Talk:Gaulish language

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Of course, Gaulish and Roman were somewhat related, as they where both Indoeuropean languages and as two thousand years ago the differentiation between the different Indoeuropean languages was clearly less then it is today. Old Gothic, Ancient Greek and Latin had much more in common with each other then modern Germanic Languages, New Greek end Romanic languages have. In the same way Gaulish and Latin had quite some resemblances, but everything we know about Gaulish (which is not THAT much), indicates that both languages were NOT mutually comprehensible. Even between Latin and the much more closely related Italic languages Umbrian, Oscan and Samnitic mutual comprehension was out of the question, even though speakers of these languages could learn Latin rather easily. It would have be considerably less easy for the Gauls. The reason why Latin GRADUALLY replaced Gaulish was the high prestige of Roman civilisation. At first the Gaulic aristocracy tried to ape Roman customs and became bilingual (within 1 or 2 generations). Then the urban population became bilingual (the towns being a creation of the Romans, quite a few Italians and inhabitants of other parts of the Empire settled there). Then more and more peasants learned some Latin after having served for 10 years or more in the Roman army. It was probably not before 300 AD (3 1/2 centuries after the Roman conquest!) that a majority of the Gauls started abadoning the Gaulish language and becoming monolingual speakers of vulgar Latin. By 400 AD, however, Gaulish had almost died out. The Gallo-Roman author Ausonius remarks that in his time (early 4th century AD) a Celtic dialect (closely resembling that of the Galatians in Asia Minor) was still spoken in the neighborhood of Augusta Trevirorum (Trier).

I strongly feel that the mention of Gauls taking over to Latin very soon because the languages were mutually comprehensible (even if it has been promoted by the famous French historian A. Lot) is unsubstantiated and should be removed from the article.

Lignomontanus - 2nd of May 2005

I really doubt that a Celtic language and Latin might be mutually intelligible. Can anyone back up this claim? The story about sending a message in Greek rather than Latin is hardly sufficient proof. Burschik 12:47, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Whether you doubt it or not, that's how it is. Gaulish and Latin were unrelated, mutually intelligible languages. How, I don't know. But linguists will tell you that is the reason Gaulish fell out of favor so quickly in Roman lands, since the language of their new leaders was so similar. -- 141.156.184.238 14:51, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I remember reading somewhere (long time ago) that Roman scholars noted that there were similarities between Celtic languages and Latin. I imagine, since Celts and Romans had been in contact for 400 years before Caesar's conquest of Gaul, there might have been a lot of importation of Latin vocabulary into Gaulish. And of course they were both Indo-European laguages, so words for commmon objects would have been similar anyway.

A few examples

Celtic mor = Latin mare = English sea (mere)

Celtic deus = Latin deus = English god (deity)

Celtic ekwos = Latin equus = English horse (equestrian)

and so on. I would have thought a Gaul and Roman could have understood each other.

Exile 23:01, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

They were similar, they were not identical. It was relatively easy for Gauls to master Latin, just the same as it's relatively easy for Dutch people to master English, when compared to, say Frenchmen or Russians. They were not mutually comprehensible. There are enough texts in Gaulish to show that. Diderot 19:09, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think that perhaps also Celtic, since Latin was the closest, largest international language at that time, might have borrowed quite much vocabulary from Latin, as well. (?)
Gaulish did not borrow a great deal (although Latin borrowed words from Gaulish). Old Welsh does have quite some borrowing from Latin, yes. --Nantonos 23:39, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Huh?

Only in 2004 was Asterix first published in Gaulish, despite the inhabitants of his village being referred to as Gauls.

This makes no sense. It's a dead language. Daniel Quinlan 13:34, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)
He means Gallo [1], which is not a Celtic language, it's the regional romance language of eastern Brittany. I pulled it.
---Diderot 17:26, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
We don't yet know enough to translate Asterix into Gaulish, and maybe never will. --Nantonos 23:39, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
Do any of you mean "Gaellic"? Gaellic is the only language I've ever heard of the Gauls speaking.

[edit] Gaulish & Latin

Sure, it shouldn't be exaggerated that Gaulish was very close to Latin and mutually comprehensible without qualification---Yet, I suspect that French scholars like Lot may not have been too far off. Remember that some linguists also propose that Italic languages & Celtic languages both may descend from Italo-Celtic. If so, there may have been Celtic languages that still retained a large Italic element. Decius 12:46, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Italo-Celtic as a class was politically motivated, so is strongly POV. --Nantonos 23:39, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Given the uncertainty & diverging opinions among scholars, it is best not to indulge in too much POV one way or the other in the article. Decius 12:47, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

it's the first time I hear Italo-Celtic is politically motivated. (sigh, why are languages always used as propaganda tools!). But what is the rationale? Franco-Welsh brotherhood? There were sound linguistic reasons for assuming I-C. So even if there was a political angle, we should just present the evidence regardless of that. dab (ᛏ) 10:35, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

