Nit: Gaelic is the wrong word here. They spoke Brittonic. "Gaelic" is "Q Celtic", spoken exclusively at that point in Ireland (and then later by Irish settlers in the north of Britain which became the Scotts).
The Brittonic speakers later became the Welsh, Cornish, and (as emigres to the continent) the Breton.
Very different branches of the Celtic language tree. Not mutually intelligible. Brittonic has more in common with (extinct) Gaulish ("P celtic")
Also the Romans established a landholding system in Gaul that took its agricultural lands under Roman control, so in a sense they definitely had impact on the local population. The rich farmland of Gaul was one of the key reasons for the conquest in the first place.
Though service in the Roman military by Gauls themselves meant they could in turn have rights to access the land as Romans. A further method of Romanization though.
I wasn't going to that level of pedantry, but you're absolutely right :)
I've lived in Dublin, the Isle of Man, and Cardiff - really interesting hearing the language and the differences. I even tried learning Manx Gaelic, but didn't get very far.
I've always wondered how Welsh sounds to Scottish or Irish Gaelic speakers and vice versa. Seems like on paper at least they're a bit further apart than, say, Spanish and French, or Norwegian and German, but not as far apart as, say Russian and Lithuanian. Within the same Celtic language family but phonetically so different as to be difficult to recognize? The P/Q thing seems pretty drastic.
Both also seem to have crazy orthography, too, hard for an English speaker to figure out
I've seen a Welsh and Gaelic speaker try and work it out twice now. It sounds "familiar" but doesn't make any sense either way.
Manx and Irish Gaelic is just-about mutually understandable, though with difficulty. It's like a Londoner trying to understand a Glaswegian.
I gave up trying to learn Gaelic after learning that there are no words for "yes" or "no". To agree with someone you have to construct a positive sentence agreeing with them (e.g. "sure and so it is"). This suddenly made so many Irish-English colloquialisms make sense :)
The Brittonic speakers later became the Welsh, Cornish, and (as emigres to the continent) the Breton.
Very different branches of the Celtic language tree. Not mutually intelligible. Brittonic has more in common with (extinct) Gaulish ("P celtic")
Also the Romans established a landholding system in Gaul that took its agricultural lands under Roman control, so in a sense they definitely had impact on the local population. The rich farmland of Gaul was one of the key reasons for the conquest in the first place.
Though service in the Roman military by Gauls themselves meant they could in turn have rights to access the land as Romans. A further method of Romanization though.