Extinct Language Reveals Celtic Origins Options

[Viggen]

Although the Roman conquest led to the extinction of the Gaulish language 2,000 years ago, a half dozen rare, surviving Gaulish/Latin bilingual inscriptions have enabled scholars to trace the origins of the Celtic language and many other European languages.

According to the study, Celtic branched in two directions from an Indo-European mother language around 3200 B.C. One version, Gaulish, which is also called Continental Celtic, stayed within the European mainland. A second, British version, referred to as Insular Celtic, moved in a single wave to Britain.

via Discovery

[Moonlapse]

Insular Celtic is probably a hybrid of Continental Celtic and the language of the mesolithic people who occupied Britain before the neolithic migration of the Celts ~4000 BC. If the differences in the two Celtic languages could be isolated, some generalized root words of the mesolithic language might be deducted and analyzed. Wouldn't that be cool..

[Faol Brigantes]

I was reading this article the other day and was very suprised at the likenesses between Gaulish and Latin.

[jugurtha]

That was a great article, Faol, for several reasons.

First of all, I like the historical part of it mentioning the migration of nations. The Indo-European language stock is the source of all languages involved in the debate. It is however all too simple to regard this as a linear language tree.

Around 390 BC the Gauls sacked Rome. In 279 BC they attacked Delphi, and some of them settled in north-western Turkey: these were the Galatians, whose descendants received an epistle from St. Paul. The western Celts lived mostly in northern Italy, France and Britain, and these were the 'Gauls' encountered by Caesar.

Although the Celts were a seperate group in the Indo-European stock, it becomes pretty clear here that they've spread all over Europe throughout history which means they've all adapted several language characteristics from the peoples they encountered. Add to that the differences that naturally evolve out of the loss of contact between remote kin. That's what makes linguistics so complicated and interesting. It also explains the different references to "Celtic" people and their culture throughout written history.

Secondly, I like the explanation of the name Ver-cingetos-rix, for it seems like since the comic strip - of which I'm a huge fan btw - Asterix has been such a success in Europe people tend to think all Celtic names end in -ix ... which is BS of course.

Most Celtic names are a pest to explain really. But when you study the ancient ones, all you come at is a primitive combination of words. Take the example of Vercingetorix as mentioned in the link above. He was the true (ver) leader/king (rix) of warriors/champions (cingetos). All you see here is the combination of three words. Problem is that many references to Celtic characters either come from Roman or Christian sources - which is basically the same thing - corrupting the initial names to Latin ones. Hey, even Polibius (was that his real name? ) did it.

- JUG