Pictish language

Uncommon card · No. 111072

Pictish is an extinct Celtic language that was spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. The language is only attested in several dozen inscriptions in ogham and Latin alphabets, in addition to a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and early medieval records in the area controlled by the kingdoms of the Picts. Available evidence, however, shows the language was Insular Celtic – possibly a variant of Brythonic, once spoken in most of Great Britain, or a distinct branch of Celtic related to it, known as Pritenic. The prevailing view in the second half of the 20th century was either that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language isolate, or that there coexisted not one but two Pictish languages: one Indo-European (Celtic) and the other non-Indo-European. Pictish was replaced by – or merged into – Gaelic in the latter centuries of its period. During the reign of Donald II of Scotland (889–900...

Read on Wikipedia