brittany, Gallo, is a langue doïl, Gallo is consequently close to French, although not mutually intelligible, and a Romance language descended from Latin. However, the number of children attending bilingual classes has risen 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709, Breton is spoken in West Brittany, roughly to the west of a line linking Plouha and La Roche-Bernard. It comes from a Brittonic language community that extended from Great Britain to Armorica and had even established a toehold in Galicia. Old Breton is attested from the 9th century and it was the language of the upper classes until the 12th century, after which it became the language of commoners in Lower Brittany. The nobility, followed by the bourgeoisie, adopted French, the written language of the Duchy of Brittany was Latin, switching to French in the 15th century. There exists a tradition of Breton literature. Some Old Breton vocabulary remains in the present day as philosophical, during the French Revolution, the government introduced policies favouring French over the regional languages, which it pejoratively referred to as patois. The revolutionaries assumed that reactionary and monarchist forces preferred regional languages to try to keep the peasant masses underinformed, in 1794, Bertrand Barère submitted his report on the patois to the Committee of Public Safety in which he said that federalism and superstition speak Breton. Teachers humiliated students for using their regional languages, and such practices prevailed until the late 1960s, the majority of todays speakers are more than 60 years old, and Breton is now classified as an endangered language. At the beginning of the 20th century, half of the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton, by 1950, there were only 100,000 monolingual Bretons, and this rapid decline has continued, with likely no monolingual speakers left today. A statistical survey in 1997 found around 300,000 speakers in Lower Brittany, few 15- to 19-year-olds spoke Breton. In 1925, Professor Roparz Hemon founded the Breton-language review Gwalarn, during its 19-year run, Gwalarn tried to raise the language to the level of a great international language. Its publication encouraged the creation of literature in all genres. In 1946, Al Liamm replaced Gwalarn, other Breton-language periodicals have been published, which established a fairly large body of literature for a minority language. In 1977, Diwan schools were founded to teach Breton by immersion and they taught a few thousand young people from elementary school to high school. See the education section for more information, the Asterix comic series has been translated into Breton
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Pytheas
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Pytheas of Massalia, was a Greek geographer and explorer from the Greek colony of Massalia. He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe in about 325 BC, in this voyage he circumnavigated and visited a considerable part of Great Britain. He is the first person on record to describe the Midnight Sun, the theoretical existence of a Frigid Zone, and temperate zones where the nights are very short in summer and the sun does not set at the summer solstice, was already known. Similarly, reports of a country of perpetual snow and darkness had reached the Mediterranean some centuries before, Pytheas is the first known scientific visitor and reporter of the Arctic, polar ice, and the Germanic tribes. He introduced the idea of distant Thule to the geographic imagination, Pytheas may have also reached Iceland. Pliny says that Timaeus believed Pytheas story of the discovery of amber, Strabo says that Dicaearchus did not trust the stories of Pytheas. That is all the information that survives concerning the date of Pytheas voyage, some would give Timaeus an extra 5 years, bringing the voyage down to 325 BC at earliest. If one presumes that Pytheas would not have written before reaching age 20, he would have been a contemporary, as they read his writings he must have written toward the earlier years of the window. As is common with ancient texts, multiple titles may represent a source, for example. The mainstream today recognizes periplus as a genre of literature and concedes that there was only one work, on the Ocean. Diodorus does not mention Pytheas by name, the connection is made as follows, Pliny reports that Timaeus says there is an island named Mictis … where tin is found, and to which the Britons cross. Diodorus says that tin is brought to the island of Ictis, the last link is supplied by Strabo, who says that an emporium on the island of Corbulo in the mouth of the Loire was associated with the Britain of Pytheas by Polybius. Assuming that Ictis, Mictis and Corbulo are the same, Diodorus appears to have read Timaeus, who must have read Pytheas, Pytheas was the first documented Mediterranean mariner to reach the British Isles. The start of Pytheass voyage is unknown, the Carthaginians had closed the Strait of Gibraltar to all ships from other nations. Some historians, mainly of the late 19th century and before, therefore speculated that he must have traveled overland to the mouth of the Loire or the Garonne. Others believed that, to avoid the Carthaginian blockade, he may have close to land and sailed only at night. An alternate theory holds that by the 4th century BC, the western Greeks, in 348 BC, Carthage and Rome came to terms over the Sicilian Wars with a treaty defining their mutual interests. Rome could use Sicilian markets, Carthage could buy and sell goods at Rome, Rome was to stay out of the western Mediterranean, but these terms did not apply to Massalia, which had its own treaty
