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Why are all articles related to the idea of 'modern Celts' persistently and flagrantly ignoring the fact that the vast, vast majority of people in these so-called modern Celtic regions don't speak Celtic languages at all? They keep stressing that language is a key, crucial, often seemingly sole factor in Celticness, while completely ignoring the pitiful Celtic language-speaking rates in these regions that are somehow considered Celtic.
Ancestral descent from Celtic-speaking populations clearly isn't relevant to them at all considering vast swathes of Europe could claim this today, and since they conveniently ignore many people in the regions they actually do call Celtic descend from Germanic, Italic or today far more exotic groups, or that Celtic-speaking populations of Europe ultimately just had the same Bronze Age ancestral descent as neighboring Indo-European peoples such as Germanic and Italic and Baltic and Slavic etc.
And if it's a matter of lapsed time since Celtic languages died out in a region, why on Earth are regions like the Lowlands of Scotland included when we know Celtic languages died out there anywhere between 500-1500 years ago, depending on the region.
This is an incoherent mess. 88.110.106.145 (talk) 05:58, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Modern EthnoLARPs[edit]
Can we get articles on Modern Picts, Modern Dacians, Modern Thracians, Modern Illyrians, Modern Baltic Prussians, Modern Avars, Modern Anatolians, Modern Tocharians, Modern Lusitanians, Modern Liburnians, Modern Paeonians?
Because people still claim to be those (yes, believe me they do still claim to be those) and people are still around who are ancestrally descended from them. Their languages are dead, but clearly by the logic of Modern Celts they are actually still alive and with us and merely need to call themselves by the name of these extinct peoples if they happen to live in the geographic area these groups once lived in before they were absorbed into surrounding groups.
That's how it works, right? 88.110.106.145 (talk) 06:44, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I've allowed myself to combine the two rants. And sorry for not riding the angry-go-round with you. Let's be careful not to fight one incoherent mess by penning another. Celtic national identity does not primarily hinge on language. It's more complicated and more diffuse than language. But you're right: national identity in general is an incoherent mess, and language isn't the main issue at hand -- take it from me, I'm Swiss. Otherwise I'd have to feel German, and so would my Austrian relatives. And yeesh, without disliking the Germans, we'd shudder at the thought. There is a lot more to "German-ness" than their language. (I hope you see where I'm going with this.) The mountain valleys where I hang out used to be Welsh-speaking until around 1000 years ago, Welsh as in our continental use of "Welsch", meaning "foreign, Romanitas-y" -- in our case Late Vulgar Latin or Early Romansh. But nobody is much aware of that outside the Canton where Romansh is still spoken. And what happened even earlier in the Bronze Age is absolutely no skin off of anyone's rosy nosey today. Nowadays these valleys without exception speak German. But there is no German identity in place. Even if we speak their lingo and could not get a copy of a popular book in Swiss German or Romansh if our lives depended on it. In my case, there is a diffuse idea of "Swissness" that hits the spot. But bugger me if I know what that entails.
- This is relevant because the same is true for the Scots, the Welsh, and most extremely the Irish when it comes to the suggestion that they might be associated with being "English", even though it is their primary language. The main motivator in establishing a self-described Celtic identity in those areas (and others) is grounded exactly in their opposition to a dominant, and often domineering, centralised English culture that was in most cases forcibly inserted through Anglo-Norman or English lordships, and later on through English schools and English social or economic policy. Ireland was predominantly Celtic until the Famine; Scotland until the Clearances, and Wales well into the 19th century, after it had started to come under English hegemony in the 12th century. Brittany has been under stronger and stronger French cultural dominance since the Revolution but was also distinctly Celtic up to then. In other words, there is a shared element of Celticness that was regionally predominant until not too long ago, even if that blurs some of the divides within these regions. From my experience, this "Celtic" identity is usually secondary and complimentary to a stronger "national" (whatever that means) identity, so a Scot is most emphatically a Scot before they are "Celtic", and a Welsh(wo)man from Cardiff feels Welsh much more than they feel "Celtic". But they will be aware of a cultural kinship when it comes to things such as local identity through family names, toponyms, or music, and -- most importantly -- to not being English. Trigaranus (talk) 07:17, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Scotland was not 'predominantly Celtic' until the Clearances. Germanic languages have been spoken in Scotland since the 600s. In fact the majority of the population was speaking English by the 14th century, and for hundreds of years before then a significant, powerful and large minority had been speaking English in the southern and eastern regions, not to mention the Norse population in the north and west, or the Norman ruling elite (neither Germanic or Celtic, but French-speaking Romance)
- That accounts for roughly 1/3 of the entire landmass of modern "Scot"land. It also probably accounted for anywhere between 25% and 35% of the population of the region (probably more).
