Pictish language : Ask Biography

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Pictish is a term used for the extinct language or languages thought to have been spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. The idea that a distinct Pictish language was perceived at some point is attested clearly in Bede's early 8th-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which names Pictish as a language distinct from both Welsh and Gaelic.

There is virtually no direct attestation of Pictish, short of a limited number of place names and names of people found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the Kingdom of the Picts.

The term "Pictish" was used by Jackson (1955), and followed by Forsyth (1997), to mean the language spoken mainly north of the Forth-Clyde line in the Early Middle Ages. They use the term "Pritennic" to refer to the proto-Pictish language spoken in this area during the Iron Age.