Oh, and when I click on "Reply", it wants me to login again.
Maybe the session management is still linked to the old domain name?

Suzy is an old sparring partner of ours. Basically this is all the usual stuff except various genetic studies (and maybe a bit of THOBR) has made it even more difficult to reconcile the fact that several million civilised folk speaking x were converted into several million slightly-less-civilised people speaking y, all in a matter of a coupla hundred years when the archaeology suggests nothing much was happening at all. So the new-normal is to have the y-speakers infiltrating the x-speakers even earlier.

It's a bonus that this accords with our own gentle multicultural times. The 'English' having to butcher millions of Welsh has been uncomfortable for some time so even the Daily Mail likes the idea of us popping over here earlier to set up language labs and/or asking the Welsh if they wouldn't mind relocating to Wales. I expect there were grants and so forth.

I wonder where these dudes suppose 'trade languages' come from. It is certainly true that you can simplify an existing language into a 'pigin' as they did in the West Indies and Papua New Guinea but that is for the benefit of (sorry!) low caste people. It is also true you can elevate an existing language into a genuine trading one, as they did with Swahili and Mandarin. But you gotta have a language to start with. So what's with this 'Celtic'?

I suppose one lot of Celts (the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons) might need to trade with -- and communicate with -- the other lot of Celts (Irish and Scots Gaels) and might have developed something with elements of both but since there is no evidence of it anyway, why bother to conjecture it into existence? Everyone else just trades and uses an interpreter.

All these problems arise because even relatively sensible people like Cunliffe persist in assuming that most of Western Europe was speaking Celtic languages because the 18th/19th century Welsh/Scottish/Irish nationalists purloined the word 'Celtic' for themselves because the Classical authors had bigged them up. (Like the Swedes nicked the Goths for similar reasons.) That turned 'Celtic' into a language group and suddenly everyone, even dear old us, was speaking one or other member of the Celtic language family. Brythonic is the agreed term now. And why not? At least it isn't Gaulish or Belgae.

As I pointed out in THOBR this language family has, according to academic historians, gone from being the biggest in Europe to the smallest. So, yes, I suppose it is kinda special.

I still love the circular logic.

What's a Celt?
Someone that speaks a Celtic language.

What's a Celtic language?
Something that spoken by Celts.

Politically it's pretty confusing. To be independent now you had to be an SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic) then, to be an SSR then you had to have a border with the outside world. Don't ask! I mean, really don't ask. If you had to, the answer would have been 'no'. Anyway this ruled out anyone in the middle of Siberia which have become a bewildering mix of Autonomous Regions and Special Administration Areas (I think, but maybe that's a holdover from Gulag days) and other titles that may or may not have much significance.

Which is a shame because the inmates are so non-Russian they may as well be Aztecs. Whether they could hack it on their own anyway is a moot point. It's hard to tell from so far away -- in all senses -- but they are certainly doing a lot better than most such folk, who seem to slouch into alcoholic despair once they are engulfed by western values (yeah, I include Russkies in that).

One gets the impression that being left alone is the best these guys can hope for though the Russians don't strike one as the sort of people who leave you alone. Or, subsidise you, come to that. But more news if you have it. Keeping red hair intact speaks volumes.