- In fact, historically, lands south of the Firth of Forth weren't even considered 'Scotia', but rather 'The Lands of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots'. The Gaelic term for the Lowlands is literally 'The Place of the Foreigner' and their word for a Lowlander is 'goill' which means stranger/foreigner/outlander/alien. Another term they used for Lowlanders was simply 'Saxon'.
- So why are you retroactively attempting to apply a 'Celtic' identity to people who considered themselves, and were considered, ANYTHING BUT. It's historical whitewashing, it's insidious and disgusting. 88.110.118.145 (talk) 01:10, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm from Scotland. I had ever even heard the term 'Celtic' until I started visiting Wikipedia in young adulthood. I have never heard a single person in Scotland actually refer to themselves as 'Celtic'. Most people here, highly ironically, think Gaelic 'sounds German' and 'don't like it', because it is a foreign language to them.
- I like that you can at least admit it's not so much a Celtic identity as it is some spiteful, bitter 'not English' identity though.
- You don't need to pretend you belong to an ethnolinguistic group you objectively do not in order to 'not be German' or 'not be English'. You can be a separate Germanic ethnic group or tribal identity, which is what you are materially in the present'.
- It devalues the term Celtic to absolute vapid nothingness. These people are not Celtic. Just as Americans are not Celtic. It's an absolute joke. 88.110.118.145 (talk) 01:14, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- You're also just blatantly lying about there being no 'German' identity in Swiss German areas. Swiss Germans identify with one another on the basis of their German language. Swiss French identify with each other on the basis of their French language. Swiss Italians identify with each other on the basis of their Italian language. And then the minorities identify with their language groups as well.
- These communities of Switzerland have long been divided and while they are generally co-operative and amenable there have been hostilities and issues in the past of Switzerland DUE to their language divides.
- Why are you lying? These communities are divided by language just as Belgium is, funnily enough, divided into 2 major communities, Flemings and Walloons (another political state divided by language), ENTIRELY on the basis of language.
- The term Celtic is inherently rooted in language. It came about through some academic going back and discovering that the languages spoken in these regions descended from an ancestral Proto-Celtic language.
- There would never have been a mere concept of Celtic peoples without the Celtic languages. Are you dense or something?
- If you do not speak a Celtic language you are not Celtic. It's as simple as that. 88.110.118.145 (talk) 01:19, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The most you can say about Scotland is that, until several centuries ago, PARTS of it were Celtic. Parts of it. Those parts have long since been Germanicized. Now, whether they want to accept they have been Germanicized or not is their issue, but they objectively have been, in a material sense. You don't get to now apply some Celtic brush to the entire region of Scotland retroactively once the Celtic languages have long died out, much of which was Germanic in language and culture centuries, or in some cases 1,500 years, ago. That's probably longer than the regions were ever 'Celtic' since we know Proto-Celtic is dated to around 1000-800 BC, but almost certainly didn't spread into the British Isles until quite a bit later than that.
- I already know you're going to make some comment about how language shift doesn't change a person's ethnic identity, or whatever. If that is the case you cannot call the Celtic regions of Scotland Celtic either since many Gaels had Norse admixture or later Norman and Anglo-Saxon admixture.
