|
The Insular Celtic hypothesis concerns the origin of the Celtic languages. The six extant Celtic languages can be divided into: The term "Insular" refers to the place of origin of these languages, the British Isles, in contrast to the (now extinct) Continental Celtic languages of mainland Europe. There is a theory that the Brythonic and Goidelic languages evolved together in those islands, having a common ancestor more recent than any shared with the Continental Celtic languages such as Celtiberian, Gaulish and Lepontic, among others, all of which are long extinct. The proponents of the Insular Celtic hypothesis point to shared innovations among Insular Celtic languages, including inflected prepositions and VSO word order. They assert that a partition that lumps the Brythonic languages and Gaulish (P-Celtic) on one side and the Goidelic languages with Celtiberian (Q-Celtic) on the other may be a superficial one, as the identical sound shift (Q to P) could have occurred independently in the predecessors of Gaulish and Brythonic. The family tree of the Insular Celtic languages is thus as follows:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |