Pioneer of the Pan Celtic Movement: How an 18th Century Linguist Paved the Way for a Shared Celtic Identity

In the first decades of the 1700s, Edward Lhwyd a brilliant Welsh linguist (who was also a botanist, geologist and antiquarian) came to understand the connections between the surviving Celtic languages: Gaelic (both Irish and Scottish), Welsh, Breton and Cornish.

The website “The Conversation”, a network of not-for-profit media outlets that publish news stories written by academics and researchers, has posted an article on the role of a 1700’s linguist, Edward Llwyd, in fostering the Pan Celtic movement through seminal work on the linkage of the modern Celtic languages.

Written by Thomas Black, a PhD candidate in Early Modern Literature at the University of Nottingham the article chronicles the impact of a brilliant linguist who pioneered the understanding of the linkage between the surviving Celtic languages of Irish, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and Cornish.

The following are excerpts from “How a Brilliant 18th Century Linguist Linked the Celtic Languages”.

“My research focuses on the way cultural and national identities developed in Scotland and Ireland during the 16th-18th centuries. I am particularly interested in the tensions between Gaels and Scots, and in Ireland where ethnic and religious divisions led to conflict. The politics of language played a key part in these processes and my work looks at how texts written in Gaelic, Latin, and English fed in to the development of identity.

In the first decades of the 1700s, Edward Lhwyd a brilliant Welsh linguist (who was also a botanist, geologist and antiquarian) came to understand the connections between the surviving Celtic languages: Gaelic (both Irish and Scottish), Welsh, Breton and Cornish.

Through massive personal effort and the assistance of many helpful correspondents   he became proficient in all four languages and published a set of comparative dictionaries and grammars in his 1707 book Archeological Britannica. This work explained the historical linkage of these languages and laid down the fundamentals necessary for his readers to learn them.

Once published, Lhwyd’s work was prefaced by pages of complimentary verse written by thankful and enthusiastic readers and correspondents. The poems in Welsh, Gaelic and Latin show us how Lhwyd’s readers responded to his work and how they valued his engagement with their native languages.”

Read the full article here: https://theconversation.com/how-a-brilliant-18th-century-linguist-linked-the-celtic-languages-132572