Re: [tied] iberian substrate

From: Max Dashu
Message: 8913
Date: 2001-09-01

>> I remember that iberian settlements spread through all the Eastern
>>Iberic coastal side and passed through the Pyrenees until the limit of
>>northern Catalonia, in France, it is, the current Catalan speaking areas.
>>If it is like this, why everybody sais that catalan is not influenced at
>>all by the iberian substratum?<<

Well, Sardinia was a big island, and we know from Strabo et alia that its
people were able to fend off Carthaginian and Roman colonists from its
highland interior. So Romanization came late. But Catalunya's Iberian
substrate had to contend first with Celtic settlement, then heavy
Romanization. Islands often do better keeping their own, but so many
factors: quick and intense conquest like the Germanic conquest of Britain
succeeded in nearly wiping out Celtic language.

Not so far from Catalunya, Ligurian doesn't seem to have survived either.
For that matter, how much Iberian substrate survived in Spain itself?

Max Dashu