What have the Welsh got to do with it? (I agree, sigh). A bunch of historical, archaeological and linguistic stuff was 'adapted' to form national myth in the period 1870 - 1914 - Franco-Prussian war to First World War. Italo-Celtic as a concept, while having some linguistic basis, was also used to demonstrate that Classical Rome and the Glories of 'nos ancêstres les gaulois' stood together against the barbarism of the Germans , and wil do so again, yadda yadda. Which just means that the current generation has to sift through this carefully. However, that being said, Proto-Celtic language does not currently see a need to postulate strong links to Italic, and Celtic languages states "the Celtic languages have sometimes been placed with the Italic languages in a common Italo-Celtic subfamily, a hypothesis that is now largely obsolete" although without a specific reference. --Nantonos 15:23, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

I see. well, quite apart from this grande nation nonsense, there is certainly strong evidence for prolongued areal contact in the Iron Age, I think that much is undisputed. That doesn't make for Italo-Celtic, of course, but the theory is still notable, and can be argued on entirely factual grounds. It's just that most common features have since been shown to descend from PIE, but that doesn't take away the common features. Proto-Celtic doesn't need to make that case, we have Italo-Celtic for that. dab (ᛏ) 15:31, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
I agree with what you say, dab and there was certainly some parallel evolution, Gaulish contributing words for new technical items into Classical Latin and also into vulgar Latin at a later date (eg caballos). I may have been reacting in too sensitive a way to "there may have been Celtic languages that still retained a large Italic element", probably in a similar way to how I suspect Decius would react to suggestions that Dacian "still retained some Slavic elements". Most of the time when I see the similarity of Gaulish and Latin discussed, the arguments are quite superficial and come down to things like "Its not very Celtic, is it?" (meaning, it doesn't look much like modern Irish) or "it looks like a dialect of Latin" (meaning, the only language with a case system that they have heard of is Latin).

Anyway, yesterday I added a table of the best attested cases (-o- and -a- stems) to the article Gaulish language. --Nantonos 16:11, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

To be fair, note in what context I made that statement: If Italo-Celtic is correct (and we're not sure it is incorrect), then there may have been Celtic languages that were closer to Italic than other Celtic languages were to Italic (>Gaulish). It's not just about grammar, but vocabulary and even some phonology in common. But I'm not an Italo-Celtist myself. If I would group these language branches together, it would be more than just a two-forked branch. I would include Venetic and some other languages. Decius 18:27, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm not going to step too much in this territory yet, because I have not studied the similarities between Italic & Celtic enough, but this dispute seems to be reminiscent of other cases. In the case of Dacian, there are no real sentences of the language surviving (the longest is three words, and it looks close to Latin or Albanian the way it uses 'per'), so I would indeed take offense to someone hastily linking it to Slavic. Decius 18:46, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
I entered this discussion to try to underline one point: Gaulish and Latin, regardless of whether they were closely genetically related as languages (though they may have been), were kind of close to each other in practice, so Lot's idea is feasible to a degree. But I don't expect a Gaul who was previously unfamiliar with Latin to just walk up to a Roman who is unfamiliar with Gaulish and have a mutually intelligible conversation. I do expect that it was very easy for an average Gaul to pick up Latin, and probably vice versa. Decius 19:03, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I can agree that it might have helped - as earlier comments noted, in much he same way as a speaker of Dutch finds it easier to pick up English than a native speaker of French or Russian. The major reason, though, was the same reason that an immigrant to the US or the UK finds it advantageous to learn English - increased employability, its the language of official communications, and so on. To continue the analogy, they may well continue to speak their native language at home. In other words the reasons were social, economic and political, not linguistic. --Nantonos 20:16, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
certainly. The effect of any degree of intercomprehensibility is far outweighed by the fact that the Romans were TEH EMPIRE, and every self-respecting young gaulois was certainly aspiring to be able to chat away nonchalantly in Latin. dab (ᛏ) 20:33, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
There is general agreement here Nantonos, and I can agree with Dab's last point also. However, in the French Wiki's Gaulish language talk page, there is a section called Gaulois, proche du latin, where a Bretonique user named Guénael made the wild claim that Gaulish was no more close to Latin than it was to ancient Greek or Old Slavonic. To this, Enzino (a prominent figure in the French Wiki) disagreed and responded: "C'est étrange car mes références, parlent tous d'un sous-groupe réunissant les langues celtes et les langues italiotes."---Enzino is saying that all the references he has seen (in France) support Italo-Celtic and the closeness of Gaulish to Latin (so I guess it is popular among French scholars). And he indicates that Guénael's view is representative of the anti-Italic Bretonique attitude (so I guess it is not popular in Brittany). Decius 21:49, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer, oddly enough I just linked in the French wikipedia article on Gaulish Language (well, a section of a page in fact) today. Enzino overstates things if he claims that all French scholarship supports an Italo-Celtic hypothesis - it does not. For example Lambert 2003 p.13 (following quotation is fair use for purposes of discussion but should not be used directly in the article) "Certains ont supposé, du même, une unité italo-celtique, moins étroite bien sûr. Mais les traits communs à l'italique et au celtique se réduisent à très peu de choses: des assimilations phonétiques (p ...kw ... > kw ... kw dans le chiffre « cinq » quinque, dans le nom du chêne, quercus), et des innovations morphologiques réduites. L'unité italo-celtique est aujourd'hui un groupement contesté. Néanmoins, il est vrai que le celtique a des élèments communs avec les dialectes voisins, comme l'italique et le germanique." Lambert is saying that some people have suggested this grouping, which he describes as weak, gives examples of the connections, saying there are not very many, and says that it is contested (my emphasis), finally agreeing that there are some common elements with neighboring languages (which does not imply a common source). --Nantonos 01:24, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I'm satisfied with the way Lot's idea is currently presented in this article, so I have no issue here. Earlier, I commented because User:Lignomontanus was, without actually presenting counter-references, just writing that Lot's theory was "very unlikely" in the article or something. There's nothing wrong with "passing judgment" in itself, but Lignomontanus was not presenting any references and was basically just enforcing his own Point Of View in the text. Decius 01:40, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
well, the contesté part is afaik a rather recent development. The Lambert reference is from 2003, I can imagine somebody who didn't follow the recent literature would be of the opinion that I-C is widely accepted. The arguments of i-Genitive and a-conjunctive were quite strong, and I think it was only over the last 20 years or so that it became clear that they are not conclusive. So I do think "I-C belief" may linger in France, in good faith, but if we want an up to date article, we will say that I-C has been essentially replaced by points about prolongued contact. For the purposes of Roman Gaul this is irrelevant anyway, it wouldn't matter if similarities at this point were genetic or areal. dab (ᛏ) 08:06, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
ah, language suicide is the term I was looking for. Maybe we can link to that :) I do think any similarity to Latin was irrelevant, Etruscan went the way of Gaulish, much earlier, and wasn't similar to Italic at all. dab (ᛏ) 08:14, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Don't forget about the non-Indo-European Iberian language of pre-Roman Spain. Though the Romans were in Spain for a long time, and even Chinese would have been Romanized in Spain. What do you mean by "language suicide"? Latin didn't commit suicide: it got smart and took over an empty shell called Old English and made it into English. Decius 08:20, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
no, Gaulish committed suicide, because Latin was cooler. dab (ᛏ) 08:27, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] numerals

