PICTISH LANGUAGE

language spoken by the Picts in northern Scotland and replaced by Gaelic after the union in the 9th century of the Pictish kingdom with the rest of Scotland. Knowledge concerning the Pictish language is derived from place-names, the names in medieval works such as the Pictish Chronicle and the writings of Bede, inscriptions from the Pictish areas of Britain, statements about the language by medieval writers who wrote while the language was still in use, and names from northern Scotland found in classical works. Pictish was apparently a Celtic language (more closely related to Gaulish and Brythonic than to Goidelic), but some scholars think that it was not Celtic, nor even Indo-European.