Gaulish language
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Gaulish is an extinct Celtic language spoken in parts of
Continental Europe Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous mainland of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by som ...
before and during the period of the
Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...
. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the
Celts The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...
of
Gaul Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Roman people, Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of . Ac ...
(now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the
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). In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe (" Noric"), parts of the
Balkans The Balkans ( , ), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throug ...
, and
Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...
(" Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish. Together with Lepontic and the Celtiberian spoken in the
Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula ( ), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprisin ...
, Gaulish is a member of the geographic group of Continental Celtic languages. The precise linguistic relationships among them, as well as between them and the modern Insular Celtic languages, are uncertain and a matter of ongoing debate because of their sparse attestation. Gaulish is found in some 800 (often fragmentary) inscriptions including calendars, pottery accounts, funeral monuments, short dedications to gods, coin inscriptions, statements of ownership, and other texts, possibly curse tablets. Gaulish was first written in
Greek script The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as w ...
in southern France and in a variety of
Old Italic script The Old Italic scripts are a family of ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which was the i ...
in northern Italy. After the Roman conquest of those regions, writing shifted to
Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...
. During his conquest of Gaul, Caesar reported that the Helvetii were in possession of documents in the Greek script, and all Gaulish coins used the Greek script until about 50 BC.''The European Iron Age'' by John Collis p.144 ''ff''
/ref> Gaulish in Western Europe was supplanted by
Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Colloquial, Popular, Spoken or Vernacular Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. ''Vulgar Latin'' a ...
. It is thought to have been a living language well into the 6th century. The legacy of Gaulish may be observed in the modern
French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...
and the Gallo-Romance languages, in which 150–400 words, mainly referring to pastoral and daily activities, are known to be derived from the extinct Continental Celtic language. Following the 1066
Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, French people, French, Flemish people, Flemish, and Bretons, Breton troops, all led by the Du ...
, some of these words have also entered the
English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...
, through the influence of
Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...
.


Classification

It is estimated that during the Bronze Age, Proto-Celtic started splitting into distinct languages, including Celtiberian and Gaulish. Due to the expansion of Celtic tribes in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, closely related forms of Celtic came to be spoken in a vast arc extending from Britain and France through the Alpine region and Pannonia in central Europe, and into parts of the
Balkans The Balkans ( , ), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throug ...
and
Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...
. Their precise linguistic relationships are uncertain due to fragmentary evidence. The Gaulish varieties of central and eastern Europe and of Anatolia (called Noric and Galatian, respectively) are barely attested, but from what little is known of them it appears that they were quite similar to those of Gaul and can be considered dialects of a single language. Among those regions where substantial inscriptional evidence exists, three varieties are usually distinguished. * Lepontic, attested from a small area on the south slopes of the
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, near the modern Swiss town of
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, is the oldest Celtic language known to have been written, with inscriptions in a variant of
Old Italic script The Old Italic scripts are a family of ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which was the i ...
appearing circa 600BC. It has been described as either an "early dialect of an outlying form of Gaulish" or a separate Continental Celtic language. * Attestations of Gaulish proper in present-day France are called "Transalpine Gaulish". Its written record begins in the 3rd century BC with inscriptions in
Greek script The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as w ...
, found mainly in the
Rhône The Rhône ( , ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Ròse''; Franco-Provençal, Arpitan: ''Rôno'') is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and Southeastern France before dischargi ...
area of southern France, where Greek cultural influence was present via the colony of Massilia, founded circa 600 BC. After the Roman conquest of Gaul (58–50 BC), the writing of Gaulish shifted to
Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...
. * Finally, there are a small number of inscriptions from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC in Cisalpine Gaul ( northern Italy), which share the same archaic alphabet as the Lepontic inscriptions but are found outside the Lepontic area proper. As they were written after the Gallic conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, they are usually called " Cisalpine Gaulish". They share some linguistic features both with Lepontic and with Transalpine Gaulish; for instance, both Lepontic and Cisalpine Gaulish simplify the consonant clusters and to and respectively, while both Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaulish replace inherited word-final with . Scholars have debated to what extent the distinctive features of Lepontic reflect merely its earlier origin or a genuine genealogical split, and to what extent Cisalpine Gaulish should be seen as a continuation of Lepontic or an independent offshoot of mainstream Transalpine Gaulish. The relationship between Gaulish and the other Celtic languages is also debated. Most scholars today agree that Celtiberian was the first to branch off from other Celtic. Gaulish, situated in the centre of the Celtic language area, shares with the neighboring Brittonic languages of Britain, as well as the neighboring Italic
Osco-Umbrian languages The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in central and southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of ancient Ro ...
, the change of the Indo-European labialized voiceless velar stop > , while both Celtiberian in the south and Goidelic in Ireland retain . Taking this as the primary genealogical
isogloss An isogloss, also called a heterogloss, is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistics, linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Isoglosses are a ...
, some scholars divide the Celtic languages into a " q-Celtic" group and a " p-Celtic" group, in which the p-Celtic languages Gaulish and Brittonic form a common "Gallo-Brittonic" branch. Other scholars place more emphasis on shared innovations between Brittonic and Goidelic and group these together as an Insular Celtic branch. discusses a composite model, in which the Continental and Insular varieties are seen as part of a
dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
, with genealogical splits and areal innovations intersecting.


