Strange Similarities Between Celtic & Semitic Languages!

This video is about the surprising similarities between Celtic languages (like Irish and Welsh) and Semitic languages (like Arabic and Hebrew).

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Special thanks to Lamiae Kadiri for her Arabic samples, Tirion Kerr for his Welsh samples, and Patrick (Youtube channel: Patchy Gaelic) for his Irish (Gaelic) samples.

Special thanks to these current patrons:

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Sources include:

1) Jongeling, Comparing Welsh and Hebrew (2000)

2) Steve Hewitt, Remarks on the Insular Celtic/Hamito-Semitic Question.

3) Germania Semitica by Theo Vennemann gen. Nierfeld
4) A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax
By Bill T. Arnold, John H. Choi

The following images were used under Creative Commons ShareAlike license:

Dbachmann

Still images including transformations of the above images are available for use under Creative Commons ShareAlike license.

[Langfocus]

Hi, everyone! I hope you like the video.


(Disclosure: The above link is an affiliate link, so Langfocus gets a small referral fee - at no extra cost to you)

[bobbygreaney]

Pure anecdotal evidence here, but I was once in a bar in the Dubai airport when a waiter asked in arabic if I'd like anything. I replied apologetically saying I didn't speak arabic, which surprised him. He'd overheard me speaking on the phone in Irish, but without listening closely assumed I was speaking arabic with a thick accent.

[C-ut]

I am a first language Welsh, learnt basic Arabic, spent time in Egypt and was supprised at similarities.

[Langfocus]

Note: in the video I said that all Insular Celtic languages have a definite article and no indefinite article, but the Breton language in fact does have an indefinite article.

-Also, there are some additional languages with a definite article and no indefinite article: Ancient Greek, and Bulgarian and Macedonian (I know those are often considered to be one language, but I just wrote both for clarity).


-And at 9:30 the map says 3rd century CE and 6th century CE, but it should be "BCE", not "CE".



Let me also cut and paste some of the main sources I used. The first two cover additional similarities that I didn't include in the video. #2 is easy to find online.

1) Jongeling, Comparing Welsh and Hebrew (2000)

2) Steve Hewitt, Remarks on the Insular Celtic/Hamito-Semitic Question.

3) Germania Semitica by Theo Vennemann gen. Nierfeld

[strtyma]

I'm an Arabic native speaker, and a few months back I took special interest in Scottish Gaelic. While trying to learn the language, I was thinking in English, think that out of the languages I know English would be the one I would relate most to Gaelic. However, when it got to the grammar I was absolutely lost! Until I realized how similar and maybe even identical the Gaelic sentence structure was to that of Arabic. It was really fascinating and I wondered how two languages spoken in different parts of the world were so similar! Thanks for the video!

[DrGlynnWix]

I was learning Arabic about 10 years ago through a community class at my university, and my Irish history professor happened to be taking the class with me. She was a native Irish speaker. Nearly every class she was surprised by the similarities and would comment on things being 'like how it is in Irish".


PS I moved to Ireland three years ago and was getting a tour of Trinity College Dublin by a guy who was doing his PhD on Old Irish. He was explaining the genitive case being used in one of the signs, and I said, oh yeah, I get it that's just like Arabic. He was kind of confused. I didn't realize this was a kind of unique grammatical feature.

[brinmoody]

I'm an Irish speaker and my cousins are actually fluent Hebrew speakers and I have long mentioned how curiously similar I found the two languages so this was really nice to hear, that I'm not losing it but that there indeed are curious similarities between them!

[snowy]

As an Arabic native speaker I really really appreciate the effort and the accuracy that’s put in this video, keep up the good work.

[grantdawson]

As someone who has studied Hebrew, and later looked at Scottish Gaelic, I must say I was immediately struck by the similarities. Thanks for fitting my random thoughts into some order in this video.

[jonathanroty]

I am a native hebrew speaker, and once i have traveled in ireland and spoke hebrew with a friend, and then two irish people approached us and asked if we just spoke gaelic to each other. I was shocked that someone had made this mistake, but now i see that it actually makes sense.

[patrickclayyancey]

As a Scottish Gaelic speaker (Nova Scotian) who has studied Arabic, I noticed many of the things you note. I would also add that "gus" in Scottish Gaelic means "until", but also "in order to". And if I remember correctly, "Hatta" has the same dual meaning in Standard Arabic.

[missbeclane]

My husband is Irish and we've lived in the Middle East. He noticed a similarity between Irish and Arabic when we lived there. He noticed that the accent mark "fada" in Irish is called a "fat-ha" in Arabic and does something similar to the pronunciation of a letter.

[bernardoreilly]

In the 1980s there was a documentary series on Irish television called Atlantean. It discussed possible ancient trade links between Ireland and the Middle East. It was based on research by an Irish writer named Bob Quinn. In one episode it discussed an ancient tradition which maintained that Irish and Arabic were mutually intelligible.

[odolwa]

Irish person here. Never knew this. Really interesting. Thanks for the video!
Wait, that sounds like a Limerick! Let me try again!

Irish person here. Isn't it feckin' gear. From Middle East a Celtic feast that sounds just right to my ear!

[INXSFan]

I'm a simple man. I see Paul post a video, I watch it. Thanks for your awesome content as always Paul!

[scw]

As a Welsh learner who grew up learning welsh in school, my mind is being blown by the grammar deconstruction. I learned from immersion and never worried about the linguistic side of things. It's awesome.

[johnc]

I'm a first language Irish speaker, and I never heard of the similarities before now, it's really interesting, iontach ar spéisiúil ar fad!

[ottodidakt]

first thing that stands out to me is that Hebrew and Arabic are much more similar than Irish and Welsh !

[kjboy]

You sir are a gem. Your page is a gold mine for those who are explorers trying to unearth the past. I as a history maj..and educator appreciate these videos. I know my linguistic colleagues especially.

[naisiunaieireannach]

Hi Paul, I wanted to let you know I really appreciate, along with many other Irish speakers, your content on our language