Common Celtic language
About 2,5 thousand years ago Europe was Celtic. Started somewhere in Central Europe, the Celts soon spread all over the continent, settling on different lands and assimilating different peoples. All modern France became completely Celtic in the 7th century BC, South and West Germany, Austria and Switzerland get covered with Celtic "dunums" and "brigas", which Romans called oppidum. The Celts invaded Italy through the Alps in the 4th century BC, plundered Rome, and settled the lands along the Padus river. They conquered vast regions in Central and Northern Spain, establishing Celtiberia. and mixing with aboriginal nations. In the 3rd century BC already Czech, Hungarian, Slovenian lands appeared to be Celtic, and from here some of them migrated to Greece, where finally were stopped by Greeks on the Peloponnese peninsula. Celts flew to Asia Minor and founded there a kingdom named Galatia. On the other end of Europe, Celts began settling down on the British Isles.

This epoch in European history was Celtic. But now only a small peninsula on the continent is inhabited by descendants of those powerful people. Bretons in France can be proud - they were the only who survived in continental Europe. Celts are also represented by Irish Gaelic, the Scottish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic; Welsh and Cornish languages in Ireland and Great Britain.

The continental subgroup of Celtic languages is now extinct, Gaulish, Lepontic and Celtiberian languages died out, that is why we can judge about Common Celtic only by the remains of Continental subgroup and by living Insular subgroup languages. What we know about the Common Celtic phonetics, is that: the vowels remained long and short, the syllable vowels turned into CV or VC forms (C - consonant, V - vowel), diphthongs tend to be dropped, consonants lost aspirants, but somewhere preserved palatals. Final consonants (important in endings) were often dropped, as well as the initial ones.

Common Celtic shows no initial mutations, lenition or nasalisation etc. Gaulish did not have them either. This is the feature that was developed in Insular Celtic epoch, though arguments are still under way.

Irish morphology was similar to its predecessor Proto-Indo-European. It had, supposedly, 3 genders, though neuter became extinct very early; three numbers and 5 or 6 noun cases (nom., gen., dat., acc., voc.). Some noun endings show archaic instrumental case in dative constructions. The common Celto-Italo-Venetic -b-, -bh- is used in dative plural and dual. The adjective was declined like a noun and had 4 degrees of comparison (plus equalitive, comparative, superlative). Pronouns that can be reconstructed are quite scarce including the only demonstrative sindos (this) which finally became an Irish definite article an or Manx yn.

And practically nothing is known for sure about the verbs in Common Celtic. They must have had forms and inflections that had not gone far from Proto-Indo-European ones.

 
Indo-European Tree