Pritennic

Pritennic is a modern term that has been coined to refer to the predecessor of the P-Celtic Pictish language. It is considered to be a sister language to the Brythonic languages.

Evidence

The evidence for the language consists of place-names, tribal names and personal names recorded by Greek and Latin writers in accounts of northern Britain. These names are given in "The Place-Names of Roman Britain". Most of these names come from Ptolemy's "Geography" but are often in corrupt form. Thus it is difficult to ascertain the language of the names.

Discussion

These names have been discussed by Kenneth Jackson, in "The Problem of the Picts", who considered some of them to be Pritennic but had reservations about most of them. Katherine Forsyth, taking advantage of scholarship since 1955, has reviewed these names and considers more of them to be Celtic. However she recognises that some names of islands and rivers may be pre-Indo-European. The rarity of survival of Pritennic names is probably due to later Gaelic and Norse settlement in the area.

The dialect position of Pritennic has been discussed by Jackson and by Koch. Their conclusions are that Prittennic and British had already split by the first century AD. The Roman frontier between "Britania" and "Pictland" is likely to have increased the split. By the 8th century AD, Bede considered Pictish and British to be separate languages.

References

*Forsyth K; Language in Pictland (1997).
*Jackson K; The Pictish Language in F T Wainright "The Problem of the Picts" (1955).
*Koch J; New Thought on Albion, Ieni and the "Pretanic Isles" in Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 6, 1-28 (1986).
*Rivet A and Smith C; The Place-Names of Roman Britain (1979).