2.3 Modern Celts

After World War II, the focus of the Celticity movement shifted to linguistic revival and protectionism, e.g. with the foundation of the Celtic League in 1961, dedicated to preserving the surviving Celtic languages.

Since the Enlightenment, the term Celtic has been applied to a wide variety of peoples and cultural traits present and past. Today, Celtic is often used to describe people of the Celtic nations (the Bretons, the Cornish, the Irish, the Manx people, the Scots and the Welsh (see App №1, Pict №1, Pict №6) and their respective cultures and languages. Except for the Bretons, all groups mentioned have been subject to strong Anglicisation since the Early Modern period, and are hence are also described as participating in an Anglo-Celtic macro-culture. By the same token, the Bretons have been subjected to strong Frenchification since the Early Modern period, and can similarly be described as participating in a Franco-Celtic macro-culture.

The International Celtic Congress is a cultural organisation that seeks to promote the Celtic languages of the nations of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man. It was formed out of previously existing bodies that had sought to advance the same goals such as the Celtic Association and the Pan-Celtic Congress (see App №1, Pict №1).

It first met in 1917 at Birkenhead Eisteddfod and has met almost every year since then. There is a branch in each of the Celtic nations, although no Cornish branch was represented until the 1920s, despite having been involved in the Celtic Association from 1904. Each branch pursues the aims of the Congress in their own nation.

The organisation is a non-political organisation, although in the 1920s, the National Party of Scotland (the forerunner of the modern Scottish National Party) sought involvement, and the then Taoiseach of Ireland, Éamon de Valera consented to be a patron of the organisation in the 1930s.

Its stated object is to "... perpetuate the culture, ideals, and languages of the Celtic peoples, and to maintain an intellectual contact and close cooperation between the respective Celtic communities."

The Celtic Congress is not similar to the Celtic League which deals with political matters. Like the Celtic league, it tries to "hold... an annual international congress in one of the six Celtic countries, if possible according to a fixed rotation". Many people are members of both the Celtic League and the Celtic Congress.

SIL Ethnologue (a linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages) lists six "living" Celtic languages, of which four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are Welsh and Breton, descended from the British language, and Irish and Scottish Gaelic, descended from Old Irish (see app №2 and app №3).

The other two, Cornish and Manx, were spoken into modern times but later died as spoken community languages. For both these languages, however, revitalization movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children and produced some native speakers.

Taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages.