Celtic Influence On English Language

The foremost language that is recognized as the main influencer of English, especially Old English is Germanic. Today, many linguists have been making further studies on the influences that Celtic had on the English language. Not many realize the influence Celtic languages had on English. It was there before the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain and forced their language onto its people. As a result the Celts moved north and language contact was not as strong as it was before. Nevertheless, many linguists are now popping out with new researches and studies that highlight the often-marginalized influence Celtic had on English. It can be found mainly in the syntax, a little bit in morphology and phonology, and slightly in vocabulary (Vennemann, 310).

An example from early thirteenth century southwestern Middle English would be, ‘His slayun he dude dun legge’. When translated into modern English, the sentence means ‘he laid down his pilgrim’s cloak’ (Willis, 6). This is a result of language contact between Celtic and English language. The auxiliary ‘do’ is a common feature of Celtic languages such as Welsh, Cornish, and Irish. Nevertheless, there is no sufficient textual evidence that could determine a solid case for a Celtic origin of English auxiliary ‘do’ (Hickey, 502). Nonetheless, it could be argued that when languages come into contact, auxiliaries surface. Therefore, the Celtic and English contact could be argued as a result of the rise of periphrastic ‘do’. Moreover, the use of ‘do’ + a noun as an equivalent to a lexical verb is a recognized feature of Celtic, especially Irish (Hickey, 502). The contact between Celtic and English cannot be proven to have had a significant influence on English; however, since Celtic was the first to have the periphrastic ‘do’, it logically follows to consider that English must have taken it as a model and followed after

All Celtic languages have the progressive, and it is represented by a Modern Welsh sentence such as ‘Mae John yn torri coed, lit.’ that literally translates to ‘is John in cut wood’, which basically means ‘John is cutting wood’. This sentence displays a prepositional expression for the progressive aspect, and it corresponds to Old English in structure, ‘ic waes on huntuge.’ which means ‘I was hunting’ (Hickey, 501). Putting things into perspective, one can note that the progressive existed in both Germanic and Celtic languages. Both languages upheld the semantic category of the progressive. Moreover, the locative preposition became absent from English, which led to an increase in the syntactic flexibility and range of the structure, plausibly as a result of Celtic contact’s supportive influence (Hickey, 501). An additional relevant fact is that with habitual and progressive verb forms both English and Celtic had “aspect structures of a process-oriented nature” which contrasted the nature of aspect categories found in Germanic languages that were more goal-oriented such as German for example. In conclusion, the reality regarding the contact between Celtic and English language cannot be denied in historical context. It is not perfectly clear how much Celtic really influenced English, but with studies and analysis linguists are finding more and more evidence that prove