Which Celtic Language should you learn? 

I love Celtic languages, they just sound so charming! I'm learning Welsh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Greetings from Italy!

I'm currently learning Breton, and I got fascinated by Celtic languages. I learned French, then started to learn Occitan, but when I started Breton... Something happened. Now I'm learning about celtic languages and culture, and discovering many many enchanting things... Greetings from Brazil!

I gotta say that I like how you analyze each language based on their individual qualities instead of what is useful or what is convenient to learn. Much respect. Go raibh maith agat, agus slán leat!

Hi there ! I'm breton and I speak breton. I have been learning cornish for a few weeks. It's very easy for me, breton language and cornish language are so close ! Thank you for your video. Kenavo from Canada.😊

Welsh is fabulous. It should become UKs official language if only to put the likes of Jacob rees mogg in their place.

Learning basic Cornish has become way easier nowadays. Go Cornish is a really great course to take online.

In Breton, ñ indicates nasalisation of the preceding vowel.

Thanks Benjiman, this is super interesting!

I am making a video to learn some breton sentences from english.

Brilliant Ben. Greetings from Scotland "agus tapadh leat a' charaid".

I am Cornish from west Penwith. I grew up with many Cornish words which I still use today passed on from my grandparents.

Ben, I've just found your channel. Great! I wish I could offer more than just my support. If only

Awesome video, you taught me something new about Breton.

Just recently fell in love with celtic culture and languages. Trying to learn the native language of my ancestors.. Much love from Breizh!!

Great overview of the Celtic languages. I have been studying Welsh for almost 5 years. Now I'm very intrigued by Manx.

In France the pronunciation of Breton has a nasal "on" in French. In English, the sress is on the first syllable "BRET-on". In Brezhoneg, the stress is also on the first syllable.

Im French, not from Bretagne but with a family home there I’ve been to since very young; I would love to learn the language of the land that has welcomed me my whole life, and also to connect with what ia most likely the closest language to that of my Gaulish ancestors

My understanding of the (revived) Manx language is that it uses a spelling system based on English spelling which makes it look quite different to Irish and Scots Gaelic and highlights any words of Norse heritage.

Thanks for explaining this about the similarities and differences between the Celtic languages. I didn't know that the Isle of Man has it's own language. I have just returned from a trip to Dublin, Ireland and it was interesting to listen to people talking in Irish. With my English accent it must have been obvious to them where I came from!

Thanks for the great video! I’m a Norse pagan as well as have lots of ancestry in that region so I’ve been trying to decide which language I want to learn.

Wonderful video! German and the Scandinavian languages interest me, too. And, if course the Romance languages. That's how I find your channel.

For people wishing to learn Brezhoneg via Bret'n courses, one has to be aware that even more than 40 years ago, it was based on French phonolgy: word stress, accentuation and so on not to mention how they pronounce the " rhotic r". Since most French speakers cannot pronounce it to begin with, they give the French "r". Then the intonation is not Brezhoneg. The accent like in Kernewek should fall on the penultimate syllable. I had to deal with this in the late 1970's but after a few weeks of working on various farms in the Tregor, I was eventually "cured" of these bad linguistic habits. Then another 35 years of speaking Brezhoneg with my future inlaws, along with traditional speakers of Brezhoneg amongst friends and colleagues. I don't really care how you spell it. As for the Ñ, it should not be over exagerated. Most cases sound like the English in "don't". As for the "z" replacing the older "dd"or "th", they disappeared by the 17th or 18th century due to French influence , "probably". Oh, I remember some Welsh coming to this same. One had learnt Brezhoneg on the farm (in Plouaret) the other in books. I remember the Welsh speaker saying " Nevez" for " Newydd". I remember thinking to myself, "if he only knew!" To begin with in the Tregor, the historical "w" is still pronounced "w" and not "v". Further south more under the influence of Gaulish, yes it can be pronounced like a "v". Just as in Dutch or German, the "w" is prounced like a "v" Ex. Winter. So, without a phonetic transcription, Newydd in Tregorese is pronounced "Néwé". Closer to Cymraeg than this "articial Breton". For example, " bloaz" year is pronounced "bla" in Tregorese Brezhoneg. Another example: "bleiz" {wolf] is pronounced like "blé". And interestingly enough, place names throughout France dozens of place names with composite place names alluding to wolves but not wheat. And the plural form - wolves in the Tregor, I have only heard "bleidi". Oh on a semi final note, I don't think "breton" in an English mouth should try to imitate the French version. Just say "briton" and replace it with an "e'. Oh, this linguistic revival did a great deal of harm to traditiona Bret'n . Kids going to university in Brittany, then coming home and trying to speak Brezhoneg to their Brezhoneg speaking parents, their parents could not understand a word they said mostly. So, Bret'n borrowed most of the abstract words from French. The concrete words, " ti', ki, merch, mamm ha tat" and so on remained Bret'n. What's the difference between that and English? English is a créole language? Yeah? So what? Oh BTW, back years ago, I had the occasion to speak to genuine Bret'n speakers, in Bro Léon, Bro Kerné, Bro Gwened and allowing for dialectal changes, they could understand me. A similar experience with a Kernewek symposium held in Bodmin (1984) gave the same reaction. Just more vocabulary to deal with. On a humoristic note in les Cours d'Anglais in Rennes university, ( one of my English professors who has long since passed away), was a native speaker of Bret'n. He knew I spoke Bret'n too and would underline my mistakes having too many "bretonismes". Sometimes we would argue about certain words in English but I would back up my words in Tregorese Bret'n. The girls (whose parents were Bret'n speaking) would laugh but this professor who spoke faultless English (like the late Peter Donalson on Radio 4) came from Bro Gerné and so sometimes wouldn't recognize some of these words. The students did however since many of them came from my regon of Tregor. These French teachers of Bret'n are purists. Now that traditional Bret'n has pretty well disappeared in most places, the artificial French "Breton" by war of attrition has pretty well won out. A language is supposed to be pure? Linguistic puriy? Example; telephone - pellgomz. If the language has alreay died out, you can get away with that. But while native speakers still speak it?They totally ignored the living language. What's next?