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Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
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British Isles
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The British Isles are a group of islands off the north-western coast of continental Europe that consist of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. Situated in the North Atlantic, the islands have an area of approximately 315,159 km2. Two sovereign states are located on the islands, Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the oldest rocks in the group are in the north west of Scotland, Ireland and North Wales and are 2,700 million years old. During the Silurian period the north-western regions collided with the south-east, the topography of the islands is modest in scale by global standards. Ben Nevis rises to an elevation of only 1,344 metres, and Lough Neagh, the climate is temperate marine, with mild winters and warm summers. The North Atlantic Drift brings significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C above the average for the latitude. This led to a landscape which was dominated by temperate rainforest. The region was re-inhabited after the last glacial period of Quaternary glaciation, Ireland, which became an island by 12,000 BC, was not inhabited until after 8000 BC. Great Britain became an island by 5600 BC, Hiberni, Pictish and Britons tribes, all speaking Insular Celtic, inhabited the islands at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. Much of Brittonic-controlled Britain was conquered by the Roman Empire from AD43, the first Anglo-Saxons arrived as Roman power waned in the 5th century and eventually dominated the bulk of what is now England. Viking invasions began in the 9th century, followed by permanent settlements. Most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom after the Irish War of Independence, the term British Isles is controversial in Ireland, where there are objections to its usage due to the association of the word British with Ireland. The Government of Ireland does not recognise or use the term, as a result, Britain and Ireland is used as an alternative description, and Atlantic Archipelago has had limited use among a minority in academia, while British Isles is still commonly employed. Within them, they are sometimes referred to as these islands. The earliest known references to the islands as a group appeared in the writings of sea-farers from the ancient Greek colony of Massalia. The original records have been lost, however, later writings, e. g. Avienuss Ora maritima, in the 1st century BC, Diodorus Siculus has Prettanikē nēsos, the British Island, and Prettanoi, the Britons. Strabo used Βρεττανική, and Marcian of Heraclea, in his Periplus maris exteri, historians today, though not in absolute agreement, largely agree that these Greek and Latin names were probably drawn from native Celtic-language names for the archipelago. Along these lines, the inhabitants of the islands were called the Πρεττανοί, the shift from the P of Pretannia to the B of Britannia by the Romans occurred during the time of Julius Caesar
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Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
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Gaul
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It covered an area of 190,800 sq mi. According to the testimony of Julius Caesar, Gaul was divided into three parts, Gallia Celtica, Belgica and Aquitania, during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, Gaul fell under Roman rule, Gallia Cisalpina was conquered in 203 BC and Gallia Narbonensis in 123 BC. Gaul was invaded after 120 BC by the Cimbri and the Teutons, Gallia remains a name of France in modern Greek and modern Latin. The Greek and Latin names Galatia, and Gallia are ultimately derived from a Celtic ethnic term or clan Gal-to-. Galli of Gallia Celtica were reported to refer to themselves as Celtae by Caesar. Hellenistic folk etymology connected the name of the Galatians to the supposedly milk-white skin of the Gauls, modern researchers say it is related to Welsh gallu, Cornish galloes, capacity, power, thus meaning powerful people. The English