Editing Welsh language (section)

===Origins===
{{see also|Celtic languages#Classification}}
[[File:1588 First Welsh Bible.jpg|thumb|upright 0.75|The 1588 Welsh Bible]]
Welsh evolved from [[Common Brittonic]], the Celtic language spoken by the ancient [[Celtic Britons]]. Classified as [[Insular Celtic languages|Insular Celtic]], the British language probably arrived in [[Great Britain|Britain]] during the [[Bronze Age]] or [[British Iron Age|Iron Age]] and was probably spoken throughout the island south of the [[Firth of Forth]].<ref name="KochBritons">Koch, pp. 291–292.</ref> During the [[Early Middle Ages]] the British language began to fragment due to increased dialect differentiation, thus evolving into Welsh and the other Brittonic languages. It is not clear when Welsh became distinct.<ref name="koch" /><ref name=":1">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=32WuBwAAQBAJ |title=The Welsh Language: A History |last=Janet |first=Davies |isbn=978-1-78316-019-8 |publisher=[[University of Wales Press]] |location=[[Cardiff]] |oclc=878137213|date=2014-01-15 }}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Higham |first=Nicholas |date=1 April 2014 |title=T. M. Charles-Edwards. ''Wales and the Britons, 350–1064'' |journal=[[The American Historical Review]] |volume=119 |issue=2 |pages=578–579 |doi=10.1093/ahr/119.2.578 |issn=0002-8762 }}</ref>

Linguist [[Kenneth H. Jackson]] has suggested that the evolution in [[syllable|syllabic]] structure and sound pattern was complete by around AD 550, and labelled the period between then and about AD 800 "Primitive Welsh".<ref name="Koch1757">Koch, p.&nbsp;1757.</ref> This Primitive Welsh may have been spoken in both Wales and the {{lang|cy|[[Hen Ogledd]]}} ('Old North') – the Brittonic-speaking areas of what are now northern England and southern [[Scotland]] – and therefore may have been the ancestor of [[Cumbric]] as well as Welsh. Jackson, however, believed that the two varieties were already distinct by that time.<ref name=koch/>

The earliest Welsh poetry – that attributed to the {{lang|cy|[[Cynfeirdd]]}} or "Early Poets" – is generally considered to date to the Primitive Welsh period. However, much of this poetry was supposedly composed in the {{lang|cy|Hen Ogledd|italic=no}}, raising further questions about the dating of the material and language in which it was originally composed.<ref name=koch/> This discretion stems from the fact that Cumbric was widely believed to have been the language used in Hen Ogledd. An 8th-century inscription in [[Tywyn]] shows the language already dropping [[inflection]]s in the declension of nouns.<ref name="Jenkins">{{cite book |last=Jenkins |first=Simon |author-link=Simon Jenkins |title=Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NFk3AQAAIAAJ |year=2008 |publisher=[[Allen Lane (imprint)|Allen Lane]] |page=244 |isbn=9780141024127 |oclc=751732135}}</ref>

Janet Davies proposed that the origins of the Welsh language were much less definite; in ''The Welsh Language: A History'', she proposes that Welsh may have been around even earlier than 600 AD. This is evidenced by the dropping of final syllables from Brittonic: {{lang|cel|*bardos}} 'poet' became {{lang|cy|bardd}}, and {{lang|cel|*abona}} 'river' became {{lang|cy|afon}}.<ref name=":1" /> Though both Davies and Jackson cite minor changes in syllable structure and sounds as evidence for the creation of Old Welsh, Davies suggests it may be more appropriate to refer to this derivative language as {{lang|la|Lingua Britannica}} rather than characterising it as a new language altogether.