- Subsequently you can never call Pictish regions 'Scottish'. Because they merely adopted the Gaelic language and culture. So they're still Picts, apparently. And we need to keep referring to them as Pictish.
- And if we are going to go by 19th century racial scientist blood group logic, huge numbers of Lowlanders can't be Celtic even if they adopted a Celtic language and called themselves Celtic. Because they bear Germanic Y-DNA and ancestral descent through the numerous documented Germanic colonizations of Scotland in addition to later English waves of settlement or Low Country migration in the Middle Ages.
- So which is it? Scotland doesn't look very Celtic either way you want to slice it and dice it. Neither by crpyptogenetics or by language and culture is Scotland remotely Celtic.
- The fact that there were 'Celtic regions' of Scotland several centuries ago is utterly irrelevant and does not change that.
- This article is a joke. You are ironically imposing a 'Celtic' identity on a region that objectively is not. It's ironically that same cultural imperialism you disparage in your earlier comments.
- Scotland is not Celtic. Whether some people in Scotland descend from Celtic-speaking populations is as irrelevant as whether an American descends from a German or a Pole or, as is usually the case, some myriad compilation of European peoples. 88.110.118.145 (talk) 01:37, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- So that leaves the question, what exactly is 'Celtic'. Because they clearly don't care about genetics and ancestry (they know it would be completely self-defeating and basically eradicate the mere idea of a 'Celtic people'). They clearly don't care about language. So is it literally just 'calling yourselves Celtic'? So ANYONE can just call themselves Celtic and be accepted Celtic? And yet Galicians and others get rejected by the 'Celtic League' because there is no Celtic language spoken in Galicia anymore.
- That's really funny, because you've been stressing that language has nothing to do with Celticness. So why would the lack of a Celtic language be remotely relevant when it comes to Galicia? And why would the existence of a Celtic language in a tiny, sparsely populated, peripheral region of Scotland somehow make the entire larger region 'Celtic'?
- Maybe you should rewrite the article and point out that 'Celtic' today has become a completely vapid term applied to a small geographic region of Europe where Celtic languages USED to be spoken, but not all the other vast swathes of Europe where Celtic languages were once spoken... because of... reasons or something?
- That might be a bit more intellectually honest than how it reads at present.
- A disgusting, odious, vile movement, void of all logic and reason. Reads like fantasy drivel, peddled by enthusiasis who understand nothing of history or ethnology. And another stain on Wikipedia's reputation as an encyclopedia and place of fact and reason. 88.110.118.145 (talk) 01:51, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- OP OP OP...tone it down! I am sympathetic towards some of your points. For example, if it is defined by place of birth then we would be excluding those born elsewhere but who lived 99% of their life in a Celtic nation. If by ancestry, then we're excluding 'people of colour' and that would make the modern pan-Celtic identity seem very at odds with today's progressive politics, which all the modern Celtic nationalist parties - perhaps save for Plaid Cymru - espouse. If by language, then it would exclude the majority of modern Celts - and if it's by ancestry, then why are individuals like myself born-and-raised in England but with majority "Celtic DNA" (75%+) excluded and referred to as "wankers" on certain subReddits if I were to ever assert myself as a Celt? ;) - The current lead definitely fails to address this issue. And yes, the Celtic league are a bunch of simpering ethno-nat gatekeepers, but their original purpose was language preservation. --SinoDevonian (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Just wanted to come in with my 2 cents on the matter. Firstly, yes OP you do really need to tone it down. I think the wider complicated network of celtic-related articles need to be reviewed, cleaned up, merged or whatever relevant changes needed. A few years ago I wrote a considerable expansion for Celtic Revival as a broad development in language revival for all the language. It was removed because it was out of step with the scope of the article, a debatable outcome in my opinion. This article itself crosses over language, culture and social movements present in other articles. The whole collection of articles need to be reviewed by Wikipedia:WikiProject Celts (which apparently itself needs reviving). Jonjonjohny (talk) 05:16, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- If anyone wants to make changes to the article based on all of this, those changes (and the discussion that precedes them on the talk page) should be based on reliable sources, not personal experiences growing up. So far, in this very long discussion, nobody has cited any. Furius (talk) 14:09, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Definitely seconded, @Furius and @Jonjonjohny. I won't have the free time to dig into this any time soon. Just to accommodate and buffer some of the stronger arguments ("disgusting, odious, vile [...] void of all logic and reason") with two books from my shelf, if it is any consolation to our man in Speaker's Corner:
- - The Historical Atlas of the Celtic World by John Haywood (London, Thames&Hudson, 2001) concludes with a chapter "The Modern Celts" that includes a section on "Romanticism and Celtomania", and another on "Celtomania and European Nationalism", without any of the bits coming up as especially vile, albeit with a healthy critique of the concept.