Gaul is from French Gaule and is unrelated to Latin Gallia, as adjectives, English has the two variants, Gaulish and Gallic. The two adjectives are used synonymously, as pertaining to Gaul or the Gauls, although the Celtic language or languages spoken in Gaul is predominantly known as Gaulish. The Germanic w- is regularly rendered as gu- / g- in French, also unrelated in spite of superficial similarity is the name Gael. The Irish word gall did originally mean a Gaul, i. e. an inhabitant of Gaul, but its meaning was later widened to foreigner, to describe the Vikings, and later still the Normans. The dichotomic words gael and gall are sometimes used together for contrast, by 500 BC, there is strong Hallstatt influence throughout most of France. By the late 5th century BC, La Tène influence spreads rapidly across the territory of Gaul. The La Tène culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age in France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, southwest Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, farther north extended the contemporary pre-Roman Iron Age culture of northern Germany and Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the Romans described Gallia Transalpina as distinct from Gallia Cisalpina, while some scholars believe the Belgae south of the Somme were a mixture of Celtic and Germanic elements, their ethnic affiliations have not been definitively resolved. One of the reasons is political interference upon the French historical interpretation during the 19th century, in addition to the Gauls, there were other peoples living in Gaul, such as the Greeks and Phoenicians who had established outposts such as Massilia along the Mediterranean coast. Also, along the southeastern Mediterranean coast, the Ligures had merged with the Celts to form a Celto-Ligurian culture, the prosperity of Mediterranean Gaul encouraged Rome to respond to pleas for assistance from the inhabitants of Massilia, who were under attack by a coalition of Ligures and Gauls. The Romans intervened in Gaul in 154 BC and again in 125 BC, whereas on the first occasion they came and went, on the second they stayed. Massilia was allowed to keep its lands, but Rome added to its territories the lands of the conquered tribes. The direct result of conquests was that by now, Rome controlled an area extending from the Pyrenees to the lower Rhône river
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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the Chronicle was still being updated in 1154. Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of historical value. The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfreds reign and these manuscripts collectively are known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Taken as a whole, however, the Chronicle is the single most important historical source for the period in England between the departure of the Romans and the following the Norman conquest. Much of the information given in the Chronicle is not recorded elsewhere, in addition, the manuscripts are important sources for the history of the English language, in particular, the later Peterborough text is one of the earliest examples of Middle English in existence. Seven of the nine surviving manuscripts and fragments now reside in the British Library, the remaining two are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. All of the manuscripts are copies, so it is not known for certain where or when the first version of the Chronicle was composed. It is generally agreed that the version was written in the late 9th century by a scribe in Wessex. After the original Chronicle was compiled, copies were made and distributed to various monasteries, additional copies were made, for further distribution or to replace lost manuscripts, and some copies were updated independently of each other. Some of these copies are those that have survived. The earliest extant manuscript, the Winchester Chronicle, was written by a single scribe up to the year 891, the scribe wrote the year number, DCCCXCII, in the margin of the next line, subsequent material was written by other scribes. It is known that the Winchester manuscript is at least two removes from the original Chronicle, as a result, there is no proof that the Chronicle was compiled at Winchester. The Chronicle, as well as the distribution of copies to other centres of learning, of the nine surviving manuscripts, seven are written entirely in Old English. One, known as the Bilingual Canterbury Epitome, is in Old English with a translation of each annal into Latin, another, the Peterborough Chronicle, is in Old English except for the last entry, which is in early Middle English. The oldest is known as the Winchester Chronicle or the Parker Chronicle, six of the manuscripts were printed in an 1861 edition for the Rolls Series by Benjamin Thorpe with the text laid out in columns labelled A to F. He also included the few remnants of a burned seventh manuscript
38.
