Celtic Found to Have Ancient Roots

NY Times ^ | July 1, 2003 | NICHOLAS WADE

[MacDorcha]

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[Salamander]

You are evil.

[I like that in a person]....;))

[SunkenCiv]

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[WoofDog123]

or even more curiously, the romans conquered britain started about a century after caesar's conquest of gaul, yet the brytonic branch of gaelic survived as the british language in non-saxon areas, not the provincial latin that must have been spoken by some in towns.

The only possible contribution I have read about the Franks to provincial latin was that their population density might account for the distinct pronunciation of french in the nothern part of france compared to the signature sound of other roman tongues (spanish/italian/romanish/portugues/catalan).

[WoofDog123]

that and the absolute disinterest in what remains of writings in antiquity of interest in philology of barbarian tongues. I think there are cases (gothic for sure) where only the need to translate the bible insured any quantity of written material survived, which obviously post-dates the era in question.

[WoofDog123]

i too find the loss of most or all of the declension system and grammatical features of many western european I-E languages odd, though in the case of english it has been suggested that mercian english was so heavily influenced by norse immigration in the time of the danelaw that that alone impacted the language in favor of simplification.

As for why acc. and dative noun declensions, dual-case pronouns, gender and all adjective and adverb declension simply vanished, I do find it puzzling. Romance lang. have lost everything BUT gender, and even some west and north germanic tongues without the varied influences english have had have given up some aspects of the structure. I guess icelandic is the best remaining germanic example.

In the case of romance I wonder if having so many people learning latin as a second language in the provinces at some point, where they certainly never could grasp the myriad grammatical forms, resulted in the next generation never hearing the language declined correctly and the growth of prepositions as a tool to form sentences understandably. Not sure how much germanic immigation on a percent of population there was into italy in late empire/early dark age time on which to add to this, but it is an interesting idea, particularly for france and iberia - immigration (in an era where education was non-existent for many) would result in the langauge being rationalized if too much population displacement occured.

[WoofDog123]

maybe i read your comment wrong. i also find the ingredients necessary to form such an insanely complex system as proto-indo-european grammar hard to imagine, given that it probably happened in a stone-age society.

[WoofDog123]

i just saw the date on your post. these 3-year old pings do create some confusion. i have occasionally posted a response just to find i had posted something similar a couple of years before on the same thread.

[Question_Assumptions]

Thanks for the reply and actually addressing the point that I raised. Yes, I understand why language simplication happens (e.g., the Danish influence on Anglo-Saxon reducing the importance of case markers, the Romance Languages being a sort of "Latin for Dummies", etc.) but, like you said, what baffles me is a stone age culture developing all of that complexity in the first place. All I can guess is that being verbal cultures without writing and a lot of recreation options, they did a lot of talking and thus had a motive for inventing the distinctions and the time and practice to learn and retain them.

[WoofDog123]

i thought about this some more. granted that I do not know what ancient structures other language families had which might resemble this insane complexity, and if this is in fact common in proto-language groups.

random thoughts - case markers would greatly word usage needed to communicate, but the practical value of gender in nouns, for example, eludes me. then i think about declining adjectives to match case, person, and gender of strong or weak nouns and i cannot fathom it.

the oddest thing is that this stuff evolved in the earliest stages of proto-I-E, given that case markers are similar or identical throughout pretty much all ancient branches of the family. apparently it was very important to help that stone age people communicate ideas effectively. I do wonder if they had what we would call prepositions at all or to any degree.

Would be interesting to know the thoughts of a native-tongue speaker of a language with most or all of its declensions still in use on this topic. All I can offer is that giving up the genitive in english would be a hassle and wordy as heck, romance-style.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

It is a staggering mistake to say that English is one of 4 early offshoots from the ancestral Indo-European language.

Damn right! He meant to say 'Merican.

[Pharmboy]

I believe the Romans so detested the Carthaginians because of their practice of child sacrifice.

[Cronos]

or most likely spanglish -- english always adapts and adds in more words, eh hombre?

[Cronos]

Troy was 1000 BC -- way before proto-Celtic. You could call them Indo-Europeans, but then the Greeks were also Indo-Europeans. at the time of the Illiad, northwestern Anatolia would have been partially Hittitie / Mitanni

[muawiyah]

Urnfield Culture (aka, Celtic) began circa 1200 BC.