- - The same goes for Barry Cunliffe's classic The Celtic World from 1980, which -- after dealing with Iron-Age and Medieval Celts -- closes with an entire chapter on "The Celts Today".
- I know there was a rather impassioned rebuttal of the idea of "Atlantic Celts" in general (and thereby their modern counterparts):
- - The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People Or Modern Invention? by archaeologist Simon James, who disliked the concept -- but I can't recall too much of his argumentation and no longer own the book myself.
- While I disagreed with Cunliffe and with James (with him a bit more so, if I remember) on various points regarding pre-historic language spread (we pesky linguists!), it's somehow possible hold opposing viewpoints without quite as much froth around the mouth. Let's hear some authors, OP. Trigaranus (talk) 18:22, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. I am sorry for my heatedness. I've lived my entire life trying to have people thrust a nonexistent identity upon me simply because I live in a region of land. I speak a Germanic language. I have a Germanic compound patronymic surname. According to DNA tests my closest modern population is northern Dutch, lol (I'm from Glasgow and don't have any recent family history of immigration)! Despite all this I am frequently told I am "Celtic" simply because I live in a region of land. Because the term Celtic has been reduced to such vapid nothingness today. I am sick of it. I'm sick of people here being siphoned off from their actual, living ethnolinguistic identity, which is Germanic. The people of Scotland speak a Germanic language and cluster extremely closely genetically with those in the Proto-Germanic homeland, ALL people in the British Isles do, and they did before the Germanic invasions too. In fact they cluster more closely with those in Scandinavia than most of the Germanic world does. Not that the genetics really matter to me, considering Germanic is and always has been an ethnolinguistic term denoting speakers of Germanic languages that has been warped and polluted and tarnished with attempts to tie it to 'biological race' (which is particularly ironic when it comes to Germanic peoples if you know anything about archaeogenetics). This 'modern Celtic' ideology however is vile. I do not apologize for that. Because without a biological racial element it simply doesn't exist. And biological racism is a lurid, psychotic fantasy that is so comically out of touch with archaeogenetic reality and the history of human ancestry and migrations and mixing events that it is almost comical. The fact that a person descends from populations which spoke Celtic is as irrelevant as a person descending from populations which once spoke Proto-Indo-European or Old European languages or countless other languages belonging to countless ethnolinguistic groups all lost to history.Ethnicity doesn't work that way. Identity doesn't work that way. You are no more Celtic because you have some distant Celtic-speaking ancestor than you are a doctor simply because your grandfather was one.There would never have been a Celtic peoples if Proto-Celtic hadn't come into existence at some point and birthed descendant languages.It is absolutely rooted in language. 2.99.92.180 (talk) 19:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC) Blocked sock. Mutt Lunker (talk) 16:12, 19 November 2022 (UTC) [reply]
- Your personal experiences are totally valid if you want to publish a book in your own name, make an argument in a debate, and so on, but they have no weight on wikipedia, where articles must be based on reliable sources (and so far these seem to show that the concept exists and is widespread, however illogical it is). See WP:Reliable Sources for the sort of thing that we're asking for. Furius (talk) 19:23, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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