Re: Lepontic

Current assessment by Celtic linguists suggest that Lepontic is indeed
a Celtic dialect, but quite an ancient one -- pretty much an older
cousin to Gaulish. It is a P-Celtic language like Gaulish and Brittonic
(while Celtiberian is a Q-Celtic language like Goidelic). Lepontic has
some very archaic traits not shared by Gaulish like the PIE enclitic,
*-KWE "and" becoming -PE (in Gaulish, for some strange reason, it
becomes -C, partially retaining the PIE -KW-, which is unusual). The
PIE -P- which is lost in the other Celtic languages seems to be
partially apparent in Lepontic, appearing as a -V-, for example the
Lepontic word UVAMO- from PIE *UP-aM-O-. There are some grammatical
differences as well, notably in the noun declensions.
-Chris Gwinn