Community of Voices

      Language is an integral part of the culture glue that binds people together and signals their presence. It (language) can be defined as the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a considerable community. Interestingly, the word derives from langue (fr.) meaning tongue. [Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary p. 641] 

      The language of my Celtic ancestors tells its own story from long, long ago. Starting in the Caucasus mountains (a divide between Europe and Asia) traces of a patriarchal clan system began. A tribal organization of society [Ency. Brit., Vol 2, p. 965] produced four different groups of languages. Indo-European is the branch defined as the beginning family of languages that my ancestors' Celto-Italo-Tocharian derives. Lots of branches from this point onward as the following diagram shows.

      My Celtic (to become Welsh) ancestors certainly had a lot of voices along the way. Their voice is thought to be pronounced focused on the bi-labial enunciation of the sounds "P" and "B", thus P-Celtic. On the other side of the Irish sea they focused on the sound "Q". I guess that this is where the saying "...mind your P(s) and Q(s)" is derived?!  At any rate, the first Welsh is believed to have begun around 500 A.D.[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language] meaning, my folks had to regroup, reorganize, and voice a different way to communicate among the family group. This was because the Romans had left the country, and their vocal sounds [Latin] stopped echoing among the hills. A new community of voices began to sing.

P.S. For those who might want more discussion or more in-depth information, a book by L.R. Palmer titled Descriptive And Comparative Linguistics A Critical Introduction, Faber & Faber, London, 1972, may be helpful. The cover of my copy is shown.