From: G.R.
Message: 26231
Date: 2003-10-03
Dear List:
Are there any remnants of the Celtic language in parts of Western Turkey due
to the Celtic migration there?
Many thanks,
Jim Connell
A couple of years ago, while trying - in one of my numberless, hopeless, amateurish ventures - to ascertain the geographic diffusion of an apparently meaningless verse in a children's "counting-out rhyme" which I remembered from my childhood in Trieste, Italy (I'm speaking of the late 1930s and early 1940s) - "an dan des" (it has many variations) - I discovered that the sequence was similar, in some cases practically identical, to equivalent verses in cognate rhymes in, among others, different parts of Northern Italy, France, Spain, in the formerly Italian-speaking areas of Slovenia and Croatia, in Romania, and, most important, in the British Isles (e.g., "eena deena dina des", or Scottish eena deena dina do, and many variations - which, according to, among others, Iona and Peter Opie in "The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes", should be related to Celtic counting systems) (*).
I also found similar instances in Turkish rhymes - exactly where I had been looking for them, reasoning along the same lines as you seem to be doing now.
Unfortunately, I cannot find my old notes on the subject right now, but here are two useful references which you might want to look up:
Rémy Dor, "Counting-out rhymes of Turkey", in "Turkic Languages", Volume 1/1-2, 1997, p. 102 (?),
and
Rémy Dor, "Türkiye sayismalari/Comptines de Turquie", Istanbul, 1998, Editions Isis, Shemsibey sok. 10, Beylerbey, 81210 Istanbul, Turkey.
But beware: Professor Dor wrote me then that "I agree with the possibility of contamination with old Celtic numeral systems. But one has to take in consideration the fact that those rhymes are travelling very fast and very far; so it can be even more ancient, a kind of relic from paleolithic times" (Please do not use this quotation, I haven't asked for his permission to quote him).
Let me know if I have been of some use.
Guido Ruzzier
(*) I remember finding many interesting series of numerals, including Celtic, in http://members.tripod.com/~rjschellen/IENums.htm - a most fascinating site, by the way, which you are most probably already familiar with.