🚀 go-pugleaf

>
>     As far as Celtic language studies, UCB is better than any
>     university I'm familiar with: currently medieval Welsh is being
>     offered, and both Irish Gaelic and Breton are available from time
>     to time subject to student interest; there is also a "Celtic
>     Colloquium" which schedules a few events each year. 
>

I don't think we offer Welsh; however Edinburgh (and, I believe, Glasgow)
offers a degree course in Celtic Studies, which predictably contains intense
study of Gaelic. In fact there are no less than three Celtic Studies I (ie,
first year undergrad level) courses; for native speakers, non-native speakers
with  some knowledge of the language (ie high school leaving level), and a
no-credit course for non-gaelic speakers. Also an extra-mural course which
I intend to make time for next year...

> 				.....English or French from
>     the same period would be almost incomprehensible to modern
>     speakers. 

H'm...the BBC once did a reading of Beowulf, with it's original Anglo-Saxon
spellings and (conjetured) pronunciations, and people were surprised at
how easy to understand it was. Bear in mind that spoken language changed
slowly up until the advent of radio/tv, whereas the written language
began to standardise shortly after the invention of movable type. Previous to
that, written forms tended to mirror spoken ones - f'rinstance, old  Scots
documents have 'qu' where modern English has 'wh' (or should that be, 'quair
modern English..'?). This actually does reflect quite well the sort of 
pronunciation one could expect from the Scots of the time.

As to the Celtic languages providing anything to the invader's tongue, I'd 
say the obvious manifestation of that would be in dialects - Scots contains
quite a few words which the Saassenach cannot comprehend - sadly having been
torn from my roots at a tender age many of them are lost on me as well. Still,
stand on a Glasgow street corner (or better still, sit in a Glaswegian pub)
for a while and you'll hear plenty of examples. Or if you want written 
examples, how about 'The New Testament In Scots'? There's plenty of other
written material about - if anyone's interested I can look some up, the School
of Scottish Studies is just around the corner from the library here.

	--Rick