History


Early period

Though Gaulish personal names written by Gauls in
Greek script The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as w ...
are attested from the region surrounding Massalia by the 3rd century BC, the first true inscriptions in Gaulish appeared in the 2nd century BC. At least 13 references to Gaulish speech and Gaulish writing can be found in Greek and Latin writers of antiquity. The word "Gaulish" () as a language term is first explicitly used in the in a poem referring to Gaulish letters of the alphabet.
Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...
says in his of 58 BC that the Celts/Gauls and their language are separated from the neighboring Aquitani and Belgae by the rivers Garonne and
Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plat ...
/ Marne, respectively. Caesar relates that census accounts written in
Greek script The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as w ...
were found among the Helvetii. He also notes that as of 53 BC the Gaulish druids used the Greek alphabet for private and public transactions, with the important exception of druidic doctrines, which could only be memorised and were not allowed to be written down. According to the '' Recueil des inscriptions gauloises'' nearly three quarters of Gaulish inscriptions (disregarding coins) are in the Greek alphabet. Later inscriptions dating to Roman Gaul are mostly in
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
and have been found principally in central France.Pierre-Yves Lambert, , éditions errance 1994.


Roman period

Latin was quickly adopted by the Gaulish aristocracy after the Gallic Wars to maintain their elite power and influence, with trilingualism in southern Gaul being noted as early as the 1st century BC. Early references to Gaulish in Gaul tend to be made in the context of problems with Greek or Latin fluency until around AD 400, whereas after , Gaulish begins to be mentioned in contexts where Latin has replaced "Gaulish" or "Celtic" (whatever the authors meant by those terms), though at first these only concerned the upper classes. For Galatia (Anatolia), there is no source explicitly indicating a 5th-century language replacement: *During the last quarter of the 2nd century,
Irenaeus Irenaeus ( or ; ; ) was a Greeks, Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christianity, Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology by oppos ...
, bishop of Lugdunum (present-day
Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...
), apologises for his inadequate Greek, being "resident among the Keltae and accustomed for the most part to use a barbarous dialect". *According to the , Symphorian of Augustodunum (present-day
Autun Autun () is a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Saône-et-Loire Departments of France, department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Regions of France, region of central-eastern France. It was founded during the Principate era of the e ...
) was executed on 22 August 178 for his Christian faith. While he was being led to his execution, "his venerable mother admonished him from the wall assiduously and notable to all (?), saying in the Gaulish speech: Son, son, Symphorianus, think of your God!" (). The Gaulish sentence has been transmitted in a corrupt state in the various manuscripts; as it stands, it has been reconstructed by Thurneysen. According to David Stifter (2012), *mentobeto looks like a Proto-Romance verb derived from Latin 'mind' and 'to have', and it cannot be excluded that the whole utterance is an early variant of Romance, or a mixture of Romance and Gaulish, instead of being an instance of pure Gaulish. On the other hand, is attested in Gaulish (for example in Endlicher's Glossary), and the author of the , whether or not fluent in Gaulish, evidently expects a non-Latin language to have been spoken at the time. *The Latin author Aulus Gellius () mentions Gaulish alongside the
Etruscan language Etruscan ( ) was the language of the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria, in Etruria Padana and Etruria Campana in what is now Italy. Etruscan influenced Latin but was eventually superseded by it. Around 13,000 Etruscan epigraph ...
in one anecdote, indicating that his listeners had heard of these languages, but would not understand a word of either.Aulus Gellius, , Extract: "For instance in Rome in our presence, a man experienced and celebrated as a pleader, but furnished with a sudden and, as it were, hasty education, was speaking to the Prefect of the City, and wished to say that a certain man with a poor and wretched way of life ate bread from bran and drank bad and spoiled wine. 'This Roman knight', he said, 'eats apluda and drinks flocces.' All who were present looked at each other, first seriously and with an inquiring expression, wondering what the two words meant; thereupon, as if he might have said something in, I don't know, Gaulish or Etruscan, all of them burst out laughing." (based on BLOM 2007: 183) *The ''Roman History'' by
