The Celtic languages are divided into two branches: the Goedelic or Gaelic (Irish, Scots Gaelic, Manx), and the Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, and Breton). Goedelic is also known as Q-Celtic, and Brythonic as P-Celtic, the essential differences arising from sound-shifts. (Otherwise known as "minding one's P's and Q's"...)

Resources:

• Celtic Language Resources

  www.candledark.net/silver/celtlang.html

• Online Dictionaries - Gaelic and Celtic Dictionaries

• An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language

MacBain, Alexander
Gairm Publications, 1982

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Typographic conventions
Abbreviations
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A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U

 

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Published by Gairm Publications, 29 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6BZ
Tel. 041-221 1971
Printed by Clark Constable (1982) Let, Edinburgh
ISBN 0 901771 68 6
1st edition - 1896
2nd edition (revised) - 1911
Photolitho Reprint of 1911 edition - 1982

Keyed in by Caoimhín P. Ó Donnaíle, Sabhal Mór Ostaig.
HTML version by John T. McCranie, San Francisco State University.

See also - http://www.wordgumbo.com/ie/cel/sco/macbain.txt

EDITORIAL NOTE - http://www.archive.org/details/etymologicaldict00macbuoft
 
The present edition of Dr MacBain's Etymological Dictionary 
consists of the text of the original edition, with interposed 
additions, amendments, and corrections drawn from the 
author's " Further Gaelic Words and Etymologies," from the 
" Addenda et Corrigenda " at the end of the first edition, and 
from written jottings on interleaved copies of these books. 

Nothing has been TCdded~*to' Br MacBain's work except 
the Supplement to The Outlines of Gaelic Etymology, the words 
and letters in square brackets, and a few slight changes from the 
original text, which are the work of the Rev. Dr George Henderson, 
Lecturer in Celtic Languages and Literature in the University of 
Glasgow, who found it necessary to abandon his intention of seeing 
the Gaelic Etymological Dictionary through the press, after 
reaching the sixteenth page of the "Outlines"; and a few 
suggestions in brackets followed by "Ed." 

Nothing has been left out which could be deciphered, Dr 
applied with any measure of confidence. Even queried 
suggestions have been given, in the belief that mere flashes of 
thought by an expert may often point the way towards correct 
findings. 

CALUM MAC PHARLAIN.