Have at least one Celtic language not wither away?

It's hard to say. There's so many potential PODs, that are themselves somewhat limited and balanced by likely English/French reactions and economic or political issues that it's hard to give a definite answer without creating a concrete timeline to back it up.

As far as Irish Gaelic goes, there's a couple of things. The most recent thing is to do something about the Potato Famine. It was poor Gaelic speaking peasants that tended to suffer the most due to poverty and starvation that resulted and thus needed to emigrate outside of Ireland, so a more limited or nonexistant Potato Famine preserves a much larger population of Gaelic speakers(or at least people familiar with Irish Gaelic) that when/if independence movements come around they'll have a lot more to work with in that sense than OTL did. IOTL, one of the major reasons for changing to English was to encourage the poor desperate peasants to have the skills necessary to get those (relatively) well-paying factory jobs in English speaking Britain or America and send back remittances.

That's not to say that the ruling class won't use English, or that English wouldn't be a very useful language to learn given professional opportunities. However, Swiss German, Catalan, and Galician all managed to hold on despite having similar predictions and being much closer in language to the established state that ruled over them, and all have managed to continue to exist as dominant forces in their region. I can see Gaelic developing in a similar way, being the language of every day life even for those that go speak English at work.
 
In the 15th century Scotland was half Gaelic and half Scots speaking. Historian Neil Oliver believes the conflict with the Houses of Stuart and Macdonald in the 15th century probably started in decline of Gaelic culture in Scotland.

Although if Scotland remained independent. Scots (a language closely related to English) would be the dominant language and considered as a seperate language to English instead of a dialect. Although they would be a large Gaelic speaking minority. Therefore Scotland would be officially bilingual (Scots and Gaelic).

Also an independent Scotland probably would meant that the Plantations in Ulster would be far less extensive than OTL. Because Scottish settlers made up a large proportion of Protestant colonists in Ulster. Ulster would have remained the most Gaelic and Catholic province in Ireland (which it was c.1600).

Thanks, this is what I was thinking would happen. And also thanks for the tidbit on Ireland. I knew of a lot of Scottish mercenaries would go there to fight, but not that they made up a l of the settlers (but the whole Scots-Irish thing in the States should have made that clear :p)

It's hard to say. There's so many potential PODs, that are themselves somewhat limited and balanced by likely English/French reactions and economic or political issues that it's hard to give a definite answer without creating a concrete timeline to back it up.

As far as Irish Gaelic goes, there's a couple of things. The most recent thing is to do something about the Potato Famine. It was poor Gaelic speaking peasants that tended to suffer the most due to poverty and starvation that resulted and thus needed to emigrate outside of Ireland, so a more limited or nonexistant Potato Famine preserves a much larger population of Gaelic speakers(or at least people familiar with Irish Gaelic) that when/if independence movements come around they'll have a lot more to work with in that sense than OTL did. IOTL, one of the major reasons for changing to English was to encourage the poor desperate peasants to have the skills necessary to get those (relatively) well-paying factory jobs in English speaking Britain or America and send back remittances.

That's not to say that the ruling class won't use English, or that English wouldn't be a very useful language to learn given professional opportunities. However, Swiss German, Catalan, and Galician all managed to hold on despite having similar predictions and being much closer in language to the established state that ruled over them, and all have managed to continue to exist as dominant forces in their region. I can see Gaelic developing in a similar way, being the language of every day life even for those that go speak English at work.

Exactly. It really does depend on the PoD, and being a part of Britain isn't a guarantee they'll whither to the extant of OTL.
 
IIRC a majority spoke Welsh into the 50s, it was that 1901 was the first time a majority spoke English.
I think the church has made a difference in Wales and Ireland - Welsh Nonconformish had a cultural connection to the language in a way Irish Catholicism didn't. Literary Welsh is still largely the language of the old Welsh Bible, and while this is changing I think BBC Welsh is as well.
I've visited the Patagonian Welsh community with school (even appeared on Welsh-language radio there) and there is definitely a Welsh culture there remaining, but I'm not sure how related it is to the language (though it was hilarious to see a sign reading Heddlu/Policia).
 
In Ireland, a lot of damage was done to the prestige of the language by both Daniel O Connell and the Catholic Church in the first half of the 19th century. The famine, and subsequent mass emigration, exacerbated this throughout the second half.
The national seminary in Maigh Nuad made no attempt to ensure that Irish-speaking priests were delegated to Irish-speaking parishes. O Connell portrayed the language as backward (more passively than actively); he would have addressed crowds where the vast majority had no English, and he was fluent in Irish, but he never used it.