Cassius Dio Lucius Cassius Dio (), also known as Dio Cassius ( ), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history of ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the ...
(written AD 207–229) may imply that Cis- and Transalpine Gauls spoke the same language, as can be deduced from the following passages: (1) Book XIII mentions the principle that named tribes have a common government and a common speech, otherwise the population of a region is summarized by a geographic term, as in the case of the Spanish/Iberians. (2) In Books XII and XIV, Gauls between the Pyrenees and the River Po are stated to consider themselves kinsmen. (3) In Book XLVI, Cassius Dio explains that the defining difference between Cis- and Transalpine Gauls is the length of hair and the dress style (i.e., he does not mention any language difference), the Cisalpine Gauls having adopted shorter hair and the Roman toga at an early date (). Potentially in contrast, Caesar described the river Rhone as a frontier between the Celts and . *In the Digesta XXXII, 11 of Ulpian (AD 222–228) it is decreed that (testamentary provisions) may also be composed in Gaulish. *Writing at some point between and AD 395, Latin poet and scholar Decimus Magnus Ausonius, from Burdigala (now
Bordeaux Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...
), characterizes his deceased father Iulius' ability to speak Latin as , "halting, not fluent"; in
Attic Greek Attic Greek is the Greek language, Greek dialect of the regions of ancient Greece, ancient region of Attica, including the ''polis'' of classical Athens, Athens. Often called Classical Greek, it was the prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige diale ...
, Iulius felt eloquent enough. This remark is sometimes taken as indicating that the first language of Iulius Ausonius (–378) was Gaulish, but may alternatively mean his first language was Greek. As a physician, he would have cultivated Greek as part of his professional proficiency. *In the Dialogi de Vita Martini I, 26 by Sulpicius Severus (AD 363–425), one of the partners in the dialogue utters the rhetorical commonplace that his deficient Latin might insult the ears of his partners. One of them answers: 'speak Celtic or, if you prefer, Gaulish, as long as you speak about Martin'. *Saint
Jerome Jerome (; ; ; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was an early Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. He is best known ...
(writing in AD 386/387) remarked in a commentary on St. Paul's ''
Epistle to the Galatians The Epistle to the Galatians is the ninth book of the New Testament. It is a letter from Paul the Apostle to a number of Early Christian communities in Galatia. Scholars have suggested that this is either the Galatia (Roman province), Roman pro ...
'' that the Belgic Treveri spoke almost the same language as the Galatians, rather than Latin. This agrees with an earlier report in AD 180 by Lucian. *In an AD 474 letter to his brother-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Clermont in Auvergne, says that in his younger years, "our nobles ... resolved to forsake the barbarous Celtic dialect", evidently in favour of eloquent Latin. *
Cassiodorus Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator (c. 485 – c. 585), commonly known as Cassiodorus (), was a Christian Roman statesman, a renowned scholar and writer who served in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. ''Senato ...
(ca. 490–585) cites in his book VIII, 12, 7 (dated 526) from a letter to king Athalaric: 'Finally you found Roman eloquence in regions that were not originally its own; and there the reading of Cicero rendered you eloquent where once the Gaulish language resounded' *In the 6th century, Cyril of Scythopolis (AD 525–559) tells a story about a Galatian monk who was possessed by an evil spirit and was unable to speak, but if forced to, could speak only in Galatian. *
Gregory of Tours Gregory of Tours (born ; 30 November – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours during the Merovingian period and is known as the "father of French history". He was a prelate in the Merovingian kingdom, encom ...
wrote in the 6th century (c. 560–575) that a shrine in Auvergne which "is called Vasso Galatae in the Gallic tongue" was destroyed and burnt to the ground. This quote has been held by historical linguistic scholarship to attest that Gaulish was indeed still spoken as late as the late 6th century in France.


