Download or read book An Introduction to the Celtic Languages written by Paul Russell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text provides a single-volume, single-author general introduction to the Celtic languages. The first half of the book considers the historical background of the language group as a whole. There follows a discussion of the two main sub-groups of Celtic, Goidelic (comprising Irish, Scottish, Gaelic and Manx) and Brittonic (Welsh, Cornish and Breton) together with a detailed survey of one representative from each group, Irish and Welsh. The second half considers a range of linguistic features which are often regarded as characteristic of Celtic: spelling systems, mutations, verbal nouns and word order.