The Celtic Languages in Contact

This collection contains 13 papers presented in the workshop on the „The Celtic Languages in Contact“ organised by Hildegard L. C. Tristram at the XIII International Celtic Congress in Bonn (Germany), July 23rd – 27th, 2007. The authors of two papers from another section also contributed their papers to this volume, as they deal with closely related issues. The time-span covered ranges from potential pre-historic contacts of Celtic with Altaic languages or Nostratic cognates in Celtic, through the hypothesis of Afro-Asiatic as a possible substrate for Celtic, Latin and Gaulish contacts in Gaul, the impact of Vulgar Latin on the formation of the Insular Celtic Languages as a linguistic area (Sprachbund), to various contact scenarios involving the modern Insular Celtic languages as well as English and French. The final paper reflects on the political status of the modern Insular Celtic languages in the Europe of the 27 EU countries.