Final demise

Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul. The exact year of the final language death of Gaulish is unknown, but it is estimated to have been about the late sixth century AD. The language shift was uneven in its progress, and shaped by sociological factors. The presence of retired veterans in colonies did not significantly alter the linguistic composition of Gaul's population. Because few Latin speakers settled in rural areas during Roman times, Latin there held little or no social value for the peasantry; as a result, 90% of the total population of Gaul remained indigenous in origin. The urban aristocracy, who used Latin for trade, education or official uses, would send their children to Roman schools and administered lands for Rome. In the fifth century, at the time of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the vast majority of the (predominantly rural) population remained Gaulish speakers. They would shift to Latin as their native speech only one century after the Frankish conquest of Gaul, adopting the prestige language of their urban literate elite. This eventual spread of Latin can be attributed to the social migration from the focus of urban power to village-centred economies and legal serfdom. Mufwene, Salikoko S. "Language birth and death". Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 33 (2004): 201–222. Page 213: "… the Romans did not colonize Europe on the settlement model … However, the local rulers, who had Romanized already, maintained Latin as the language of their administrations … (footnote) Latin was spread outside Rome largely by foreign mercenaries in Roman legions, similar to how English is spreading today as a world lingua franca significantly by nonnative speakers using it and teaching it to others … (main) More significant is that the Roman colonies were not fully Latinized in the fifth century. When the Romans left, lower classes (the population majority) continued to use Celtic languages, especially in rural areas …" Page 214: "The protracted development of the Romance languages under the substrate influence of Celtic languages is correlated with the gradual loss of the latter, as fewer and fewer children found it useful to acquire the Celtic languages and instead acquired egional Latin… Today the Celtic languages and other more indigenous languages similar to Basque, formerly spoken in the same territory, have vanished." Page 215: " n contrast to the Angles and Saxons who kept Germanic speech and religion the Franks surrendered their Germanic traditions, embracing the language and religion of the indigenous rulers, Latin and Catholicism." Bonnaud maintains that Latinization occurred earlier in Provence and in major urban centers, while Gaulish persisted longest, possibly as late as the tenth century with evidence for continued use according to Bonnaud continuing into the ninth century, in Langres and the surrounding regions, the regions between Clermont, Argenton and
Bordeaux Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...
, and in Armorica. Fleuriot, Falc'hun, and Gvozdanovic likewise maintained a late survival in Armorica and language contact of some form with the ascendant
Breton language Breton (, , ; or in Morbihan) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic languages, Celtic language group spoken in Brittany, part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on the European mainland, albei ...
; however, it has been noted that there is little uncontroversial evidence supporting a relatively late survival specifically in
Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...
whereas there is uncontroversial evidence that supports the relatively late survival of Gaulish in the Swiss Alps and in regions in Central Gaul.Kerkhof, Peter Alexander (2018). "Language, law and loanwords in early medieval Gaul: language contact and studies in Gallo-Romance phonology". Page 50 Drawing from these data, which include the mapping of substrate vocabulary as evidence, Kerkhof argues that we may "tentatively" posit a survival of Gaulish speaking communities "at least into the sixth century" in pockets of mountainous regions of the Central Massif, the Jura, and the Swiss Alps.


Corpus


Summary of sources

According to '' Recueil des inscriptions gauloises'' more than 760 Gaulish inscriptions have been found throughout France, with the notable exception of
Aquitaine Aquitaine (, ; ; ; ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Aguiéne''), archaic Guyenne or Guienne (), is a historical region of southwestern France and a former Regions of France, administrative region. Since 1 January 2016 it has been part of the administ ...
, and in northern Italy. Inscriptions include short dedications, funerary monuments, proprietary statements, and expressions of human sentiments, but also some longer documents of a legal or magical-religious nature, the three longest being the Larzac tablet, the Chamalières tablet and the Lezoux dish. The most famous Gaulish record is the Coligny calendar, a fragmented bronze tablet dating from the 2nd century AD and providing the names of Celtic months over a five-year span; it is a lunisolar calendar trying to synchronize the solar year and the lunar month by inserting a thirteenth month every two and a half years. There is also a longish (11 lines) inscribed tile from Châteaubleau that has been interpreted as a curse or alternatively as a sort of wedding proposal. Many inscriptions are only a few words (often names) in rote phrases, and many are fragmentary. It is clear from the subject matter of the records that the language was in use at all levels of society. Other sources contribute to knowledge of Gaulish: Greek and
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
authors mention Gaulish words, personal and tribal names, and toponyms. A short Gaulish-Latin vocabulary (about 20 entries headed ) called " Endlicher's Glossary" is preserved in a 9th-century manuscript (Öst. Nationalbibliothek, MS 89 fol. 189v). French now has about 150 to 180 known words of Gaulish origin, most of which concern pastoral or daily activity. If dialectal and derived words are included, the total is about 400 words. This is the highest number among the
Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
.


