Welcome to Celt-Mouth, a blog for those interested in Celtic history, culture, language, and mythology. The purpose of Celt-Mouth, besides giving credence to a master’s degree in Celtic studies, is to amuse and enlighten. I hope you’ll enjoy.
For this first post, I’ve decided to keep things introductory and answer a common preliminary question. I’d have a full fanny-pack by now if I got a penny every time somebody asked me “Is it pronounced Kelt or Selt?” Very valid question and an important thing to know at this stage in the blog.
To get our answer, let’s check the annals. In the 6th century BC, Greek geographer Hecataeus of Miletus describes a group of people that he refers to as Keltoi living in southern France. This term was eventually borrowed into Latin by the Romans, and when Caesar invaded Gaul (the homeland of the Keltoi that Hecataeus described) in the 1st century BC, he referred to the Gauls as Celtae, citing their alleged heritage from Celtus, a son of the legendary Hercules. We must note that the classical Latin in Caesar’s day pronounced any ‘c’ as a hard ‘k’ sound. Therefore, Celtae was pronounced kel-tye. In fact, the name Caesar itself was articulated less like see-zer and more like kai-sar. I guess the Germans had it closer when they granted their head of state the imperial name, but try ordering a Kaiser Salad without sounding like you have a stick lodged in your rectum.
After Gaul was conquered, its inhabitants took on the language of the new administration and Latin eventually became the principal language of the Gauls, the same people Caesar had described as Celtae. Even after Roman hegemony failed, and the lands once held by the Empire disintegrated into separate kingdoms, Latin survived as a daily language. But it too became something separate. In Gaul, Latin survived even when a Germanic tribe known as the Franks conquered the country. Their legacy lasts in Gaul’s modern name: France. Here, over the centuries, the common variety of Latin being spoken changed through the innovation of subsequent generations into the language we now recognize as the ancestor of modern French. That’s why French (along with Spanish, Italian, and Portugese) is known as a Romance language, not because of the romantic passions associated with French culture, but because it developed from the same Latin language that the Romans spoke.
After Gaul was conquered, its inhabitants took on the language of the new administration and Latin eventually became the principal language of the Gauls, the same people Caesar had described as Celtae. Even after Roman hegemony failed, and the lands once held by the Empire disintegrated into separate kingdoms, Latin survived as a daily language. But it too became something separate. In Gaul, Latin survived even when a Germanic tribe known as the Franks conquered the country. Their legacy lasts in Gaul’s modern name: France. Here, over the centuries, the common variety of Latin being spoken changed through the innovation of subsequent generations into the language we now recognize as the ancestor of modern French. That’s why French (along with Spanish, Italian, and Portugese) is known as a Romance language, not because of the romantic passions associated with French culture, but because it developed from the same Latin language that the Romans spoke.
French introduced Caesar’s word ‘Celtae’ into English as Celtes, the ‘c’ now being softened to an ‘s’ sound. Thus the word Celts first came into English pronounced as selts. Interestingly enough, before the 18th century, the word and all of its predecessors was not used to describe a people other than those of ancient Gaul, and the different societies we think of today as Celtic hardly thought of themselves in the same light. I imagine it would have been hard to convince one tribe that it was kin to the same enemy tribe that regularly stole its cattle and taunted the pride of its warriors. It'd be like trying to remind the English troops of either World War that they were a Germanic people. Even though you might share a common cultural and linguistic heritage as the guy in the opposite trench, it matters little when he's firing high-powered artillery at you.
Beginning in the 1700s, scholars began using the word ‘Celtic’ to categorize similar languages under one linguistic family heading. Those Celtic languages that have survived into modern times, though just barely, are Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh. Some Celtic tongues, like Gaulish, Cornish, and Galatian, were less fortunate and died out along the way.
As scholars dug a little deeper, they drew broader connections between the peoples that shared this common linguistic heritage, so that ‘Celtic’ came to describe more than just speech, but also a shared cultural heritage. However, Celtic did not really become a conscious identity until the mid-19th century as a counterpoint to a perceived, mainstream Anglo-Saxon culture. Supporters of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish independence brought credibility to their cause by distinguishing themselves as Celts and cultivating the concept of an ancient cultural legacy. Ironically, the word ‘Celt’ and its variants had come to them through a filter of French and English. In fact, it did not sound Celtic at all, because a ‘c’ is pronounced like a ‘k’ in Celtic languages, and they were still saying seltic. So, it was appropriated and given a hard beginning sound. Thus, ‘s’ once more became ‘k’.
Today when talking about the peoples, their languages and cultures, the preferred pronunciation is keltic. However, it is expected of sports teams such as Glasgow Celtic and Boston Celtics to be pronounced seltic. Although we make the concession for athletics, ‘Celtic’ is elsewhere used as an adjective to describe something as belonging to or resembling the Celts and the cultural components associated with them. With all of that said, modern dictionaries have once more accommodated our confusion by standardizing both kelt and selt (eventually, even ‘irregardless’ will be a time-honored word). As of today, many dictionaries, the Oxford English and American Heritage Dictionary among them, offer both pronunciations. Personally, I say I am a Celticist with a ‘k,’ or else I would probably be scoffed out of my field. That and my professor once told me, “I swear to you, and I rarely swear, that if you should ever pronounce Celtic with an ‘s’ as in ‘sieze the ears from my skull’ rather than with a ‘k’ as in ‘kill me now,’ I shall whip out your eye with a hot poker, and ask you kindly to correct yourself.” Lovely old chap.
