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Gaulish Language - Anyone here speak Latin?
#1
I have been doing some personal research into the Gaulish language. That is, the common language, or variations of the common language spoken by most of the populace of Gaul before the Romans invaded. I have realised that there are very few known words and no sentence structure seems to be known. Most of my information comes from the Internet, since there does not seem to be any accessible information in books describing the language in sufficient detail. I do not particularly like the Internet, because a lot of the material is unreferenced.

From the information I have found, I have produced my own bi-lingual dictionary of English and Gaulish. I have published on my groups' website: http://members.optushome.com.au/valenti ... guage.html . The problem is that there only seems to be about 180 known words Confusedhock: , and this makes it hard to make proper sentences. I have borrowed some words from Latin to fill some vital gaps. I am wondering about word order. In his writings in the Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Ceaser notes that Latin and Gaulish were similar and that Roman messages had to be written in Greek so that the Gauls could not interpret them if they intercepted a message. I reason that since no record of Gaulish sentence structure exists, it may be best to use Latin sentence structure.

If anyone here speaks Latin, can they confirm my findings about Latin:
- Each sentence only has one verb.
-The basic word order is Subject, Object, Verb. E.g. I, (the) ball, kick.
- Latin is a very precise language and a ten word sentence in English can be four words in Latin.

If anyone could clarify this, or if anyone knows any more information, help would be appreciated Smile
Andrew Valentine

De Bello Gallico: <a class="postlink" href="http://members.optushome.com.au/valentined/dbg/index.html">http://members.optushome.com.au/valenti ... index.html
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#2
From my knowledge of Latin, what you have written is basically correct about Latin grammar, except there were many sentences that were compound (clean and polish your armor) and complex (first clean and polish your armor, then oil it so you can safely put it in storage). The verbs (except the "BE" irregular, sometimes) usually do come at the end of a sentence. What makes it more specific than, say, English, is that we don't have verb and noun endings that can change a word's meaning in the same way they did, so "let us bless the food" can simply be "cibos benedicamus".

I don't think you'll find a lot of Gaulish words simply for the reason (as you already know) that they didn't write down things in day to day life, and didn't write their history at all, lest as Caesar reports: "their memories would rust" by not memorizing the stories of the past. In Britain, some forms of "Celtic" languages survive as Gaelic and Welsh, though there's gallons of ink been used over the "whether" arguments that surround and attack that statement. I wonder if Irish and Scot Gaelic are not somehow related to what could have been called "Gaulic" in former days. Do the general Latin grammar rules apply in Gaelic? Hard to know, as I'm not a linguist, but even Scot and Irish Gaelic differ somewhat to my ear, so I genuinely have no idea. :?
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)

Saepe veritas est dura.
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#3
Thanks for confirming my thoughts about the basic grammar of Latin. I have to keep sentences short from the lack of words, so complex sentences are not a problem as I cannot really make them!

I have heard about there being some things written in Gaulish using the Greek alphabet (from the Greek influence in southern Gaul about 550 B.C.E, I suppose). I cant remember what exactly, I will have to research it. I have no direct knowledge of the matter, but I would assume that Pre-Roman Continental forms of Celtic language and Post-Roman British Isle forms of Celtic language would be very different. The Italians and Gauls probably got their language from a common source that was different to those of the British Isles. The Romans never invaded Ireland or Scotland (or not for a significant time, anyway), so I cannot see that Latin would have a huge effect on Irish or Scottish Celtic/Gaelic (I don't know which is which) grammar.
Andrew Valentine

De Bello Gallico: <a class="postlink" href="http://members.optushome.com.au/valentined/dbg/index.html">http://members.optushome.com.au/valenti ... index.html
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#4
If you are interested to gaulish language, you can find a dictionary:

Xavier Delamarre, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, Errance, Collection des Hespérides, 2003

and a grammar, including examples from epigraphic sources:

Pierre-Yves Lambert, La langue gauloise, Description linguistique, commentaire d'inscriptions choisies, Errance, 2003

Both are in french, and they are very good and very scientific, even if dictionary is much shorter and grammar less precise than modern languages ones, or even latin or ancient greek ones; the reason is, obviously, that modern knowledge of gaulish language is limited.
Kosios (Livio Asta)
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#5
I'll have to look into those resources. Thanks for sharing them. I don't speak French, but with a French-English bi-lingual dictionary I might be alright. Its worth a try. Smile
Andrew Valentine

De Bello Gallico: <a class="postlink" href="http://members.optushome.com.au/valentined/dbg/index.html">http://members.optushome.com.au/valenti ... index.html
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#6
Ave Fratres,

Have read and reread the posts and wondered if it would help to put in my two denarii on this. There was an interesting program on the TV, I get UK programming here in the Balkans, The premise was that the Anglo Saxon invasion never happened but it was more of a cultural assimilation.......OK,.... Here comes the language part, there was a cameo appearance of some oxford don, that said that the only surviving remnant of the original Celtic languages in English is the word order. German, French, Latin and the Slavic languages have a different way of positioning subjects and verbs, with the verbs usually at or near the end of a sentence....word and verb endings determine case, voice, etc. This may be an interesting premise that may help you with your reconstruction of spoken Gallic. English word order with the resurrected words. It might work. There are probably some closet philologists on RAT that may be able confirm if that is close to being true or just a recent theory.


Regards from a sunny and warm Balkans, Arminius Primus aka Al
ARMINIVS PRIMVS

MACEDONICA PRIMA

aka ( Al Fuerst)




FESTINA LENTE
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#7
That is a very interesting piece of information. Having studied German at high school, I can relate to what you mean how the verb is placed at the end of the sentence.

I am not sure weather the British Celtic language was the same or similar to that of Gaul around 50 B.C.E. I will do some research on it. Since you are talking about the Anglo-Saxons though, and the period of about 500 A.D, I wonder if the TV presenter was talking about the Ancient Gaulish language or the later Gallic language that was spoken in early France? The language that developed after the Romans left Gaul was Gallic, and had a word order like English, whereas earlier Gaulish may not have. I just wonder if the two languages are actually similar? :|
Just my thoughts.
Andrew Valentine

De Bello Gallico: <a class="postlink" href="http://members.optushome.com.au/valentined/dbg/index.html">http://members.optushome.com.au/valenti ... index.html
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#8
In regards to the Gaulish language, all of you might be interested to hear that it is currently undergoing a revival as a modern language. All relevant information can be found here: www.moderngaulish.com. Please feel free to use it as you see fit.

Regards

Steve Hansen, Australia
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#9
It is interesting that Italic and Celtic both had Q and P forms - ie in Irish 'head' is ceann (Q form) whilst in Welsh it is pen (P form). Latin was Q Italic, whilst Sabine/Samnite was P.

Gaulish was very probably closely related to British Celtic (Old Brythonic), we know that Gaulish people trained in druidism in Britain and a number of chieftains (Commius) and tribes (Attrebates Parisii) were found both in northern Gaul and Britain.

However, in the 6th-7th centuries Brythonic became Early Welsh and the language changed very considerably. Pronunciation altered and the use of word endings to indicate inflections (as in Latin) was largely replaced by changes to word order in a sentence or to word beginnings - ie cunus ('dog' - Lat. canis) became cyn or gwn, and the word for 'big' or 'great' (Brythonic - maglos) could be either vawr or mawr depending on grammatical use. Therefore modern Celtic languages are only of limited use as paradigms for ancient Celtic language forms.
Martin

Fac me cocleario vomere!
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