Abstract

The Welsh scientist Edward Lhuyd was part of the eighteenth-century British intellectual milieu that developed a deep interest in the investigation of the complexity of the reality of the world. Following the principles adhered to in these academic circles, languages belong to the framework devised by the perfection of nature. Lhuyd divided Celtic languages into two branches and stated that they had developed as a consequence of geographical and phonological factors thus positing an equation between the entities of the P-Celtic, the Brithonic which originated in Gaul, and the Q-Celtic which emerged from Spain.