Celtic Found to Have Ancient Roots

NY Times ^ | July 1, 2003 | NICHOLAS WADE

[aruanan]

This guy must treat his undergraduate students very well (snicker).

Sounds as though he was just making a statement of fact. He didn't call the other linguists a bunch of ignorant monkeys.

[Pharmboy]

But serially, you do nmention Montreal; that is one real example.

[Pharmboy]

Well, mebbe; but he COULD have been a bit more...how shall we say...respectful of other disciplines' point of view? It just struck me as a bit harsh...and, the sonofagun may not even be RIGHT!

[NittanyLion]

Interesting. Although I clicked on this expecting find a story about Larry Bird on some sort of mind-altering drug...

[Nubbytwanger]

This whole thing is really dubious. Accounts of the Milesian conquest of Ireland and the archeological evidence of the prior occupants place the arrival of the Celts well inside the first millenium BC. Put that up against 30 words? I don't think so. Furthermore, the migration of the Celts from Scythia through the Mediterranean, Egypt, Rome (where their presence is documented) through to Galicia in Spain and on to Ireland is pretty compelling.

[Prof Engineer]

ping

[Bluntpoint]

"Celtic Found to Have Ancient Roots"

When reached for comment, the Rev. Jessie Jackson stated:

"Like all blond caucasoid claims, no matter how much they claim otherwise, their roots are still black. The Celtics are a bunch of peroxide phonies."

[ClearCase_guy]

It is a staggering mistake to say that the author suggested that.

I understand what the author intended, but the formation of that sentence is poor. If I state that Blues has had a wide influence in modern music, leading to Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, Rock and Roll and Duran Duran … this statement is not incorrect, but don’t you think “Duran Duran” is a little out of place?

Duran Duran does not represent a major branch of modern music. English is not a major language family. But I believe Greek, Latin, and Celtic are considered major language families. It's just awkward to make English a fourth "example".

[Redbob]

I'm not sure the journalist said "English is one of four early offshoots"; what he said was that "the ancestral Indo-European language... split into different branches leading to Celtic, Latin, Greek, and English," and presumably to German, Flemish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc. etc.

There is a difference.

[Revelation 911]

Celtic Found to Have Ancient Roots

[NotQuiteCricket]

Don't worry about it. It is an article in the New York Times. You expect too much from this reporter. Maybe the reporter is not a native English speaker (due to affirmative action at the slimes). To expect correct and clearly understandable sentence structure and grammer is racist.

</sarcasm>

[Slyfox]

The domestication of the horse or the invention of the wheeled ox cart may have triggered the great expansion of the Indo-European languages.

The Dallas-Fort Worth airport triggered the great expansion of the word 'y'all'.

[Pharmboy]

Yes, but for someone not familiar with some of the basics associated with the origins of the major world languages (not us, but others, of course), the sentence was dreadfully constructed, ambiguous and misleading.

[Slyfox]

Handy Latin Phrases

[Oberon]

English is not a major language family. But I believe Greek, Latin, and Celtic are considered major language families.

I don't think Greek is a major language family either, but it is interesting to note the importance of the latter three of the four. At some point in history, each of those three languages has served as a lingua franca to a greater or lesser degree. Before the Roman Empire, anyone with a working knowledge of Greek could do business in any of a hundred port towns or trading communities from Tarshish to Tashkent.

Later, Latin served the same function over an even broader geographical range, being used by the Church long after the Roman Empire had been replaced by the Holy Roman Empire.

Today, English is the language of world communications and commerce. Though the World Wide Web spans the globe, well over 90 percent of its content is in English.

I don't know if Celtic ever served as a trade language across cultural boundaries, although it might make for some interesting study. It may be too remote in time to draw any meaningful conclusions.

[stainlessbanner]

has English EVER been replaced ANYWHERE as a language?

Miami.

[rod1]

Well in this case he is probably correct. It is hardly surprising that a vast majority of linguists would have absolutely no clue about techniques used in evolutionary genetics. In fact, there are other area of science where these techniques would be quite foreign as well.

As a geneticist I obviously applaud the application.

[muawiyah]

Clearly the Milesians made use of the existing stock of Gaelic speaking womenfolk in Ireland. The result was the development of a creole language with elements of both, and possibly more elements from the mothers than from the fathers (the mothers being the children's first language teachers).

In any case, no one has ever credited the Milesians with having imposed their language on the Irish, just their rule! This is typical of many conquest situations.

I am not sure why you want the Milesians to come from Galicia (in Anatolia) when it is clear that both the Milesians and the Galicians both came from the same location further West, mainly what we now call Bulgaria and possibly even Ukraine. The blind poet Homer pretty well covered the destruction of the Milesian colony at Illium (Allium) by the more primitive Greeks. That Scythians adopted Celtic culture, weapons and words is beyond dispute. It is an ironclad rule that those who are less technologically developed obtain both the devices and the words from those with the more advanced technology.

The library at Ebla, which provided us with our first historic (and non-Biblical) references to King David also provided us with messages from Celtic kings in the near Middle East to each other and to the folks at Ebla. They were written in a Celtic language.

[Pharmboy]

Great link--thanks.

[Pharmboy]

Ignorant I yam...who the heck were the Milesians? Sounds like a group from Star Trek...could you provide a few good/great links?