by Ryan Starkey

Two charts and seventeen maps, showing how the languages of Britain and Ireland have changed since the Roman rule of Britannia ended 1600 years ago

When most people think of the languages of Britain and Ireland, they probably think of English. It’s the language pretty much everybody speaks, and sadly we have a fairly monolingual reputation (especially the English). Hopefully you also think of the Celtic languages, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic. There is also Scots, considered by some to be a dialect of English, but really a separate language.

But there are many more native languages you probably haven’t heard of, and the linguistic history of Britain and Ireland is actually a very complex and interesting one. How do Cumbric, Cornish and Pictish fit in? What is Manx? Have you heard of Norn? Sercquiais? Shelta? Beurla Reagaird? Yola? Here I will try to show you how the many languages of our history are related, where they come from, and where they went, using 2 diagrams and 16 maps of British and Irish languages.

This post will mainly focus on the major languages that dominated different regions of Britain and Ireland over time, rather than minority languages. Here is another chart I made showing which languages were most widely spoken in Wales, England, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ireland, since 400 AD. 
This is meant to give a vague idea, rather than exact percentages, as reliable data about this is sparse. It only takes into account native speakers, and, in the case of bilingualism, I’ve shown the non-English language.

Before 400 AD

When the Romans arrived in England in  43AD, they found Britain populated with many different tribes, all speaking the Common Brittonic language. Irish tribes spoke a distantly related language called Archaic Irish. They also described a group of tribes in northern Scotland called the Picti, but we can’t be sure if their language was separate from Common Brittonic yet. The Romans then colonised the region, and British Latin became a minority language, spoken by the rulers and settlers from the mainland empire.

By 500 AD

The Roman rule of Britain ended in 410AD, and many Latin speakers were summoned back to defend Rome. British Latin, already a minority language, was eclipsed by the native Brittonic language, although it may have remained a minority language in some areas until as late as 700AD.
With the Romans gone, a new group set their sights on Britain: the Anglo-Saxons. They came from Denmark and northern Germany, and colonised the south and east coasts of Britain. They spoke a collection of Germanic dialects, which became Old English.

Meanwhile an Irish kingdom, the Dal Riata, invaded western Scotland and spread Old Irish to the Northwest of Britain.

By 600 AD

By 600 AD, Old English had spread further into England and the south east of Scotland. The Dal Riata expanded deeper into western Scotland. Pictish was very probably a different language to Common Brittonic by this point. 
Irish settlement of the Isle of Man had probably begun by this time.

By 700 AD

By this time Old English had spread so far into Britain that Common Brittonic was divided into three separate regions, each with a different dialect of the language. Archaic Irish had evolved into Old Irish, and spread further into Scotland. Pictish was confirmed as a separate language by scholars of this time.

By 800 AD

By this time, Brittonic had diverged into 3 distinct forms: Old Cornish, Old Welsh, and Cumbric. The Vikings formed The Kingdom of the Isles, ruling over the Isle of Man and the Hebrides of Scotland; and Kingdom of The Northern Isles, ruling Orkney and Shetland. Vikings may have founded the Irish city of Wexford by 800AD.

By 900 AD

Old Irish replaced Pictish in most of Scotland.
The Vikings reached their peak, and the Danish ruled most of Northern England. They founded many towns, and the Norse language left a major impact on English, especially in northern English dialects. The Vikings also founded Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, which became the first large towns in Ireland. Cumbria was not directly ruled by the Danish, but many Vikings settled there. 

By 1000 AD

The Vikings were finally driven out of England. Old Irish evolved into Middle Irish, and may have totally replaced Pictish in Scotland by this time. Vikings settled parts of southern Wales. The Normans annexed the Channel islands, and whatever language was spoken there (probably some dialect of Brittonic) began to be replaced with Norman French.

By 1100 AD

Pictish was gone, and Cumbric was on its way out. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 brought a new minority language, Anglo-Norman, used by the elite Norman rulers of the nation.

By 1200 AD

The Anglo-Norman influence on Old English caused it to evolve into Middle English, which has many borrowed words of Old French origin. The Normans also invaded Ireland and Wales, spreading Middle English and Anglo-Norman into those regions. Cornish was still being forced further west.

By 1300 AD

Middle Irish evolved into three distinct forms: Early Modern Irish, Early Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, although they all used a standard form called “Classical Irish” in writing.
The Western Isles and the Isle of Man came under Scottish rule, and Norse gradually died out in these regions.

By 1400 AD

The Black Death struck Britain and Ireland in the mid 1300s. This was devastating for the Anglo-Norman colonisation of Ireland, as they mainly lived in towns, while the native Irish were more rural. This caused Norman rule of Ireland to collapse, and Middle English became confined to 2 areas: around Dublin, and Wexford. 
English spread further up into Scotland, causing the Galwegian dialect of Gaelic to diverge. Galwegian probably had more in common with Manx and the Irish spoken in Ulster than with other parts of Scotland.

