The Scottish Celtic review

THESCOTTISH CELTIC EEYIEW.No. 1.—MARCH, 1881.INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: PLACE OF CELTIC INTHE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES —TESTS OF ETYMOLOGICAL AFFINITY—GRIMM'SLAW—ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE APPLICATION OFGRIMM'S LAW.The Celtic tongues consist of two main divisions—the Gaedhelicand the British or Kymric. The former comprises the Irish, theGaelic of the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland, andManx, still spoken in the Isle of Man;the latter comprises Welsh,Cornish, now extinct, and Armorican, still spoken in Brittany.Celtic belongs to the Indo-European or Aryan family of speech.The other membei-s of this family are— 1. Sanskrit, the ancientclassical or learned language of the Hindus ; 2. Zend, the sacredlanguage of the Zoroastrians, and, as most closely allied to it, theold Persian and the Armenian ; 3. Greek and Albanian ; 4. theItalian languages, including Latin, Umbrian, and Oscan ; 5. theSlavonic and Lithuanian languages ; and G. the Teutonic languages,comprising (I) Old, Middle, and New High German, (2) theLow German branch, including Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Old Dutch,Old Frisian, and Old Saxon, with their modern representatives,English, Low German, Frisian, and Dutch, and (3) the Scandinavianbranch, including Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish.The place of Celtic in this family has been a subject of muchcontroversy among philologists. Schleicher holds' that it is most' Of. Comp. der Vergl. Gramm. der Indo-Oerman. Spr. 4th ed., p. 6, and alsoKuLn'a Beitr. zur Vergl. Spr. i. p. 437.