Please, whoever added the Modern Irish and/or the Russian material, do not re-add it. The Modern Irish material is irrelevant, since ordinal number constructions are not inherited from Old Irish, and therefore do not compare with the Gaulish words. Likewise, Russian, a non-Celtic language, does not show any parallels, and if it did, would be outside the scope of a comparison with Gaulish's NEAREST relatives, that is, the other Celtic languages. It is not necessary to compare Russian with EVERY other Indo-European language. That can be done on the Indo-European languages page.

Flibjib8 01:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question about *eqos

I suppose Indo-European *eqos should be Proto-Indo-European *ekʷos, but as a source is given I didn´t dare to change it. Is there someone out there who can check if *eqos is what the source says, or are there any rules in Wikipedia how to write PIE? Laurelindë 20:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

  • ekʷos is indeed correct. --24.201.238.141 16:25, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Phonetics

Some parts of the phonetic information here are more or less bizarre:

"[χ] is an allophone of /k/ before /t/."

A single, allophonic uvular, separated at least 1000 km from its closest kin? I bet that this actually means [x] (which appears briefly in the article too), in some old non-IPA sort of transcription.

"nasal + velar became /ng/ + velar"

Obvious bad transcription aside, is there any reason this would have waited 'til the actual Gaulish period? Just because they wrote <N> does not imply [n]. Sounds like some sort of misunderstanding here.

"U /u/ and V /w/ are distinguished only in one early inscription"

Seriously? That would put the birth of U some 500 years back from what's usually thought.

"intervocalic /st/ became the affricate [ts] (alveolar stop + voiceless alveolar stop)"

(Emphasis mine.) Is that just a failed attempt to point out that an affricate consists of a stop & a fricativ, or something more ambitious that also failed?

"and intervocalic /sr/ became [ðr] and /str/ became [þr]"

And yet we don't have {{[IPA|[ð]}} nor [þ] in the phonology. Either might mean the affricate, or some intermediate that later became something else??

--Tropylium (talk) 22:46, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I imagine the eð serves here for the Gaulish Ð which the article says occurs in some inscriptions, whose value isn't 100% certain, but may have been /ts/. Don't understand the Þorn, though.

-- Paul S 16:33 14 March 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul S (talk • contribs) 16:35, 14 March 2008 (UTC)