Living Languages
SIL Ethnologue lists six "living" Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are the Goidelic Irish (Gaeilge) and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) descended from Old Irish, and the Brythonic Welsh and Breton descended from the British language.
The other two, Cornish and Manx, were spoken into modern times but later died as spoken community languages. For both these languages, however, revitalization movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children and produced some native speakers.
Taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages.
Read more about this topic: Celtic Languages
Famous quotes containing the words living and/or languages:
“Every living language, like the perspiring bodies of living creatures, is in perpetual motion and alteration; some words go off, and become obsolete; others are taken in, and by degrees grow into common use; or the same word is inverted to a new sense or notion, which in tract of time makes an observable change in the air and features of a language, as age makes in the lines and mien of a face.”
—Richard Bentley (1662–1742)
“It is time for dead languages to be quiet.”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)