Defeat at Aughrim during the Williamite War was arguably the first nail in the coffin. As astutely observed by the late historian Hubert Butler, the breaking of the native aristocracy meant the decline and eventual extinction of the itinerant poets and bards. It was through their literacy and tradition that the language had evolved. By the time literary writing in Irish started to revive in the early 20th century, the battle was lost.

The prevention of even one of these phenomena would have staunched the flow of blood to a significant degree.
 
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On a point of pedantry (and I know you all have the noblest of intentions), may I aver that there is no such language as Gaelic.

The Gaelic (or Goidelic) languages are Irish, Scottish and Manx. In linguistic circles Scottish Gaelic is acceptable (though not preferable!) so as not to be confused with Scots.

However, referring to 'Irish Gaelic' is akin to using the phrase 'English Anglo-Frisian' or 'Welsh Brittonic'- the latter word is redundant.
 
Thiiiis would probably make them wither away faster, seeing as there would be no Romans to halt the Germanics.

..................... wut?

Let's just stop, and think about this statement for a moment. When Germanic tribes invaded, well, anywhere besides the British Isles in the 4th and 5th centuries, did Germanic languages flourish there? Spain? France? Italy?...

The answer is no. No, they did not. And it had nothing to do with Rome and Romance languages, it had to do with population size. In Gaul, Spain, and northern Italy you have very dense populations that can easily assimilate an invading force of... well, anything the Germanic tribes could muster. The only instances when Germanic tribes managed to assimilate Celts into their culture were in areas with less population density, like the British Isles, southern Germany and Austria, and the Balkans which had more to do with the Dacians than any Germanic tribes that migrated through the area.

Any Germanic tribe that migrates into Gaul, Celtiberia/Lusitania, or Italy will simply be assimilated into the larger, much more populous and prosperous, mediterranean Celtic culture.
 
..................... wut?

Let's just stop, and think about this statement for a moment. When Germanic tribes invaded, well, anywhere besides the British Isles in the 4th and 5th centuries, did Germanic languages flourish there? Spain? France? Italy?...

The answer is no. No, they did not. And it had nothing to do with Rome and Romance languages, it had to do with population size. In Gaul, Spain, and northern Italy you have very dense populations that can easily assimilate an invading force of... well, anything the Germanic tribes could muster. The only instances when Germanic tribes managed to assimilate Celts into their culture were in areas with less population density, like the British Isles, southern Germany and Austria, and the Balkans which had more to do with the Dacians than any Germanic tribes that migrated through the area.

Any Germanic tribe that migrates into Gaul, Celtiberia/Lusitania, or Italy will simply be assimilated into the larger, much more populous and prosperous, mediterranean Celtic culture.

And in the British Isles the Germanic assimilation may have been made a lot easier because the Germanic languages had already spread into the eastern parts of Britain in the centuries prior to the collapse of the Roman Empire.

teg
 
And in the British Isles the Germanic assimilation may have been made a lot easier because the Germanic languages had already spread into the eastern parts of Britain in the centuries prior to the collapse of the Roman Empire.

teg

Well, depends on who you ask. We don't really know what was going on there.
 
@Errnge: as noted the Germanic tribes were able to assimilate Celtic populations in less densely populated areas. That might also include parts west of the Rhine and northern Gaul. However these areas might already have been mixed Germanic and Celtic.
 
Up into the 1950s or early 1960s there was a pocket of a few thousand French speakers in NE Illinois. Remnant of 18th Century settlers I understand. Better documented would be the assorted native American languages that have survived a centiury or more of pressure to get with the program and use the dominate language.

So, it seem possible a small towns worth of Welsh speakers might survive in far Patagonia.
 
And in the British Isles the Germanic assimilation may have been made a lot easier because the Germanic languages had already spread into the eastern parts of Britain in the centuries prior to the collapse of the Roman Empire.

teg

Again, it is debatable, and possibly tainted by a certain british anglo-saxon nationalism.
 
Is there any particular reason for that? I don't see what could have drawn what surely should have been a sizeable number of Welsh people (to maintain the existence of the Welsh language there) to a land as far away and as foreign as Patagonia.

I'm even more surprised that it's been there for as long as you said it has, that's at least over 114 years. Considering it's in a land so far away that the Welsh-speaking population would be unlikely to be reinforced by other immigrating Welsh speakers over a long period of time, it seems miraculous to me that it has managed to survive with a population of 5,000.

The idea was a 'language colony', a place away from the policies designed to suppress the Welsh language. Policies developed by mainly Welsh bureaucrats who thought the language was doomed, so why bother tying to save it.

Unfortunately, the Patagonian colony resulted in a population that speaks Spanish in every day life. Welsh is usually spoken only in church and possibly the rugby field.
 
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