Editing Pictish language (section)

== Influence on the Gaelic languages ==
Etymological investigation of the [[Scottish Gaelic]] language, in particular the 1896 efforts of [[Alexander Macbain]],<ref name="MacBain" /> has demonstrated the presence of a corpus of Pictish loanwords in the language.<ref name="UGlas" /><ref name="MacBain">{{cite book |last1=MacBain |first1=Alexander |title=Etymological Dictionary of Scottish-Gaelic |date=1988 |publisher=Hippocrene Books |isbn=9780781806329 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3JRgkdyty3wC&pg=PA25 |access-date=27 April 2020}}</ref> The items most commonly cited as loanwords are ''bad'' ("clump"; [[Breton language|Breton]] ''bod''), ''bagaid'' ("cluster, troop"; [[Welsh language|Welsh]] ''bagad''), ''dail'' ("meadow"; W ''dôl''), ''dìleab'' ("legacy"), ''[[mormaer]]'' ("earl"; W ''mawr'' + ''maer''), ''pailt'' ("plentiful"; [[Cornish language|Cornish]] ''pals''), ''peasg'' ("gash"; W ''pisg''), ''peit'' ("area of ground, part, share"; W ''peth''), ''pòr'' ([[Middle Welsh]] ''paur''; "grain, crops"), ''preas'' ("bush"; W ''prys'').<ref name="MacBain" /> On the basis of a number of the loans attesting shorter vowels than other British cognates, linguist Guto Rhys proposed Pictish resisted some Latin-influenced sound changes of the 6th century.<ref name="NQSXPI">{{cite web |last1=Rhys |first1=Guto |date=2015 |title=The New Quantity System in Pictish |url=https://www.academia.edu/14461949 |access-date=2021-12-14}}</ref> Rhys has also noted the potentially "fiscal" profile of several of the loans, and hypothesized that they could have entered Gaelic as a package in a governmental context.<ref name="UGlas" />

Several Gaelic nouns have meanings more closely matching their Brittonic cognates than those in Irish, indicating that Pictish may have influenced the sense and usage of these words as a [[Substrate language|substrate]].<ref name="pp"/>  ''Srath'' (> ''[[Strath|Strath-]]'') is recorded to have meant "grassland" in [[Old Irish]], whereas the modern Gaelic realization means "broad valley", exactly as in its Brittonic cognates (cf. Welsh {{lang|cy|ystrad}}).<ref name="pp" /> ''[[Dun (fortification)|Dùn]]'', ''foithir'', ''lios'', ''ràth'' and ''tom'' may, by the same token, attest a substrate influence from Pictish.<ref name="pp" /><ref name="cpns" />

Greene noted that the verbal system inherited in Gaelic from Old Irish had been brought "into complete conformity with that of modern spoken Welsh",<ref name="Thomson">{{cite book |last1=Thomson |first1=Derick S. |author1-link=Derick Thomson |title=The Companion to Gaelic Scotland |date=1994 |publisher=Gairm |isbn=9781871901313 |page=107 |edition=2}}</ref> and consequently Guto Rhys adjudged that Pictish may have modified Gaelic verbal syntax.<ref name="UGlas" />