Inscriptions

Gaulish inscriptions are edited in the '' Recueil des inscriptions gauloises'' (RIG), in four volumes, comprising text (in the
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, Greek, and
Etruscan alphabet The Etruscan alphabet was used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write Etruscan language, their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD. The Etruscan alphabet derives from the Euboean alpha ...
s) written on public monuments, private '' instrumentum'', two calendars, and coins. The longest known Gaulish text is the Larzac tablet, found in 1983 in
l'Hospitalet-du-Larzac L'Hospitalet-du-Larzac (; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Aveyron Departments of France, department in southern France, part of the southern Massif central, incorporating part of the Larzac plateau. The economy is agricultural, nota ...
, France. It is inscribed in Roman cursive on both sides of two small sheets of lead. Probably a curse tablet (), it clearly mentions relationships between female names, for example (Aia, daughter of Adiega... Adiega, mother of Aia) and seems to contain incantations regarding one Severa Tertionicna and a group of women (often thought to be a rival group of witches), but the exact meaning of the text remains unclear. The Coligny calendar was found in 1897 in Coligny, France, with a statue identified as
Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...
. The calendar contains Gaulish words but Roman numerals, permitting translations such as evidently meaning days, and month. Months of 30 days were marked , "lucky", months of 29 days , "unlucky", based on comparison with Middle Welsh and , but the meaning could here also be merely descriptive, "complete" and "incomplete".Bernhard Maier: . S. 81 f. The pottery at La Graufesenque is the most important source for Gaulish numerals. Potters shared furnaces and kept tallies inscribed in Latin cursive on ceramic plates, referring to kiln loads numbered 1 to 10: *1st (Welsh "before", "first", Breton "in front" "first", Cornish "first", Old Irish , Irish "first") *2nd , (Welsh , Breton , Old Irish "other", Irish ) *3rd (Welsh , Breton , Old Irish ) *4th (Welsh , Breton ) *5th (Welsh , Breton , Old Irish ) *6th (possibly mistaken for , but see Rezé inscription below; Welsh , Breton , Old Irish ) *7th (Welsh , Breton , Old Irish ) *8th (Welsh , Breton , Old Irish ) *9th (Welsh , Breton , Old Irish ) *10th , ( CIb , Welsh , Breton , Old Irish ) The lead inscription from Rezé (dated to the 2nd century, at the mouth of the
Loire The Loire ( , , ; ; ; ; ) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône. It rises in the so ...
, northwest of La Graufesenque) is evidently an account or a calculation and contains quite different ordinals: *3rd *4th *5th *6th , etc. Other Gaulish numerals attested in Latin inscriptions include "fourteenth" (rendered as , with Latinized dative-ablative singular ending) and "thirty" (rendered as , with a Latinized ablative plural ending; compare Irish ). A Latinized phrase for a "ten-night festival of (
Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...
) Grannus", , is mentioned in a Latin inscription from
Limoges Limoges ( , , ; , locally ) is a city and Communes of France, commune, and the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne Departments of France, department in west-central France. It was the administrative capital of the former Limousin region. Situated o ...
. A similar formation is to be found in the Coligny calendar, in which mention is made of a "three-night (festival?) of (the month of) Samonios". As is to be expected, the ancient Gaulish language was more similar to
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
than modern Celtic languages are to modern Romance languages. The ordinal numerals in Latin, used when more than two objects are counted, are , , , and . An inscription in stone from Alise-Sainte-Reine (first century AD) reads: :: :: ::"Martialis onof Dannotalos offered to he god Ucuetis this edifice, ::and to the smiths ( dative plural; compare Old Irish ) who honour (?) Ucuetis in Alisia" A number of short inscriptions are found on spindle whorls and are among the most recent finds in the Gaulish language. Spindle whorls were apparently given to girls by their suitors and bear such inscriptions as: * (RIG l. 119) "my girl, take my penis(?)" (or "little kiss"?) * (RIG l. 120) '"I am a young girl, good (and) pretty." A gold ring found in Thiaucourt seems to express the wearers undying loyalty to her lover: * "May (this ring) never see (me) turn away (from you), Adiantunnos!" Inscriptions found in Switzerland are rare. The most notable inscription found in Helvetic parts is the '' Bern zinc tablet'', inscribed () and apparently dedicated to Gobannus, the Celtic god of metalwork. Furthermore, there is a statue of a seated goddess with a
bear Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family (biology), family Ursidae (). They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats ...
, Artio, found in Muri bei Bern, with a Latin inscription , suggesting a Gaulish "Bear (goddess)". Some coins with Gaulish inscriptions in the Greek alphabet have also been found in Switzerland, e.g. RIG IV Nos. 92 ( Lingones) and 267 ( Leuci). A sword, dating to the La Tène period, was found in
Port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...
, near Biel/Bienne, with its blade inscribed with (), probably the name of the smith.


