Looking for good resources on Gaulish...in English

[sucaeyl]

Thanks for this! It'll be an interesting read.

[kuroda]

I wonder if anyone tried to derive a conlang from Gaulish with historical French sound changes.

Yes.

(Failed/lost interest )

[marconatrix]

Afaik, apart from a few obscure hydronyms, all the recorded pre-gaelic place and personal names from Scotland look to be British in the South, and something not very different from British in the North. All those aber's and penn's and so on. Plus some hints of Brittonic influence on Scots Gaelic.

It would be fun to reinvent Pictish but it would have to be at least 80% invention, hopefully informed deductive invention. Take a look though at the attempts on the web to 'restore' 'Cumbrian' i.e. the Late Brittonic/Proto Welsh of North Britain, or perhaps you shouldn't (!) Anyway they have more to go on than with Pictish as the language lasted longer and was closely related to a well known language, Welsh.

Then there's "West-Country Brittonic" which is a sort of mash-up of Nance's Unified Cornish and Lewis' Llawlyfr Llydaweg Canol, of which the less said the better. (Why did I even mention it ... aaagh!)

Actually Dewrad (was it you?) did pretty well with his Gaulish derived modern Channel Island language, which looked quite believable to me.

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Someone said that Gaulish and early Irish don't look 'Celtic'. Q. How would you characterise 'Celtic'?
Personally I don't have too much of a problem with seeing Gaulish as Celtic, as I can recognise many familiar nouns and adjectives at least. The problem I have is with Celtiberian, can anyone demonstrate why this is categorised as Celtic rather than just 'unknown IE'?

[WeepingElf]

Actually Dewrad (was it you?) did pretty well with his Gaulish derived modern Channel Island language, which looked quite believable to me.

Yes, it was him.

I also have a modern Continental Celtic language project (for the League of Lost Languages), but it hasn't developed much so far. It is meant to be spoken in the Alps and doesn't have typically Insular Celtic features such as VSO word order or initial mutations. It is in part a response on Dewrad's Arvorec, which does have those features. (In my opinion, those features developed after the Celtic languages got established in the British Isles, under the influence of a pre-IE substratum.)

Someone said that Gaulish and early Irish don't look 'Celtic'. Q. How would you characterise 'Celtic'?

This is something that some people get messed up. The Insular Celtic languages (i.e., all of those still spoken, including Breton which immigrated from Britain around 500 AD) have certain highly characteristic typological features, namely VSO word order and initial mutations. These, however, are not what defines them as "Celtic". They are Celtic because they belong to a particular branch of Indo-European, to which Gaulish and Celtiberian also belong - despite lacking those "typically Celtic" features.

Personally I don't have too much of a problem with seeing Gaulish as Celtic, as I can recognise many familiar nouns and adjectives at least. The problem I have is with Celtiberian, can anyone demonstrate why this is categorised as Celtic rather than just 'unknown IE'?

I cannot provide you with details, but:

There are certain phonological developments that define the Celtic branch of IE, such as the loss of */p/ in most contexts, and Celtiberian has them. There are also some words and word-forms that are characteristic of Celtic, and are also found in Celtiberian.

[linguoboy]

OK. Have a go at this and get back to me with any questions.

I've got one: what's the evidence for "φ > w /[+back]_[+nasal]"? I'm trying to derive a Brythonic cognate to Irish cuan (< PC *kaφno-) and having a helluva time finding parallels. (I thought perhaps tân < *taφno-, but the consensus seems to be that it derives from *teɸnet-.)

[Dewrad]

OK. Have a go at this and get back to me with any questions.

I've got one: what's the evidence for "φ > w /[+back]_[+nasal]"?

Matasović cites *sowno- "sleep" from PIE *supno- as evidence.

[Zaarin]

There are certain phonological developments that define the Celtic branch of IE, such as the loss of */p/ in most contexts, and Celtiberian has them. There are also some words and word-forms that are characteristic of Celtic, and are also found in Celtiberian.

Indeed, isn't this why Lusitanian is generally not classified as Celtic--because in some instances it has a <p> (assuming <p> does in fact equal /p/) where it ought not have a /p/ if it were Celtic?

[WeepingElf]

There are certain phonological developments that define the Celtic branch of IE, such as the loss of */p/ in most contexts, and Celtiberian has them. There are also some words and word-forms that are characteristic of Celtic, and are also found in Celtiberian.

Indeed, isn't this why Lusitanian is generally not classified as Celtic--because in some instances it has a <p> (assuming <p> does in fact equal /p/) where it ought not have a /p/ if it were Celtic?

AFAIK, yes.

[James0289]

I thought I would bump this back up again -- it looks interesting. I've usually got an idea for a Celtic conlang buzzing around in my head, with only limited success in getting it crystallised in a semi-coherent manner.

In fact, not just Gaulish, but any references to materials about Celtic diachronics would be interesting -- sound changes from Proto-Celtic, grammatical developments, that sort of thing.

[hwhatting]

I don't remember if Language in Pictland has already been linked to on the ZBB, but it doesn't do any harm. Relevant to the discussion.

[Nortaneous]

There are certain phonological developments that define the Celtic branch of IE, such as the loss of */p/ in most contexts, and Celtiberian has them.

