Re: [tied] Lusitanians

On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 22:42:46 -0800, Michael J Smith
<lookwhoscross-eyednow@...> wrote:

> Miguel, my understanding was that Celtiberian was the language
>spoken by the tribes of part Celtic, part Iberian origin, hence the term
>Celtiberian, and that other Q-Celtic dialects were spoken be the Celtic
>tribes who hadn't merged with Iberian tribes.

There is no linguistic evidence for that. The name "Celtiberian" was
used in antiquity for a group of tribes in North-Central Spain
(Castille-Aragon-Navarre area), but there is no evidence that they
were of mixed descent. The name can be interpreted simply as "Celts
from Iberia". The inscriptions certainly don't show any evidence for
such a thing: the Celtic inscriptions are all in Q-Celtic and there's
no admixture of Iberian words (except perhaps personal names). We can
only distinguish between Celtic inscriptions in Iberian script (such
as Botorrita) and Celtic inscriptions in Latin script.

>And didn't P-Celtic
>dialects begin to replace much of Q-Celtic speech in the middle of the
>1st Century B.C.?

Not in Spain.

> I always that maybe the fact that Q-Celtic was spoken in Iberia could
>lend support to the Irish myth of the Milesians settling Ireland from
>Iberia.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...