Passage 1

The Celtic languages are a group of languages of northern Europe that are descendent of the Indo-European family of languages. These languages developed from the language of the Celts, a warlike civilization originating in the eastern part of central Europe, in the northern Alps, and along the Danube during the Bronze Age. The Celts reached the height of their civilization during the Iron Age, the last five centuries B.C., and then fanned out from their original homeland into many parts of continental Europe and across the channel and into the British Isles. Celtic languages were spoken in much of western Europe during Pre-Roman and Roman times. Place names of Celtic origin can be found today all over the British Isles and France, in northern Spain and Italy, and in Switzerland and parts of Germany.

Rather than one language, the Celtic languages consist of two distinct clusters: the Gaelic group and the Brythonic group. These two clusters of languages most likely developed from dialects of the same language, the language of the Celts in their original homeland. These two dialects were most likely mutually intelligible to some degree as late as the fourth century. The Gaelic group of Celtic languages consists of Irish, Scottish, and Manx, the language of the Isle of Man. The Brythonic group of Celtic languages includes Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Gaulish, the language of Gaul prior to the days of the Roman Empire, with its Latin-speaking population.

Passage 2

Many, though not all, of the Celtic languages are either extinct or are in the process of becoming extinct. Gaulish apparently disappeared around 600 A.D. Cornish and Manx both actually became extinct, the former in the nineteenth century and the latter just a few decades ago, but both are being revived and are now taught in a few schools each. Scottish, Irish, and Breton are all declining in use. There are under a hundred thousand speakers of Scottish Gaelic, mostly on the northern Hebridean Islands; there are more than a hundred thousand speakers of Irish, mainly in the western countries of Ireland; there are about a half million speakers who use Breton on a daily basis. In all these situations, though, the rate of transmission to new generations is low, and this does not bode well for the survival of these languages. Of all the Celtic languages, perhaps only Welsh has a strong hold on the future.

The author’s intention in writing “the rate of transmission to new generations is low” is to…