Alfred the Great
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Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899. Alfred successfully defended his kingdom against the Viking attempt at conquest and he is one of only two English monarchs to be given the epithet the Great, the other being the Scandinavian Cnut the Great. He was also the first King of the West Saxons to style himself King of the Anglo-Saxons, details of Alfreds life are described in a work by the 10th-century Welsh scholar and bishop Asser. In 2002, Alfred was ranked number 14 in the BBCs poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Alfred was born in the village of Wanating, now Wantage, historically in Berkshire but now in Oxfordshire. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex by his first wife, Osburh. In 853, at the age of four, Alfred is reported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to have sent to Rome, where he was confirmed by Pope Leo IV. Victorian writers later interpreted this as a coronation in preparation for his eventual succession to the throne of Wessex. This is unlikely, his succession could not have foreseen at the time. A letter of Leo IV shows that Alfred was made a consul and it may also be based on Alfreds later having accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Rome, where he spent some time at the court of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, around 854–855. On their return from Rome in 856, Æthelwulf was deposed by his son Æthelbald, with civil war looming, the magnates of the realm met in council to hammer out a compromise. Æthelbald would retain the western shires, and Æthelwulf would rule in the east, when King Æthelwulf died in 858, Wessex was ruled by three of Alfreds brothers in succession, Æthelbald, Æthelberht and Æthelred. Bishop Asser tells the story of how as a child Alfred won as a prize a book of Saxon poems, legend also has it that the young Alfred spent time in Ireland seeking healing. Alfred was troubled by health problems throughout his life and it is thought that he may have suffered from Crohns disease. Statues of Alfred in Winchester and Wantage portray him as a great warrior, evidence suggests he was not physically strong, and though not lacking in courage, he was noted more for his intellect than as a warlike character. During the short reigns of the two of his three elder brothers, Æthelbald of Wessex and Æthelberht of Wessex, Alfred is not mentioned. This arrangement may have been sanctioned by Alfreds father, or by the Witan, the arrangement of crowning a successor as royal prince and military commander is well known among other Germanic tribes, such as the Swedes and Franks, to whom the Anglo-Saxons were closely related. In 868, Alfred is recorded as fighting beside Æthelred in an attempt to keep the Great Heathen Army, led by Ivar the Boneless. At the end of 870, the Danes arrived in his homeland, the year which followed has been called Alfreds year of battles
39.
Armenians
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Armenians are an ethnic group native to the Armenian Highlands. Armenians constitute the population of Armenia and the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. There is a diaspora of around 5 million people of full or partial Armenian ancestry living outside of modern Armenia. The largest Armenian populations today exist in Russia, the United States, France, Georgia, Iran, Germany, Ukraine, Lebanon, Brazil and Syria. With the exceptions of Iran and the former Soviet states, the present-day Armenian diaspora was formed mainly as a result of the Armenian Genocide, most Armenians adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a non-Chalcedonian church, which is also the worlds oldest national church. Christianity began to spread in Armenia soon after Jesus death, due to the efforts of two of his apostles, St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew, in the early 4th century, the Kingdom of Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity as a state religion. The unique Armenian alphabet was invented in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, historically, the name Armenian has come to internationally designate this group of people. It was first used by neighbouring countries of ancient Armenia, the earliest attestations of the exonym Armenia date around the 6th century BC. In his trilingual Behistun Inscription dated to 517 BC, Darius I the Great of Persia refers to Urashtu as Armina (in Old Persian, Armina and Harminuya. In Greek, Αρμένιοι Armenians is attested from about the same time, xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BC. He relates that the people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians and it is also further postulated that the name Hay comes from one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states—the Ḫayaša-Azzi. Movses Khorenatsi, the important early medieval Armenian historian, wrote that the word Armenian originated from the name Armenak or Aram, the Armenian Highland lies in the highlands surrounding Mount Ararat, the highest peak of the region. In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Hittite Empire, Mitanni, soon after Hayasa-Azzi were Arme-Shupria, the Nairi and the Kingdom of Urartu, who successively established their sovereignty over the Armenian Highland. Each of the nations and tribes participated in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people. Under Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian empire reached the Caucasus Mountains, yerevan, the modern capital of Armenia, was founded in 782 BC by king Argishti I. T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov proposed the Indo-European homeland around the Armenian Highland, eric P. Hamp in his 2012 Indo-European family tree, groups the Armenian language along with Greek and Ancient Macedonian in the Pontic Indo-European subgroup. In Hamps view the homeland of this subgroup is the northeast coast of the Black Sea and he assumes that they migrated from there southeast through the Caucasus with the Armenians remaining after Batumi while the pre-Greeks proceeded westwards along the southern coast of the Black Sea. However, fresh genetics studies explain Armenian diversity by several mixtures of Eurasian populations that occurred between ~3,000 and ~2,000 b. c
40.
