Nanohedron wrote:
Somehow I missed this thread. There are a lot of Irish words that have much in common with the Latin branch. The Irish "cathaoir" (chair) and the Latin "cathedra" (seat) are evidently related, for one example.
I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't a borrowing.
Quote:
The idea that "sean" would have a relationship to the Latin "senator" or "senile" is no stretch at all, I think.
No stretch at all! Both the Irish sean and the Latin senex (and therefore, senator) and also Welsh hen derive ultimately from IE *senos. There are sororal words in Sanskrit, Greek, Gothic and Avestan as well.
Quote:
I wouldn't go so far as to place Celtic languages within the Latin branch, however. IIRC their commonalities are held to point to a time before these groups split off from each other, before there were even Latin or Celtic branches.
Indeed not the same branch. They are distinct. Though there are / have been hypotheses that place both the ancestral Celtic and Italic languages in an IE "Italo-Celtic" subgroup together.