Brythonic Languages - Classification

Classification

The family tree of the Brythonic languages is as follows:

• Insular Celtic
  • British ancestral to:
    • Western Brythonic ancestral to:
      • Cumbric
      • Welsh
    • Southwestern Brythonic ancestral to:
      • Cornish
      • Breton

Brythonic languages in use today are Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Welsh and Breton have been spoken continuously since they formed. Cornish nearly died out during the 19th and 20th centuries, retained only by a few elderly people and some families as a language of the home, but a process of revitalisation since 1904 has seen numbers of natural speakers increase. Also notable are the extinct language Cumbric, and possibly the extinct Pictish although this may be best considered to be a sister of the Brythonic languages. The late Kenneth H. Jackson argued during the 1950s, from some of the few remaining examples of stone inscriptions, that the Picts may have also used a non-Indo-European language, but some modern scholars of Pictish do not agree.