Armorica
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The toponym is based on the Gaulish phrase are-mori on/at sea, made into the Gaulish place name Aremorica Place by the Sea. The suffix -ika was first used to create forms and then. The original designation was vague, including a part of what became Normandy in the 10th century and, in some interpretations. Later, the term became restricted to Brittany, in Breton, on sea is war vor, though the older form arvor is used to refer to the coastal regions of Brittany, in contrast to argoad for the inland regions. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, claims that Armorica was the name for Aquitania. Trade between Armorica and Britain, described by Diodorus Siculus and implied by Pliny was long-established and this prehistoric connection of Cornwall and Brittany set the stage for the link that continued into the medieval era. Still farther East, however, the typical Continental connections of the Britannic coast were with the lower Seine valley instead, archeology has not yet been as enlightening in Iron-Age Armorica as the coinage, which has been surveyed by Philip de Jersey. Under the Roman Empire, Armorica was administered as part of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis, when the Roman provinces were reorganized in the 4th century, Armorica was placed under the second and third divisions of Lugdunensis. Jordanes lists Aëtius allies as including Armoricans and other Celtic or German tribes, the Armorican peninsula came to be settled with Britons from Britain during the poorly documented period of the 5th-7th centuries. Even in distant Byzantium Procopius heard tales of migrations to the Frankish mainland from the island, largely legendary for him, of Brittia. These settlers, whether refugees or not, made the presence felt of their coherent groups in the naming of the westernmost, Atlantic-facing provinces of Armorica, Cornouaille and these settlements are associated with leaders like Saints Samson of Dol and Pol Aurelian, among the founder saints of Brittany. Still, questions of the relations between the Celtic cultures of Britain— Cornish and Welsh— and Celtic Breton are far from settled, Martin Henig suggests that in Armorica as in sub-Roman Britain, there was a fair amount of creation of identity in the migration period. In western Armorica the small elite which managed to impose an identity on the population happened to be British rather than Gallo-Roman in origin, the process may have been essentially the same. With western Armorica having already evolved into Brittany, the east was recast from a Frankish viewpoint as the Breton March under a Frankish marquis. The home village of the fictional comic-book hero Asterix was located in Armorica during the Roman Republic, there and this unnamed village was reported as having been discovered by archaeologists in a spoof article in the British The Independent newspaper on April Fools Day,1993. North Armorica is mentioned in the first sentence of James Joyces novel Finnegans Wake, Armorica is featured extensively in Bernard Cornwells novel The Winter King where Ynys Trebes, later Mont Saint Michel is besieged and destroyed by the Franks. The protagonist, Mathurin Kerbouchard, of Louis LAmours The Walking Drum is a native of Brittany, armoricani Armorican Plomodiern Parish close Saxon shore Martin Henig, review in British Archaeology 72 John Hooker - Coriosolite coinage and classification
41.
John Rhys
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Sir John Rhys, PC, FBA was a Welsh scholar, fellow of the British Academy, Celticist and the first Professor of Celtic at Oxford University. He was born John Rees at Ponterwyd in Ceredigion, to a miner and farmer, Hugh Rees. Rhys was educated at schools in Pantyffynnon and Ponterwyd before moving to the British School, here Rhys was enrolled as a pupil and teacher, and after leaving studied at Bangor Normal College from 1860 to 1861. Upon leaving Bangor Normal College, Rhys gained employment as headmaster at Rhos-y-bol and it was here that Rhys was introduced to Dr Charles Williams, then the Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, in 1865. This meeting eventually led to Rhys being accepted into the college, in 1869, he was elected to a fellowship at Merton College. Rhys also travelled and studied in Europe during this period, staying in Paris, Heidelberg, Leipzig and he attended lectures by Georg Curtius and August Leskien whilst in Leipzig, and it was during this period that his interest in philology and linguistics developed. Rhys matriculated from Leipzig in 1871, and it was around this time that he adopted the Welsh spelling of his name and he returned to Wales as a government inspector of schools, covering Flint and Denbigh, and he settled in Rhyl. Rhys also began to write, with articles on the grammar of the Celtic language and articles on the glosses in the Luxembourg manuscript being printed, in 1872 Rhys married Elspeth Hughes-Davies. In 1874 Rhys delivered a series of lectures in Aberystwyth, later published as Lectures on Welsh Philology and this reputation saw him appointed as the first Professor of Celtic at Oxford University in 1877. He was also made a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, Rhys was elected bursar of the college in 1885, a position he held until 1895, when he succeeded Daniel Harper as principal. Rhys served on public bodies. Rhys gained his knighthood in 1907, and in 1911 was appointed to the Privy Council
42.