Your points make sense to me. I picked Welsh back up after a few years. I guess it wasn’t the right time when I was exploring it before because now I wonder how I left it! It’s really easy to make fast progress because the grammar is surprisingly, relatively simple and I find now that there are a lot more resources than there were before. Natural, spoken input is really the key for me. Subjectively speaking, it’s hard to get tired of hearing Welsh. 🎶 Discovering the Latin connections is interesting too. Of all the Celtic languages, Welsh feels the most alive to me, which is motivating learning it far from any Welsh-speakers. I explored Irish in the past too but found it a bit obtuse in comparison. I’d really like to go back to it one day, although I’m more curious about Scottish Gaelic now than I was before. Breton and Cornish (and Manx) are curiosities for me but I feel like you really need to be local to get much out of your studies, moreso so than for the other Celtic languages. They’re all so interesting though! Honestly I still can’t believe anyone speaks them, yet there they are. I hope all the revival efforts are successful!

Loving trying Cornish as its closest to me, interesting take that its coming back and adaptive in its nature. Great to see Celtic languages alive and its good you are helping bring them to people. Meur ras a gwydghyow!

This discussion is very helpful!!!!! After hearing Welsh spoken in the beginning of the Mabinogi by a modern day bard, I switched to Welsh. Initially I begin learning Scot's Gaelic, but my longest written family tree goes back to Wales and I wanted to learn more about my ancestors in it. There are many literary figures and dieties woven through some Welsh genealogies, so it is fun to read the Mabinogi and the tales of King Arthur, as though I am in the stories on some level. So because of my detour thru Wales, Scot's Gaelic is now on hold for the moment. From what you said, that sounds like I made the correct choice.

Welsh has lots of Latin loanwords in its lexicon. Pont = pons = Bridge, ffenestr = fenestram = window , Llyfr = liber = book, sgrifennu = scribentes = write. There are many more but interestingly these borrowings hark back to direct contact with the Romans in Roman occupied Britain when Brythonic (ancient Welsh) was spoken throughout Britain unlike English which borrowed heavily from Latin via the Church (don’t forget that Britain was a catholic country for a millennia before the reformation, it has still been catholic twice as long as it’s been Protestant) and Norman French then later starting around the 16th century English writers cribbed 1000s of words directly from Latin rather than fashioning neologisms from the existing lexicon as is common in other Germanic languages. Since Latin was still the lingua Franca in education English writers believed these borrowings lent sophistication and gravitas to their English which had just begun its ascendency to linguistic supremacy as Latin fell from its pedestal as The prestige language of administration, law, education and government. Intriguingly you will notice the Welsh borrowings relate to technologies the Romans brought to Britain which the Britons had no words for as they didn’t really exist in Britain prior to The Roman Conquest.