What are the other phonological developments? (I ask because Proto-Basque has some Celtic-like features: no /p/, fortis-lenis contrast in /n l r/ like Old Irish...)

[James0289]

What are the other phonological developments?

According to the entry for Proto-Celtic in John Koch's "Celtic Culture: a Historical Encyclopedia", at least the following:

Consonants:
PIE palato-velar ḱ, ǵ and velar k, g Proto-Celtic velar k, g
PIE g^w PC b
PIE's voiced aspirated plosives de-aspirated to b, d, g
PIE's p deleted in most environments. Word medially before a consonant, it became /X/. Some instances of (P)IE /p/ merged with /k^w/ (presumably affected by later changes, such as the one which has been termed the P/Q split), as in *penk^we-to "fifth" > Old Irish cóiced (but Gaulish pinpetos)
IE /s/ + /nasal/ geminated nasal; e.g. *es-mi "I am" > Gaulish imi, OIr. am
IE's double dental consonants the so-called "tau gallicum", i.e. /t^s/ or /^st/, exact phonemic value unclear
PIE's laryngeals merged and were mostly lost. Around resonants, the associated vowel tended to become /a/.
PIE syllabic /m n/ am, an
PIE syllabic /l r/ /ri li/ before (P)IE's k^w, t, k, ḱ, g^w, g, ǵ, b and the aspirated plosives

Vowels:
IE ē ī
IE ō (also ōH, where H is a laryngeal) ū word finally, ā non-finally

[James0289]

Here's a little list of what I've found about Gaulish so far.

Available on the interwebz:

• Václav Blažek (2008): "Gaulish Language" (Graeco-Latina Brunensia, vol. 57, pp.37-65) - he's also written one on Celtiberian
• David Stifter (2008) "IV. Gaulish" (one of a series of notes to go along with a fieldcourse -- see the others here (scroll down))
• Bernard Mees (no date) "Wackernagel's law, pro-drop and verb-second syntax in Continental Celtic" (probably a handout for a lecture, it gives his take on ideas concerning mainly Gaulish syntax - it doesn't help that translations for the Gaulish sentences aren't given, though)
• Karin Stüber (2007) "Effects of Language Contact on Roman and Gaulish Personal Names" (in Hildegard Tristram (ed.) The Celtic languages in contact : Papers from the workshop within the framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies, Bonn, 26-27 July 2007)
• And of course the Wikipedia page and Dewrad's materials which have already been linked to earlier in the thread.

Available in print books:

• Chapters 1-3 of The Celtic Languages, second edition (eds. Martin J. Ball & Nicole Müller), Routledge. (Namely, 1. Typological aspects of the Celtic languages, 2. The emergence of the Celtic languages, 3. Continental Celtic -- general overviews of Gaulish, its attestations and its placement within Celtic.)
• Joseph Eska (2008) Chapter 8, "Continental Celtic" (in The Ancient Languages of Europe, ed. Roger D. Woodard; Cambridge) -- includes descriptions of Gaulish, Hispano-Celtic (= Celtiberian) and Lepontic
• John Koch's (2006) Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, vols 1-3, ABC-CLIO

[Zaarin]

Thanks for the additional resources, James and hwhatting.

[Bristel]

Oh nice. This thread might further develop into a good resource thread on Celtic in general.

My conlang Ercunic is Celtic (set in the Hercynian Forest and other parts of Germania), and it frequently reminds me of Irish more than Gaulish, but there are some reflexes that look Gaulish as well.

[Bristel]

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Pāpos donyos est gnātos riyos etic samalos canti balcoteron etic iānoterā.

Pèif deugne est né ri e sémaux chent bélquière e jéntère.

Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en dignité et en droits.

Ercunic:
Cách doin est ñath rí onct saval caint balcáché onct *rechtáché.
[kaːx donʲ est ɲaθ rʲiː onkt saval kantʲ balkaːxeː onkt rextaːxeː]

(*although I'm not sure what root "rights" comes from in your example, *yāno-?)

[James0289]

Ercunic:
Cách doin est ñath rí onct saval caint balcáché onct *rechtáché.
[kaːx donʲ est ɲaθ rʲiː onkt saval kantʲ balkaːxeː onkt rextaːxeː]

(*although I'm not sure what root "rights" comes from in your example, *yāno-?)

Sweet. ^_^

I think he has it coming from yāno- "true, just, correct" + -ter, a nominalising suffix from Welsh (John Morris Jones has it as a 'comparative suffix', peculiarly).

[mèþru]

Has anyone made a Gaulish altlang with Old Frankish as an influence? (With little to no Latin).

[mèþru]

Where can I find a good lexicon for Gaulish? I googled and got several results that looked very different from each other, and none of them had enough words for an altlang.

[Matrix]

Well, there's La Langue Gauloise by Georges Dottin, 1920. But it's in French, so if you don't know that, you'll have a bit of trouble using it.

[hwhatting]

Well, there's La Langue Gauloise by Georges Dottin, 1920. But it's in French, so if you don't know that, you'll have a bit of trouble using it.

If being in French is not a problem, there's the more up-to-date dictionary of Xavier Delamarre (from 2003).