> I did not wish to imply that "Swiss Gaulish" survived _long_ after
>other varieties of continental Celtic. I just remember having read
>some papers on Swiss toponymy which suggested that a Celtic dialect
>survived there into _fairly_ late times (presumably in mixed Gallo-
>Roman communities), developing phonologically in a way that partly
>parallelled the evolution of Brittonic. I can't give you the exact
>references now but perhaps I'll be able to locate them later. I am
>sure the Alemannic and Frankish conquests in Switzerland put an end
>to whatever traces of Celticity may have survived there, and that by
>the sixth century or so there were no Celtic-speakers in Helvetia.
There's a small discussion of this, with bibliography, in Joshua
Whatough's "Dialects of Ancient Gaul" (though it is quite out of date
now - I am sure that there has been more written in the subject in
the journals since the DAG was written).
> Chris Gwinn certainly knows a lot more about these things than I
do, so I hope he finds the time to comment.
You seem to have summarized it quite nicely - I suspect that I know
no more than you on this subject! :)
I think that you made an important point in saying that the system of
mutations wasn't funtional yet in the ancient period (though there is
certainly some evidence for lenition in late Gaulish at least), thus
it wasn't recorded in ancient inscriptions. The mutation system as it
exists in the Brittonic and Goidelic branches from the medieval
period onward is a relic of the lost gender/case system (which both
branches lost at roughly the same time - the middle of the first
milennium AD - prior to then the Giodelic and Brittonic branches were
not significantly different from one another).
The British and Irish were also not isolated from one another, despie
speaking different Celtic dialects - there was a lot of interaction
and settlement going on in both directions - so it is not very
surprising that the Brittonic and Goidelic branches would share some
innovations not found in Continental Celtic.
- Chris Gwinn