P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages
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The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. Modern Celtic languages are spoken on the north-western edge of Europe, notably in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall. There are also a number of Welsh speakers in the Patagonia area of Argentina. Some people speak Celtic languages in the other Celtic diaspora areas of the United States, Canada, Australia, in all these areas, the Celtic languages are now only spoken by minorities though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO, the spread to Cape Breton and Patagonia occurred in modern times. SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are the Goidelic languages and the Brittonic languages, the other two, Cornish and Manx, died in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. For both these languages, however, revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children, taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages, shelta, based largely on Irish with influence from an undocumented source. Some forms of Welsh-Romani or Kååle also combined Romany itself with Welsh language, beurla-reagaird, Highland travellers language Celtic divided into various branches, Lepontic, the oldest attested Celtic language. Anciently spoken in Switzerland and in Northern-Central Italy, from the Alps to Umbria, coins with Lepontic inscriptions have been found in Noricum and Gallia Narbonensis. Celtiberian, anciently spoken in the Iberian peninsula, in parts of modern Galicia, Asturias, La Rioja, Aragón, Cantabria, Old Castile, the relationship of Celtiberian with Gallaecian, in the northwest of the peninsula, is uncertain. Gallaecian, anciently spoken in the former Gallaecia, northwest of the peninsula, Gaulish languages, including Galatian and possibly Noric. These languages were spoken in a wide arc from Belgium to Turkey. Brittonic, including the living languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, there may have been a Brittonic language in the Isle of Man. Goidelic, including the living languages Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic, scholarly handling of the Celtic languages has been rather argumentative owing to scarceness of primary source data. Other scholars distinguish between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic, putting most of the Gaulish and Brittonic languages in the former group, the P-Celtic languages are sometimes seen as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was Gaelic and it has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages
43.
Oxford English Dictionary
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The Oxford English Dictionary is a descriptive dictionary of the English language, published by the Oxford University Press. The second edition came to 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, in 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the edition was published. Since 2000, an edition of the dictionary has been underway. The first electronic version of the dictionary was available in 1988. The online version has been available since 2000, and as of April 2014 was receiving two million hits per month. The third edition of the dictionary will probably appear in electronic form, Nigel Portwood, chief executive of Oxford University Press. As a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary explains words by showing their development rather than merely their present-day usages, therefore, it shows definitions in the order that the sense of the word began being used, including word meanings which are no longer used. The format of the OEDs entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects and this influenced later volumes of this and other lexicographical works. As of 30 November 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary contained approximately 301,100 main entries, the dictionarys latest, complete print edition was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, as entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000, then put in 2007, then run in 2011. Despite its impressive size, the OED is neither the worlds largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language, the Dutch dictionary Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal is the worlds largest dictionary, has similar aims to the OED and took twice as long to complete. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers dictionary of the German language, begun in 1838, the official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española, and its first edition was published in 1780. The Kangxi dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716, trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the Society formally adopted the idea of a new dictionary. Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips, later the same year, the Society agreed to the project in principle, with the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. He withdrew and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor, on 12 May 1860, Coleridges dictionary plan was published and research was started
44.
