the Wheel and Dating PIE

[Christopher Gwinn]

From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>

>> I consider Welsh (including its Latin component) to be pretty
>> solid linguistical evidence.

> -- of a Celtic language _in Wales_.  In the absence of written records, it
> would be virtually impossible to show that there had ever been such a
> language in most of England.  Even the place-names of minor landscape
> features are mostly Germanic; those Celtic names that do survive are few and
> often the product of misunderstanding -- eg., a number of western English
> rivers are called "Avon", which means... 'river'.

That is not entirely true - Brittonic elements in placenames (hills,
forests, towns, rivers) are present all throughout England (most of the
English cities even retain a modernized Romano-British name), though the
names are less common in the East as opposed to the West. The largest
percentage of Brittonic elements are in Western England, including
Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire as well as Shropshire,
Worcestershire, North East Herefordshire, Western Gloucestershire and, of
course, Devon and Cornwall. This Western area maintains Brittonic elemnts
even in smaller rivers and streams, brooks, villages, and homesteads and
even has names which are not from the Brittonic level, but rather from early
Welsh/Cornish