Dear A.,
You are not free to say what you like about
Gaulish or Celtiberian, since the languages in question are known from rather
large corpora of inscriptions. Though our knowledge of them cannot be
said to be complete, we at least know very well what they looked like and
in what respects they differed from Latin. While there was a certain degree of
similarity due to common descent (Latin and Celtic were not only IE but also
members of the "Western" areal grouping within the family), they similarity was
hardly greater than, say, between Baltic and Slavic (which rules out mutual
comprehensibility beyond being able to guess the meaning of individual words).
To claim otherwise it to bend facts. If Caesar was worried about his secret
correspondence, this means that some of the Celts he was afraid of were
literate, and likely to know a little Latin.
I recommend Chris Gwinn's website
presenting the continental Celtic corpus. Anyone who knows Latin can judge for
himself how comprehensible the inscriptions are. There's nothing like first-hand
experience. It's better even than reliance on the authority of Strabo and
Ennius.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 10:15
AM
Subject: [tied] OK, there is maybe a
failure, but which one?
I made a supposition that in the south of europe ,
excepting some
enclaves, the people spoked all a lexicaly similar
language
with latin.Please keep in mind I do not speak about literar ,
ciceronian latin but I mean with "latin" that "lingua barbara"
in the
meaning of which the romans meant it.
Here we have several statements
of ancient writers regarding
the "almost identity" of these
languages.
Some example:
for Iberia:
Enninus ( 239-169
BC) affirm the people spoken a kind of latin
there .Because the romans
just went there at that time, we
cannot speak about an romanised folk at
that time.
for galia:
strabon tells us that Iulius have had to crypt
his letters to his
generals in Greece because of the similarity of the
celtic
dialects spoken in Galia with the latin
language.