Talk:Pritenic

Fate of Pritenic and Pictish

@Mutt Lunker and also maybe @Kepler-1229b or @JoeyofScotia would also like to join us, I think its the proper place to decide on the fate of Brythonic and Pritenic views on Wikipedia, even if we have so little participants to invite. You can find some links to the articles on the main page

Basically, the current view is absolute Brittonic-centred and always treats Pictish as Brythonic. It was made in mid-10s after articles of Guto Rhys, and I believe this view wasn't even checked much.

Anyway, what I suggest, is instead of writing "Pictish was likely Brythonic, but there's also Pritenic..." write "Pictish was likely Pritenic, but there's also Brythonic...", because the majority of modern articles (and not only modern) consider Pictish not fully Brythonic, but rather a close branch of P-Celtic, that diverged earlier than Neo-Brittonic.

Key opposition comes from Rhys who believes that Pictish is 100% Brittonic, other people like Forsyth are neutral, others, like Simon Rodway and Bernard Mees (The morphology of Pictish) do not agree with "Pritenic" as it was proposed by Jackson, but state that Pictish was different from other Brythonic languages, despite showing similarities with them. Continuous articles from notable people like Alan James and Simon Taylor on other hand, actively mention Pritenic exactly in the context of a language that diverged together with Brythonic from P-Celtic.

To simplify things even more: I see almost no scholars who claim that Pictish was a fully Brythonic language like Cumbric or Welsh. The majority considers Pictish an earlier split, even if not always explicitly states that it was "Pritenic". But as I said above, some people like James and Taylor already used the term "Pritenic" exactly in this context.

Independently of what we decide, we need to support ambiguity. @Mutt Lunker reverted my several edits on Scots language and Scottish Gaelic articles, where I simply removed the specification of Pictish as a language of exactly Brittonic branch. I understand his conservatism, but I think sometimes it is better to not specify anything, especially in the complicated situation of the classification of Pictish.

What do you (all) think? From Alba, Celtoi, (talk) 08:05, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

I really don't have expertise in this field, but from what you're saying, I think you should boldly change the article to reflect the scholarly consensus. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 19:20, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, the core problem here is @Mutt Lunker who seemingly believes otherwise and automatically reverts all my bold edits. I made this topic after he suggested me to create it in order to reach some consensus, so I hope he'll arrive and write an answer here. If he won't show up though, I will continue my Bold editing... From Alba, Celtoi, (talk) 04:12, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

I'd advise bringing this issue up to a noticeabord if Mutt Lunker displays any WP:ICANTHEARYOU signs. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 04:59, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

See Talk:Scottish_Gaelic#The_reason_for_reversions Mutt Lunker (talk) 17:54, 26 June 2026 (UTC)