EXCELLENT VIDEO

Something I need to point out: if you happened to learn fluent Breton without knowing any French, you'd have real trouble communicating with the locals in Brittany. That's because there's a common core of daily vocabulary in Breton but for technical terms, legal terms, anything like that, most people will most likely just say the words in French. I grew up in Wales so the phenomenon you mentioned at 9:04 was very familiar to me. It's called code-switching in linguistics. The technical terms do exist, but a lot of people prefer not to use them or can't remember them quickly enough when they need them because they were educated in English (or French, as the case may be). There is a North-South dialect split in Wales, but in my experience Welsh-speakers from all over Wales can converse without difficulty. What's hard about Welsh is learning the language as it really is spoken because the difference between spoken, written and formal Welsh is much wider than in English, and the language that's taught in schools is not really spoken anywhere.

Ben, Scottish Gaidhlig is pronouced Gah-lick with a long pure "a2 sound as in father and is similar to the German "a".

Thank you Ben for another interesting and thought provoking video. I agree with your comments about the Welsh language and how annoying and I think shameful, it is when some Welsh speakers choose to use English words, phrases or most irritating of all to add whole English sentences to illustrate their Welsh. Some will even switch into English at that point and I think shame on them!! I will reply to them by saying "Dwi ddim yn siarad Saesneg a Chymry" and carry on with what I was saying in Welsh apparently unfased, but it does fase me and I find it really challenging to do that. You also mention the difference in North and South Walian Welsh and I find that the Welsh taught in course books is annoyingly biased towards a North Walian dialect and the old written form of "Yr wyf i yn" is more commonly abbreviated to "Rwy'n" or even "wi'n" in speech in South Wales but dwi'n, which is used in North Wales is the form shown in courses as if it is standard, but for me dwi is the abbreviation of the negative verb and begins a negative sentence followed by ddim as in "Dwi ddim yn siarad Saesneg a Chymry"

I've been working on learning Welsh because I've been fantasizing about moving there and I'd begun to pick up a few words here and there from looking at real estate. I do have a book on learning Breton (in French) which my brother picked up when he spent time there, but it might be a bit of a challenge to learn a language through a second language. But a friend in a facebook group on architecture in the UK has been encouraging me to look at France and I spotted a lovely old Breton farmhouse so... but it looks a lot more difficult than Welsh somehow, probably because I haven't found the same amount of resources.

I’m currently learning the North Germanic languages (Norwegian first) but the Celtic languages are next on my list of languages to learn. I think the Celtic languages are very beautiful and unique. I plan on learning either Irish or Welsh first.

I've heard Gaelic spoken in the Outer Hebrides and the west of Scotland. I have heard some folk musicians speak Irish in Dublin. I have not heard many people speak Welsh, but all the rail announcements at Welsh railway stations are in Welsh before English.

I plan to learn Scottish Gaelic first, due to being part of the Highlands' diaspora. Welsh is certainly also on my list. Not sure about any of the others but Kenerweg is a strong possibility.

I've probably watched this video about 5Xs now haha, it's my goal to have some knowledge in all the Celtic language branches, some more than others. I was curious to know, you did a video for learning Cornish along with some learning resources. I did the Cornish course by Daniel Prohaska and found his teaching method to be very helpful and intuitive. Are there any Welsh lessons that are similar to Daniel's approach to teach Welsh? Meur Ras/Diolch!

This was inspiring. There are good reasons to learn all six of these languages. I just might do it.

Nice video! If i remember correctly, breton doesnt have an equivalent to the welsh dd sound, zh is pronounced like a voiced s

Learning Scottish Gaelic, because I am Scotch. Would love to learn some Welsh down the line, but Gaelic quickly went from a hobby on the side to a major part of our career and life plans

Gura mie ayd for showing some Manx, although you did spell "moghrey mie" wrong which may be in part what caused you to describe it as Germanic. Also yes, we have the best flag :D

I have been learning Scottish Gaelic for one year. There is a sort of "th" sound in some accents, but it is a way of pronouncing "r", so quite unlike the Britonnic languages.

I have never really learnt any Breton, I wonder if @Ecolinguist could help us do a Brythonic languages mutal intelligibility test. I know too much Cymraeg for that, but I could try to understand Breton based on my knowledge of Kernewek and Cymraeg.

By the way, Richard Simcott was learning Manx. I think he has some videos on it, too.

I’d love to just move to Wales and learn in-country. Do you suggest learning in the South? Or the North? Diolch!

3:48: also Welsh (Argentina), though you do mention that later.

Im learning cornish first as its my ancestral language. If I ever get around to learning a second I would probably go with Welsh or breton cause of their similarly to cornish.

Could you rank these 6 languages from greatest number to least number of speakers? That will probably help me decide which ones i might want to dabble in first.