By 1500 AD

Middle English had undergone so many changes that it is now classified as a new language: Early Modern English. In Scotland, the far north of England, and Ireland (Wexford, Fingal), many of these changes didn’t happen, so these dialects diverged a lot from the English of southern England. Thus Scots, Yola, and Fingalian were born.

By 1600 AD

The plantations of Ireland had begun (although they remain small scale), and many settlers arrived from Scotland and England.
Scots had moved further into Scotland, and into the Northern isles. 

By 1700 AD

The plantations of Ireland increased in scale, with huge areas of land being confiscated from the Irish by the British government, and granted to British settlers. 
Cornish was only spoken by a few thousand people in the far west of the county. 
Scots replaced Norn as the main language of most people in Orkney and Shetland. English speakers became a growing minority on the Channel Islands.

By 1800 AD

The English language was becoming more common in Ireland, but Irish still remained a majority language. English was beginning to overtake Manx as the main language of the Isle of Man. The last native speakers of the Cornish language were dead. Wales remained the spoken language of most of Wales. 
Scots continued to spread, causing the Galwegian dialect of Gaelic to die out.

By 1900 AD

The 1800s was a dark century for British and Irish languages, and English came to dominate in most regions.

Exacerbated by the horrendous and wilful negligence by the British government, the Great Famine devastated Ireland, causing the death and emigration of so many people that the population of Ireland dropped by a quarter. This century also saw the introduction of schools in which students were forbidden from speaking Irish, and a general stigma created around the language by the British and the Catholic church. All these factors combined caused the Irish language to be largely replaced with English.

Yola and Fingalian, those strange descendants of 12th century Middle English spoken in Ireland, were totally replaced modern with English by 1850, although left a few words in the local dialects of their regions. 

Meanwhile, Scotland suffered its own horrors. The Highland Clearances were the eviction of many mainly Gaelic speaking people from their land in the Scottish highlands, forcing many of them to emigrate to the west coast, to the lowlands, and even to America and Canada. The Highland Potato Famine also struck, further encouraging emigration. Meanwhile in the Lowlands of Scotland, Scots became seen as unfashionable by many of the gentry, and English became increasingly common. Dialects in England likely saw a similar phenomenon, as “Standard English” became the language of education and the higher classes in every region.

In Wales, the Welsh language was banned in schools, as the British government attempted to ensure every Welsh person could speak English. 

By this time, less than 10% of Manx people could speak Manx, and the last Norn speaker died in 1850.

By 2000 AD

Despite attempts at reviving the language by an independent Ireland, the Irish language became increasingly rare as a native language throughout the 1900s. The number of people who speak Irish as a second language has increased, however. 
Scottish Gaelic as a first language is now primarily localised to the outer Hebrides. Scots has seen a steep decline too, with the Scottish government pushing English as the more useful language.
English has overtaken Norman as the main language on every Channel Island.
In Wales, the English language is spoken by virtually everyone, although recent efforts have seen the Welsh language revived somewhat.
The last native speakers of Manx died in 1974.
By 2000, the English language was a first language of nearly every native of Britain and Ireland.

 After 2000 AD

That last map looks pretty sad. But there is hope!
Irish revival efforts have seen an increase in the number of young people speaking Irish, and there are hundreds of Irish languages schools in Ireland.

The number of Welsh speakers has has been on the rise since 2000, after Welsh became compulsory in all schools.

Cornish and Manx were both dead languages (with no native speakers) at the end of the 20th century, but continued to be used as second languages. They are now the first languages (along with English) of a handful of children in Cornwall and Mann respectively. Revival efforts have actually brought those languages back from the dead!

Scots has been officially reclassified as a separate language, and it has been included in the school curriculum in lowland of Scotland. Scots continues to be used as both a household language, and one of literature and poetry.

Scottish Gaelic is also increasingly taught in Scotland, with schools in 14 of Scotland’s 32 council areas now offering Gaelic courses. In the Outer Hebrides, where Gaelic is still a dominant language, Gaelic is now the default language of education.

And even though Cumbric has been gone for around 900 years, its counting system survived, and is still used by Cumbrian farmers when counting sheep today. Yan tan tethera methera pip!

It’s also worth remembering that several of the Celtic languages have spread outside the region: 
An offshoot of Old Cornish is alive and well in Brittany, France: Breton has over 220,000 native speakers.
A Welsh dialect, Patagonian Welsh, is spoken natively by between 1,500 and 5000 people in Argentina.
And a dialect of Scottish Gaelic can be found all over Atlantic Canada, and is the native tongue of over 1000 Canadians, the descendent of those who emigrated during the highland clearances.