Phonology

*vowels: **short: a, e, i, o, u **long: ā, ē, ī, (ō), ū **diphthongs: ai, ei, oi, au, eu, ou # is an allophone of /k/ before /t/. *occlusives: **voiceless: **voiced: *resonants **nasals: **liquids *sibilant: *affricate: *semi-vowels: The diphthongs all transformed over the historical period. ''Ai'' and ''oi'' changed into long ''ī'' and ''eu'' merged with ''ou'', both becoming long ''ō''. ''Ei'' became long ''ē''. In general, long diphthongs became short diphthongs and then long vowels. Long vowels shortened before nasals in coda. Other transformations include unstressed ''i'' became ''e'', ''ln'' became ''ll'', a stop + ''s'' became ''ss'', and a nasal + velar became + velar. The lenis
plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
s seem to have been voiceless, unlike in Latin, which distinguished lenis occlusives with a voiced realization from fortis occlusives with a voiceless realization, which caused confusions like for , for , for .


Orthography


Lugano script

The alphabet of
Lugano Lugano ( , , ; ) is a city and municipality within the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland. It is the largest city in both Ticino and the Italian-speaking region of southern Switzerland. Lugano has a population () of , and an u ...
used in Cisalpine Gaul for Lepontic: :AEIKLMNOPRSTΘVXZ The alphabet of Lugano does not distinguish voicing in stops: represents or , is for or , for or . is probably for . and are distinguished in only one early inscription. is probably for and X for (Lejeune 1971, Solinas 1985).


Greek script

The Eastern Greek alphabet used in southern Gallia Narbonensis.


Latin script

Latin alphabet (monumental and cursive) in use in Roman Gaul: :ABCDꟇEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXZ :abcdꟈefghiklmnopqrstvxz G and K are sometimes used interchangeably (especially after R). ''Ꟈ''/''ꟈ'', and may represent and/or . X, is for or . Q is only used rarely () and may represent an archaism (a retained ), borrowings from Latin, or, as in Latin, an alternate spelling of (for original , , or ). Ꟈ is the letter '' tau gallicum'', the Gaulish affricate. The letter ''ꟉꟉ''/''ꟊꟊ'' occurs in some inscriptions.


Sound laws

* Gaulish changed the Proto-Celtic voiceless labiovelar (from both PIE and PIE ) to , a development also observed in the Brittonic languages (as well as Greek and some
Italic languages The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient Italic languages ...
like the
Osco-Umbrian languages The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in central and southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of ancient Ro ...
), while other Celtic languages retained the labiovelar. Thus, the Gaulish word for "son" was , contrasting with Primitive Irish *'' maq(q)os'' (attested
genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...
), which became (gen. ) in modern Irish. In modern Welsh the word , (or its contracted form , ) is found in surnames. Similarly one Gaulish word for "horse" was (in Old Breton and modern Breton "pregnant mare") while
Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (, Ogham, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ; ; or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic languages, Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The ...
has , the modern
Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...
and
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...
, and Manx , all derived from
proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
*'' h₁éḱwos''. The retention or innovation of this sound does not necessarily signify a close genetic relationship between the languages; Goidelic and Brittonic are, for example, both Insular Celtic languages and quite closely related. * The Proto-Celtic voiced labiovelar (from PIE ) became : * → "I pray" (but Celtiberian Ku.e.z.o.n.to /gueðonto/ < *'' gʷʰedʰ-y-ont'' 'imploring, pleading', Old Irish ''guidim'', Welsh ''gweddi'' "to pray"). * PIE , became , spelled : → (cf. Irish "nearest", Welsh "next", Modern Breton and "next"). * PIE became or , and later : PIE *'' tewtéh₂'' → / → "tribe" (cf. Irish , Welsh "people"). *PIE became and PIE → (cf. Irish "three"). * Additionally, intervocalic became the affricate (alveolar stop + voiceless alveolar stop) and intervocalic became and became . Finally, labial and velar stops merged into the fricative when occurring before or .