Tá do fhíseán go hiontach. I don't know do you speak my language so I will comment in English. Your overview of our native languages is brilliant. I'm a native Mayo Connacht Irish speaker. I can understand most of Manx and Scots Gaelic without having ever studied them. I would love to learn all the other Celtic languages down the line. The Manx flags simple is the Triskel, the Celtic symbol of Life, Death and Rebirth.

I learned Irish in school and returned to it as an adult. I dip into Scotish Gaelic as I find the differences and similarities intriguing.

I've actually been learning Irish and Scottish Gaelic at the same time on Duolinguo. This can be a bit confusing, having to remember dog is madra in Irish and cù in Scottish Gaelic, but hasn't been as bad as I thought it might be.

The Welsh use of 'Car' does in it's origin come from the Celtic 'Cerbyd', so it isn't an English loan word! x

Sharad Cumbric! The revival of the Cumbric language is underway. I have found ancient texts with Cumbric. You can help in the revival more details to follow! Mae adfywiad yr iaith Cumbric ar y gweill. Rwyf wedi dod o hyd i destunau hynafol gyda Cumbric. Gallwch chi helpu yn yr adfywiad mwy o fanylion i ddilyn!

Your spot on I’m an English speaker from North America and I find Welsh out of the box to be the easiest one to hear a word and annunciate it after hearing it and of course the orthography isn’t too difficult where Irish is the furthest in linguistic distance and the orthography I find very difficult

I think the Anglicisation of Welsh is really just just a young person thing as children and young adults may be fluent but their parents might not speak it, (except in the north), so they slip in between the two languages with ease. Yes there may be a few English words in the modern form but there is always a perfectly good Welsh word too, such as teisen for cacen, (cake). All Languages borrow. For example "aparcar" in Spanish translates as to park a car. A is the preposition "to" in Spanish. Welsh has a very extensive lexicon perhaps more than the other Celtic language. I am only a learner and English is my mother tongue. Really these languages have almost nothing in common. English being built up of Saxon, Viking and old French Latin has many synonyms. I have always just considered the variance in Northern and Southern Welsh vocabulary a richness in the language and taken them just as synonyms

Hello Ben! I:ve Just found this video and I comepletely agree! The Irish Grammar😮 is a. "Real Challenge" and sometimes a "Nightmare" 😅😊😂 Really!!! But, I'm learning "3 of them"...Yes! I'm Out of My mind, But is Funny, for me!!! Saludos desde la ciudad de México!!!

In Kernewek, "spencer mona" is an "ATM" "Money dispenser"?

Regarding Welsh spelling, some consonants need to be explained to English speakers too. C = K, F = V, FF = F. The sounds of LL and RH in Welsh are different from English too. For years I thought "Cymru" was pronounced "simroo"!

i would like to know how to say "I don't speak ." As well as "I don'[t speak Celtic" in each of them. with phonetic english pronunciation.

Thanks for that video. The "zh" in Breton is actually pronounced "z" without the tongue touching the teeth. The presence of the "h" is the result of a compromise with the Bro Gwened (or "gwenedeg") variety, where it is pronounced "c'h" For instance in the words "Breizh" (brittany) or "kozh" (old), in modern standard Breton which we call KLT, it is said "z" and in Bro Gwened "c'h". As far as I know the "th" sound is a typicly english, and I just discorvered in that video that it also exists in Welsh or Scottisch. Since it does not exist in other Germanic languages, could we imagine that it is present in english through a celtic influence??

I am going with Welsh now

Only know a few Breton words learned in my early childhood. Sad that my parents were made ashamed for speaking in their mother tongue.

I would like to learn a Celtic language and am so torn. Many people want to learn to speak the language but I am most interested in being able to read it.

Learning Irish! And from Dane no less!

Breton to me sounds like Welsh being spoken with a French accent. I truly wish the Goidelic languages could devise an easier spelling system. I am a Welsh speaker and can look at a Welsh word and know how to pronounce it. Not so for me with Irish or Scots Gaelic.Manx is a bit easier but not much. I think a simplified spelling system for Goidelic languages might encourage the study of them among English speakers. But that's just me! Diolch yn fawr i'r fideo.

So... which one should I learn?

What was the secret language of the druids? Brithonnic? Attic Greek? Phoenician? proto-Irish?

I'd like to learn Brezhoneg, but the english materials on it are so few.

Just have to point out Gaelic is as far as I know, only pronounced Gay-lick in Ireland. In Scotland, it's supposed to be pronounced Gah-lick. Even when you're speaking English. I'm not sure how the Manx pronounce it.

