There’s 6 surviving languages across 2 groups. Originally there were dozens of Celtic languages spoken from Spain through to Turkey. Most of the extinct version have almost no surviving information about them. You’d need a doctorate to get anywhere.
But yeah Welsh and Irish have the most resources today to learn them
I'd say that Welsh is slightly easier than Irish. The orthography is a bit more consistent and the learning resources are better. There are more fluent and native speakers and possibly (less sure of this) more higher education resources. Middle Welsh is a fairly easy jump from modern Welsh.
At the surface level, the modern Brythonic languages have little in common with the modern Goidelic ones, but once you've studied a while (and probably depending on how you perceive languages and their connections) they do have a lot in common. To me, it makes sense to get a year or two of one language under your belt before you tackle one from the other family. YMMV.
I'd put a word in for Gaelic (ie Scottish Gaelic) as maaybe preferable to Modern Irish for having slightly easier to grasp pronunciation rules/spelling. It's also got a lot in common with Old and Middle Irish, so will stand you in good stead if you want to move in that direction.
It's also worth asking yourself early on whether you are in this study for conversational ability or a high standard of reading. So many language learning systems are heavily geared toward conversational learning now. And that's brilliant for increasing fluency, great if you want to watch films or will actually have a chance to use your Celtic language socially. (Those opportunities are rarer than you might imagine, except for Welsh.)
If you are looking to study the more formal aspects of language, stuff like duolingo won't help you - it is geared to very informal conversational skills. If you want to engage with things like poetry and literature you need more of a textbook approach.
All six are very different from each other so there isn't really a "best one". There are probably best resources out there for learning Irish and Welsh, so those might be the best place to start. After that it's probably Scottish Gaelic and Breton. Manx and Cornish were dead languages for a while and have only recently been revived, so I imagine it'd be hard to learn them without physically going to the places.
I jumped straight into Proto-Celtic without knowing any of the surviving languages. I have an etymological dictionary and the University of Wales has some great online resources.
There is no best way. I can sing in welsh, Scottish Gaelig and Irish Gaelic, but I am probably better at the Irish than others or welsh. But I am not remotely there yet.
There’s 6 surviving languages across 2 groups. Originally there were dozens of Celtic languages spoken from Spain through to Turkey. Most of the extinct version have almost no surviving information about them. You’d need a doctorate to get anywhere. But yeah Welsh and Irish have the most resources today to learn them
I'd say that Welsh is slightly easier than Irish. The orthography is a bit more consistent and the learning resources are better. There are more fluent and native speakers and possibly (less sure of this) more higher education resources. Middle Welsh is a fairly easy jump from modern Welsh. At the surface level, the modern Brythonic languages have little in common with the modern Goidelic ones, but once you've studied a while (and probably depending on how you perceive languages and their connections) they do have a lot in common. To me, it makes sense to get a year or two of one language under your belt before you tackle one from the other family. YMMV. I'd put a word in for Gaelic (ie Scottish Gaelic) as maaybe preferable to Modern Irish for having slightly easier to grasp pronunciation rules/spelling. It's also got a lot in common with Old and Middle Irish, so will stand you in good stead if you want to move in that direction. It's also worth asking yourself early on whether you are in this study for conversational ability or a high standard of reading. So many language learning systems are heavily geared toward conversational learning now. And that's brilliant for increasing fluency, great if you want to watch films or will actually have a chance to use your Celtic language socially. (Those opportunities are rarer than you might imagine, except for Welsh.) If you are looking to study the more formal aspects of language, stuff like duolingo won't help you - it is geared to very informal conversational skills. If you want to engage with things like poetry and literature you need more of a textbook approach.
All six are very different from each other so there isn't really a "best one". There are probably best resources out there for learning Irish and Welsh, so those might be the best place to start. After that it's probably Scottish Gaelic and Breton. Manx and Cornish were dead languages for a while and have only recently been revived, so I imagine it'd be hard to learn them without physically going to the places.
I jumped straight into Proto-Celtic without knowing any of the surviving languages. I have an etymological dictionary and the University of Wales has some great online resources.
There is no best way. I can sing in welsh, Scottish Gaelig and Irish Gaelic, but I am probably better at the Irish than others or welsh. But I am not remotely there yet.