Morphology

Gaulish had some areal (and genetic, see
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
and the controversial Italo-Celtic hypothesis) similarity to Latin grammar, and the French historian Ferdinand Lot argued that this helped the rapid adoption of Vulgar Latin in Roman Gaul among the urban aristocracy.


Noun cases

Gaulish had seven cases: the nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative,
instrumental An instrumental or instrumental song is music without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through Semantic change, semantic widening, a broader sense of the word s ...
and the locative case. Greater epigraphical evidence attests common cases (nominative and accusative) and common stems (-o- and -a- stems) than for cases less frequently used in inscriptions or rarer -i-, -n- and -r- stems. The following table summarises the reconstructed endings for the words "tribe, people", "boy, son", "seer", "voice", and "brother". In some cases, a historical evolution is attested; for example, the dative singular of a-stems is in the oldest inscriptions, becoming first and finally as in Irish ''a''-stem nouns with attenuated (''slender'') consonants: nom. "hand, arm" (cf. Gaul. ) and dat. (< ; cf. Gaul. > * > ). Further, the plural instrumental had begun to encroach on the dative plural (dative and vs. instrumental and ), and in the modern Insular Languages, the instrumental form is known to have completely replaced the dative. For o-stems, Gaulish also innovated the pronominal ending for the nominative plural and genitive singular in place of expected and still present in Celtiberian (). In a-stems, the inherited genitive singular is attested but was subsequently replaced by as in Insular Celtic. The expected genitive plural appears innovated as (vs. Celtiberian ). There also appears to be a dialectal equivalence between and endings in accusative singular endings particularly, with Transalpine Gaulish favouring , and Cisalpine favouring . In genitive plurals the difference between and relies on the length of the preceding vowel, with longer vowels taking over (in the case of this is a result of its innovation from ).


Verbs

Gaulish verbs have present, future, perfect, and imperfect tenses; indicative, subjunctive, optative and imperative moods; and active and passive voices. Verbs show a number of innovations as well. The Indo-European s-aorist became the Gaulish t-preterit, formed by merging an old third-person singular imperfect ending - to a third-person singular perfect ending or and subsequent affixation to all forms of the t-preterit tense. Similarly, the s-preterit is formed from the extension of (originally from the third person singular) and the affixation of to the third-person singular (to distinguish it as such). Third-person plurals are also marked by addition of in the preterit.


Syntax


Word order

Most Gaulish sentences seem to consist of a subject–verb–object word order: :: Some, however, have patterns such as verb–subject–object (as in living Insular Celtic languages) or with the verb last. The latter can be seen as a survival from an earlier stage in the language, very much like the more archaic
Celtiberian language Celtiberian or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic is an extinct Indo-European language of the Celtic branch spoken by the Celtiberians in an area of the Iberian Peninsula between the headwaters of the Douro, Tagus, Júcar and Turia rivers and the ...
. Sentences with the verb first can be interpreted, however, as indicating a special purpose, such as an imperative, emphasis, contrast, and so on. Also, the verb may contain or be next to an enclitic pronoun or with "and", "but", etc. According to J. F. Eska, Gaulish was certainly not a verb-second language, as the following shows: :: Whenever there is a pronoun object element, it is next to the verb, as per Vendryes' Restriction. The general Celtic grammar shows Wackernagel's rule, so putting the verb at the beginning of the clause or sentence. As in Old Irish and traditional literary Welsh, the verb can be preceded by a particle with no real meaning by itself but originally used to make the utterance easier. :: :: According to Eska's model, Vendryes' Restriction is believed to have played a large role in the development of Insular Celtic verb-subject-object word order. Other authorities such as John T. Koch, dispute that interpretation. Considering that Gaulish is not a verb-final language, it is not surprising to find other "head-initial" features: *Genitives follow their head nouns: :: *The unmarked position for adjectives is after their head nouns: :: *Prepositional phrases have the preposition, naturally, first: :: *Passive clauses: ::