Hi there ! Dia duit ! Is as an Rúis mise agus tá mé ag foghlaim Gaeilge agus Gaeilge na hAlban 🇷🇺🇮🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

From a practical point of view most Breton teaching materials are in French, so Welsh and Cornish are easier coming from English. Code-switching is confusing, sure, but all languages have dialects, it is the same with Irish and it's natural for native speakers to code-switch. Language is part of culture, so I would advise people to learn the language (and dialect) of the culture that speaks loudest to them. I started with Cornish, but I have found studying Welsh, Breton and Irish to be useful, if a little confusing sometimes, so start with just one. Meur ras dhe why!

Its Gah - leek in Alba

I chose Welsh as the Celtic language I want to learn. I know a bit of Gaelic, but I always found Welsh more appealing and beautiful.

Can Celtic language supporters have handheld portable translator machines for the 6 languages ? Let us hope soon!!! Jumpstart language learning. Also, International Phonetic Alphabet letters for each of the 6, when they have same sounds + same spellings, which can promote hearing those same sounds, despite official different spellings. Also, we may still be middle of UN decade to protect endangered languages

Many Americans and Australians have Lowland Scots ancestry because of the carrot and a stick strategy England used to clear the Lowlands for sheep grazing. Based on my surnames and dna results I'm very Scottish but reading between the lines I am a mix of Breton, Dal Riata, Pict, Northumbria. Because the Breton and Cumbric languages are lost and the fact that a Norse/Gael/Pict people group became the Scottish culture with Scottish Gaelic (Gallic) as the liturgical/linga franca of most of the areas my background is from, I'm embracing this language. It's my hope all of Scotland does too. Anglo-Saxon brought a Germanic language to the Celtic world. But Irish, in my opinion was more legitimate, coming from a Celtic, older culture.

Brezhoneg ! Llydaweg ! Kalz Bretoned a gomz brezhoneg e Breizh =) !

Dydh da, from down under

I wanted to learn a Celtic language but I didn't know which one

So it sounds like: Welsh: easiest for English speakers still in use Irish: hardest still in use Scottish Gaelic: difficult and barely used Cornish: language trying to be revived Manx: Viking Irish Breton: French Celtic

I'd learn all 6 if I dedicated my life.

Yikes! So misleading! Irish has about 2½ cases: nominative, genitive & vocative. The vocative only changes male Irish first names, so it’s really, really limited. Scottish Gaelic on the other hand, does still make some use of the dative case, which Irish has dropped, so you *could* argue they have 4 cases. I definitely wouldn’t describe Manx as being Irish + Norse either. In many ways Manx is very close to both Irish & Scottish Gaelic, and there’s a real mix of words that sound like both. All three languages have some Norse borrowings, but there are more in Scottish Gaelic because the Norse influence lasted longer there. I would say learn what you feel an affinity with or what draws you, because learning a language is not a trivial exercise and motivation is important! If you want to collect one of each family, I’d say learn Welsh and Irish simply because of the amount of resources available, e.g. there are TV channels in both languages which isn’t true for any other Celtic language.

Dw i eisiau dysgu Cernyweg a Llydaweg.

Irish has the most speakers of all the Celtic languages according to Wikipedia. It's one of the 24 official languages of the European Union which makes it worth learning. The only downsides being the complex grammar, as mentioned in this video, and its complicated spelling conventions, which make it difficult to learn.

Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam. GRMA as an bhfíseán

As someone whos learning Irish I'm disappointed that you put Irish at the bottom of your list. Irish has so much to offer and the Irish language is so similar to scot Gaelic its quite easy to jump from one to the other once you have learned one there are way more resources for Irish from across the world then there is for Manx or Cornish. And Irish has by far more speakers than any other Celtic language 1.7 million speakers in 2018 census as opposed to opposed to the runner up -welsh with roughly 564,000 speakers. And if your in America there are Irish speaking communities in Canada as well as smaller pockets in New York and Boston.

Personally, I chose to learn the Scottish Gaelic language cause it sounds a lot like English

Meur ras koweth.. kernewek ov y. Dydh da.

Interesting. You need to learn to pronounce Gàidhlig correctly. It's not "gay-lick", it's "gal - ick"

Prynhawn da. Go raith math agat.

Irish is to Welsh like English is to Swedish.

Thanks for the video, Ben! If there's anyone interested in learning Cornish or speaking it in a community, we have a discord at discord.gg/BEBEmUwW with many resources available and lessons available too. Kernewek may be small but it is important to remember that it is a growing language and so it's becoming increasingly important to Cornish communities especially.