> I have to say, that by the nature of your responses, it appears that
> you may be attempting to move the discussion even further off tract.
Pardon me, but I believe that I am trying to do just the opposite. This
whole debate started because you claimed to have found the word *combrogi in
Gaulish.
I asked you where exactly you saw this (I need to have the exact source -
was it in the CIL,
was it in Holder's Alceltischer Sprachschatz?). As all modern commentators
on the
derivation of Welsh Cymry say that the word was not coined until late
antiquity/early
Dark Ages (which post dates the end of Gaulish on the Continent) and then
only in Western
Britain, I would like to know where you have discovered something that has
eluded all of the
professionals.
> An interesting, although I may add, unprofitable style of debate. So
> that there is no misunderstanding, I'm attempting to provide a
> more synthetic approach, as to address this rather complex subject purely
> on a linguistic basis will only result in more theoretical paralysis.
Isn't this a purely linguistic debate? It is on my part, because I am
interested in your linguistic theories.
> Additionally, your continual requests for sources without adding the
> same qualification to your statements appears to follow this same
> methodology.
I'll gladly provide sources. For the origins of the words
Cymry/Cymru/Cymraeg see Eric Hamp (Etudes Celtiques 19, pg. 147) and Rachel
Bromwich ("Armes Prydein", pg. 20) and Kenneth Jackson ("Language and
History in Early Britain", pgs. 445, 653). For Gaulish onomastics, consult
Pierre Billy ("Thesaurus Linguae Gallicae"), Alfred Holder ("Altceltischer
Sprachschatz") and Joshua Whatmough ("Dialects of Ancient Gaul"). For the
Gaulish language inscriptions see Whatmough (DAG), "Recueil Des Inscriptions
Gauloises" (vols. 1-4) as well as Pierre-Yves Lambert "La Langue Gauloise"
and Georges Dottin "La Langue Gauloises" (plus the supplements to RIG
offered in Etudes Celtiques over the years since RIG 1's appearance). For
Lepontic inscriptions consult Michel Lejeune ("Lepontica") and for some info
on Galatian see Leo Weisgerber ("Galatische Sprachreste" in Natalicium, FS.
J. Geffcken).
> Again when discussing the language
> use by the peoples the Romans called Celts or Gauls the technically
> correct term is Gallic, which is the English form. So that there will
> be no misunderstanding please note that when the Romans used the term
> Celt, it was only applied to the Gallic people of northern France.
This is just a game of semantics - but if you read any technical articles in
the journals written in English you will find the language referred to as
Gaulish and the country as Gaul. Gallic is indeed used occasionally, but as
it is more often used as an adjective in English, Gaulish tends to be
preferred when strictly speaking of the language of ancient Gaul. Here are
the forms that you are most likely to come into contact with in the
technical journals:
English French German Latin
Gaul Gaule Gallien Gallia
Gauls Gauloises Gallier Galli
Gaulish Gaulois(e) Gallisch Gallica(/us/um)
As a side note, Latin Celtae (English Celts) was also used to describe
people of Southern Gaul as well as sections of Spain, so it was not simply
restricted to Northern France. Roman and Greek tradition has it that Celtae
(Greek Keltoi) was the native name for the people that the Romans called
Galli (Greek Galatai).
> Also to address this statement<And what, exactly, in your mind marks
> a Brythonic language>
> Simply stated all languages classified as P-Celt languages are
> Brythonic.
It baffles me why you would call Continental P-Celtic languages Brythonic
(actually Brittonic is the favored term these days) - somehow implying that
the P-Celtic languages of Gaul derived from Britain!? I suppose you might
also want to label German as English? No one else in Celtic Studies calls
P-Celtic on the Continent "Brythonic" - why do you feel justified in doing
so? You do realize that it is widely accepted that Celtic languages
developed on the Continent and then spread to Britain (not the other way
around), don't you?
> Because this is a separate issue, I'm not going to address the
> relationship of Gallic to Hispano-Celt, Lepontic-Celt, Galatic-Celt,
> and Goidelic speaking groups, except to point out that the surviving
> examples of Hispano-Celt indicate that it was a Q-Celt type, and it
> is very probable that Lepontic- and Galatic-Celt also were.
I am sorry, but you can't possibly have ever actually seen any Lepontic and
Galatic inscriptions if you are labeling them as Q-Celtic. They are more
than obviously P-Celtic Do you not realize that one of the tell-tale signs
of Q-Celtic is the use of PIE -kw- (variously spelled as -qu-/-cu-/-ku-)
where Gaulish and Brittonic has -p-?? Note that the PIE coordinant -kwe
appears in Lepontic as -pe whereas it is -cue in the Q-Celtic Celtiberian
(Gaulish has a rare Q-Celtic archaism in that -kwe is retained as -c, though
in all other cases PIE -kw- becomes -p- in Gaulish). Note also the Galatian
placename Petobriga.
> We know
> that these languages are directly tied to the form of Gallic in use
> in the Marne-Champagne, Moselle-Rhineland, and Bohemia district, were
> the associated migrating populations originated. With this in mind
> one may deduce that Gallic in the 5th and 4th centuries BC also was a
> Q-Celt language.
I don't see how you can say this since Herodotus mentions a Celtic city
called Pyrene in the 5th century BC. We know that Brittonic was P-Celtic in
the 4th century BC, for the islands were known as the Pretannike islands to
the Greeks.
> I argue that at least in northern France the process of changing
> burial patterns (inhumation to cremation) is associated with the
> growing political and military stature of the Belgae confederation.
> We know the Belgae speak Brythonic.
Because of this archaeological evidence you deduce that the Belgae spoke
Brythonic?? Have you ever actually considered that the Belgae spoke Belgic -
and that Belgic was but a dialectal variant of Gaulish?
> Thus, I suggest that the Belgae
> were not an isolated group, but rather a small element of a much
> larger Brythonic culture, to include language, community situated in
> Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and Northern Germany, in the 4th century
> BC. Now, with this said a connection between this continental
> Brythonic community and earlier Urnfield Culture can be made.
>
> Also here is the Tacitus reference:
You are not getting it - just because Tacitus thought the Aestii soke the
same language as the Britons does nothing to prove your argument that
Brythonic was the language of the Baltic. It only proves that Tacitus knew
very little about this far away (to him) part of the world. There are only
the slightest traces of Celtic words in Baltic languages - only handfull of
isolated loanwords that likely arrived there via Germanic.
I think the big problem here is your insistence on calling the Celtic
language of ancient North-Western (Continental) Europe "Brythonic". Not only
is this misleading, it has no actual scientific basis. I suggest you switch
to calling it Belgic or simply Northern Gaulish - then we might be able to
get somewhere.
-Chris Gwinn