Subordination

Subordinate clauses follow the main clause and have an uninflected element () to show the subordinate clause. This is attached to the first verb of the subordinate clause. :: is also used in relative clauses and to construct the equivalent of THAT-clauses :: This element is found residually in the Insular Celtic languages and appears as an independent inflected relative pronoun in Celtiberian, thus: *Welsh **modern "which is" ← Middle Welsh ← * **vs. Welsh "is" ← *Irish **Old Irish relative "they love" ← * *Celtiberian ** masc. nom. sing. , masc. dat. sing. , fem. acc. plural


Clitics

Gaulish had object pronouns that affixed inside a word: :: Disjunctive pronouns also occur as clitics: . They act like the emphasizing particles known as ''notae augentes'' in the Insular Celtic languages. :: :: Clitic doubling is also found (along with left dislocation), when a noun antecedent referring to an inanimate object is nonetheless grammatically animate. (There is a similar construction in Old Irish.)


Modern usage

In an interview, Swiss
folk metal Folk metal is a fusion genre of heavy metal music and traditional folk music that developed in Europe during the 1990s. It is characterised by the widespread use of folk instruments and, to a lesser extent, traditional singing styles (for example ...
band Eluveitie said that some of their songs are written in a reconstructed form of Gaulish. The band asks linguistic scholars for help in writing songs in the language. The name of the band comes from graffiti on a vessel from Mantua (). The
inscription Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...
in Etruscan letters reads ''eluveitie,'' which has been interpreted as the Etruscan form of the Celtic ("the Helvetian"), presumably referring to a man of Helvetian descent living in Mantua.


See also

* Italo-Celtic * Lepontic language *
Celtiberian language Celtiberian or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic is an extinct Indo-European language of the Celtic branch spoken by the Celtiberians in an area of the Iberian Peninsula between the headwaters of the Douro, Tagus, Júcar and Turia rivers and the ...
* Languages of France * List of English words of Gaulish origin * List of French words of Gaulish origin


References


Citations


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * . * . * * * * * ''Recueil des inscriptions gauloises'' (XLVe supplément à «GALLIA»). ed. Paul-Marie Duval et al. 4 vols. Paris: CNRS, 1985–2002. * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* Beck, Noémie. "Celtic Divine Names Related to Gaulish and British Population Groups". In: ''Théonymie Celtique, Cultes, Interpretatio – Keltische Theonymie, Kulte, Interpretatio''. Edited by Hofeneder, Andreas and De Bernardo Stempel, Patrizia, by Hainzmann, Manfred and Mathieu, Nicolas. Wein: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2013. 51–72. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv8mdn28.7. * Hamp, Eric P. "Gaulish ordinals and their history". In: ''Études Celtiques'', vol. 38, 2012. pp. 131–135. OI: https://doi.org/10.3406/ecelt.2012.2349 ww.persee.fr/doc/ecelt_0373-1928_2012_num_38_1_2349* Lambert, Pierre-Yves. "Le Statut Du Théonyme Gaulois". In Théonymie Celtique, Cultes, Interpretatio – Keltische Theonymie, Kulte, Interpretatio, edited by Hofeneder Andreas and De Bernardo Stempel Patrizia, by Hainzmann Manfred and Mathieu Nicolas, 113-24. Wein: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2013. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv8mdn28.11. * * Mullen, Alex; Darasse, Coline Ruiz. "Gaulish". In: ''Palaeohispanica: revista sobre lenguas y culturas de la Hispania antigua'' n. 20 (2020): pp. 749–783. DOI: 10.36707/palaeohispanica.v0i20.383 * Witczak, Krzysztof Tomasz. "Gaulish SUIOREBE 'with two sisters'", Lingua Posnaniensis 57, 2: 59–62, doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/linpo-2015-0011


External links


L.A. Curchin, "Gaulish language"
* Langues et écriture en Gaule Romaine by Hélène Chew of the Musée des Antiquités Nationales

{{Authority control Extinct languages of Europe Languages attested from the 3rd century BC Languages extinct in the 6th century Subject–verb–object languages