Continental Celtic languages
The Continental Celtic languages are the now-extinct group of the Celtic languages that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central Anatolia, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles and Brittany. In the field of historical linguistics, Continental and Insular Celtic are put forward as the main branches of the group, which is itself a branch of the Indo-European languages. As the word branch implies, this field primarily makes use of the family tree analogy. Indo-European is a tree with all the different groups as branches. No branches, no tree, and vice versa.
| Continental Celtic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Continental Europe, Anatolia |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
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| Subdivisions |
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| Glottolog | None |
Celtic languages during the Iron Age and classical Antiquity. 1: early Iron Age core region (Hallstatt -H-, early La Tène -L-) 2: assumed Celtic expansion by the 4th century BC L: La Tène site H: Hallstatt site I: Iberia B: British Isles G: Galatia, settled in the 3rd century BC (after 279 BC) | |
Not all the branches, however, are known. There are alternative hypotheses of the exact paths between known branches. For this reason, the late linguist, Calvert Watkins, omits the upper branch lines between Proto-Indo-European and the various major daughter groups in his circular presentation of the tree on the rear fly leaves of the Fourth and other editions of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, containing his essay "Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans" and his appendix on Indo-European roots. There are in that edition 15 major groups, some containing only one language. Theorists can connect these major branches according to their groupings.