This chapter provides an overview of the early history of the Celtic languages. The first part offers a tour of Britain and Ireland, pausing at key points, both historical and geographical, from which we may consider the development of the Celtic languages. The second part of the chapter then goes on to examine a number of features of the Celtic languages in greater detail: the stress accent, lenition and mutations, the loss of final syllables, and the verbal system.

This chapter provides a brief sociolinguistic description of two Celtic languages that have experienced language death and revival: Cornish and Manx. First, their distinctive sociolinguistic position as revived languages is reviewed. There follows a structured discussion of the factors contributing to each language’s historical decline and more recent revival movement, followed by an overview of the current position of each language in terms of demographics and language policy provisions. We note that while both languages are revived, differences in timescale have left speakers with different concerns regarding reconstruction as a spoken vernacular, although both Cornish and Manx are affected by similar debates around purism and authenticity. More broadly, we emphasise that the fate of both languages is inextricably linked with the wider political landscape, and that the efforts of volunteer activists at a grassroots level are currently paramount in ensuring their visibility, in a context where more official sources of support are often unreliable.

In 1600, even as English was slowly becoming established as the dominant language in several parts of the world which were very remote from the island where it had first come into being, back in Britain there were still several regions which were not yet at all English-speaking. This was true even of parts of Herefordshire and Shropshire in England. But the major continuing story in the British Isles from 1600 onwards is the familiar one of the retreat of all the other languages English came into contact with.

This chapter describes some prevalent ideologies and attitudes found in minority language communities. It emphasizes the importance of listening to attitudes expressed in a community, and identifying the underlying ideologies, before developing programs to improve negative attitudes. Particularly in cases of linguistic discrimination and language trauma (e.g. Breton, Kashubian Polish), changing language ideologies is a long-term process and must be handled sensitively. The best approach is to make people aware of ideologies and how they function, through education, media and other means. Case studies address ideologies leading to the loss of Zadar Arbanasi in Croatia, and a positive shift in attitudes to Guernesiais, although these are not necessarily followed by action. In the Isle of Man, in order to change perceptions of Manx it is necessary to avoid arguments about the authenticity of the modern form of the language. In Jeju (Korea) Jejudommal is seen as a language in which emotions can be expressed more richly than in Standard Korean. Negative attitudes and ideologies associated with speaking Nahuatl are described.