Acts of Union 1707
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The Acts of Union were two Acts of Parliament, the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland. They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had agreed on 22 July 1706. Although described as a Union of Crowns, until 1707 there were in two separate Crowns resting on the same head. The Acts took effect on 1 May 1707, on this date, the Scottish Parliament and the English Parliament united to form the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the Palace of Westminster in London, the home of the English Parliament. Hence, the Acts are referred to as the Union of the Parliaments, on the Union, the historian Simon Schama said What began as a hostile merger, would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world. It was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history, the first attempts at Union surrounded the foreseen unification of the Royal lines of Scotland and England. In pursuing the English throne in the 1560s, Mary, Queen of Scots pledged herself to a union between the two kingdoms. England and Scotland were ruled by the king for the first time in 1603 when James VI of Scotland also became the king of England. However they remained two separate states until 1 May 1707, the first attempt to unite the parliaments of England and Scotland was by Marys son, King James VI and I. On his accession to the English throne in 1603 King James announced his intention to unite his two realms so that he would not be guilty of bigamy. James used his prerogative powers to take the style of King of Great Britain and to give an explicitly British character to his court. In the meantime, James declared that Great Britain be viewed as presently united, and as one realm and kingdom, the Scottish and English parliaments established a commission to negotiate a union, formulating an instrument of union between the two countries. However, the idea of union was unpopular, and when James dropped his policy of a speedy union. When the House of Commons attempted to revive the proposal in 1610, the ordinance was ratified by the Second Protectorate Parliament, as an Act of Union, on 26 June 1657. One united Parliament sat in Westminster, with 30 representatives from Scotland and 30 from Ireland joining the members from England. Whilst free trade was brought about amongst the new Commonwealth, the benefits were generally not felt as a result of heavy taxation used to fund Cromwells New Model Army. This republican union was dissolved automatically with the restoration of King Charles II to the thrones of England and Scotland, Scottish members expelled from the Commonwealth Parliament petitioned unsuccessfully for a continuance of the union. An abortive scheme for union occurred in Scotland in 1670, following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the records of the Parliament of Scotland show much discussion of possible union
45.
Kingdom of Great Britain
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The Kingdom of Great Britain, officially Great Britain, was a sovereign state in western Europe from 1 May 1707 to 31 December 1800. It did not include Ireland, which remained a separate realm, the unitary state was governed by a single parliament and government that was based in Westminster. Also after the accession of George I to the throne of Great Britain in 1714, the early years of the unified kingdom were marked by Jacobite risings which ended in defeat for the Stuart cause at Culloden in 1746. On 1 January 1801, the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland were merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom, the name Britain descends from the Latin name for the island of Great Britain, Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons via the Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Edward IV of Englands daughter Cecily and James III of Scotlands son James. The Treaty of Union and the subsequent Acts of Union state that England and Scotland were to be United into one Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain. However, both the Acts and the Treaty also refer numerous times to the United Kingdom and the longer form, other publications refer to the country as the United Kingdom after 1707 as well. The websites of the UK parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the BBC, additionally, the term United Kingdom was found in informal use during the 18th century to describe the state. The new state created in 1707 included the island of Great Britain, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, both in existence from the 9th century, were separate states until 1707. However, they had come into a union in 1603. Each of the three kingdoms maintained its own parliament and laws and this disposition changed dramatically when the Acts of Union 1707 came into force, with a single unified Crown of Great Britain and a single unified parliament. Ireland remained formally separate, with its own parliament, until the Acts of Union 1800, legislative power was vested in the Parliament of Great Britain, which replaced both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. In practice it was a continuation of the English parliament, sitting at the location in Westminster. Newly created peers in the Peerage of Great Britain were given the right to sit in the Lords. Despite the end of a parliament for Scotland, it retained its own laws. As a result of Poynings Law of 1495, the Parliament of Ireland was subordinate to the Parliament of England, the Act was repealed by the Repeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782. The same year, the Irish constitution of 1782 produced a period of legislative freedom, the 18th century saw England, and after 1707 Great Britain, rise to become the worlds dominant colonial power, with France its main rival on the imperial stage
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