The Ironage begins 1000 BC - 750 BC in many places. This is when the sea-going Celts came to be known in the Mediterranean. According to Galician sources the last Celtic invasion of Ireland departed from the coast of Spain circa 700 BC (some sources place this at 500 BC, and all that means is the "invasion" might well have occurred over a very long span of time.

[Cronos]

The Phoenicians excelled at trade. The Carthagenians excelled at war.

Not really, one Hannibal does not a war machine make. The Carthaginians were traders in the western mediterranean, just as it's mother country, the city of Tyre were traders in the eastern mediterranean. They made pacts with the Berbers inland of them and with the Ibero-Celts in Hispania, but they were not known for their warring capabilities. When Rome attacked, the Carthaginians relied on their allies for fighting on land. On the sea, well, the main fighting was ramming ships. Then Hannibal came along.....

[Prost1]

German comes from the word Germane and referred to the those tribes who originally had been known to live in the Ukraine but moved westward into Celtic territory.

Thus Germans refer to the original Scythians, not those latter known by that name because they displaced the Germane (original) peoples.

The habit of Lederhosen is a direct linkage to the Scythian horsemanship.

[Ciexyz]

I see this thread has picked up again, after a hiatus of some months. I'll have to go back to the beginning and re-read the original article, before responding.

[ZULU]

"German comes from the word Germane and referred to the those tribes who originally had been known to live in the Ukraine but moved westward into Celtic territory."

I believe German comes from the Latin word Germanus and I think it has some connection to a term meaning "brothers".
The German name for themselves was something like Teutones and the modern German word Deutsch is derived from it.

I do not believe the Germans came from Ukraine. I believe you are confusing the Goths, a Germanic tribe with "the Germans". The Goths originally came from Scandinavia, settled on the shores of the Baltic Sea for a time and controlled the lucrative amber trade with Greece and Ancient Rome. LAter they moved into Ukraine and lived there for some time before being driven west by the Huns and tribes allied with them. A portion of the Goths themselves, the later Ostrogoths, were actually forcibly recruited into the Hunnish Army along with various Turkic, Iranian and other Germanic people.

The Germans originally came from northern Europe and moved west, east and south, displacing the Celtic people from Switzerland, southern Germany and Austria until temporarily stopped by the Romans.

"Thus Germans refer to the original Scythians, not those latter known by that name because they displaced the Germane (original) peoples."

Again, I don't agree. The original Scythians were an Iranian people related to the ancient Persians and Sanskrit speaking invaders of India.

"The habit of Lederhosen is a direct linkage to the Scythian horsemanship."

Why on earth would anybody want to ride a horse in short pants? Horsehair can be very irritating. The Scythians, Mongols, Huns, Goths, Turks and other horse people always worse full pants.

I haven't got the slightest idea where Lederhosen came from. I think it means Leather Pants in German.

Why does this topic seem to interst so many people and why does it keep regurgitating itself? That's interesting in itself.

[Prost1]

It is totally absurd to think of a people coming out of Scandinavia en masse. This is another false assumption of early "historian" which is still perpetuated.

And, no, I am not thinking of the Goths. The Franks came from the area as well. As legend has it, Trier was founded by a descendant of Troy and became one of the "Palaces" of the Franks.

Deutsch refers to Tribe in the same way as Tuatha refers to tribe. "Ich bin Deutscher" means "I am a tribesman". "Aber was fuer ein Deutscher?" means "But which tribe?" "Ja, ich bin Hessisch" means "I am Hessian". Underlying the meaning is that of "Volk" or people. So the order of the language is People, tribesman, tribe.

As an aside, the curiosity of saying Deutscher is that the languages spoken must have been far closer than they are today. Considering that a vocabulary of 10,000 words was probably max, it is not unreasonable to suggest that German, Keltic and possibly other languages were more similar than conjectured.

Back to the basics. Europe was lightly populated as a result of the last Ice Age. Forests covered much of the landscape, wolves and bears were found throughout. People would have had to stay close to fresh water sources that would have provided their principle transportation, as well. Northern Europe and Germany was marshy or plains. Tribes moved as they used up the local resources. There is no substantive proof that Cold, dark, unfriendly Scandinavia could support the large numbers of peoples supposedly appearing suddenly from there.

To the contrary. The people north of the Black sea followed the sea routes north and established settlements and colonies.

Sorry for being long-winded.