Etaonsh wrote:

> The enlightenment I was referring to
> earlier (and which the vagaries of
> the 'Reply' mechanism failed to
> refresh) which comes from learning
> Irish (and other Celtic languages)
> comes from the juxtaposition of
> Celtic languages and English,
> incuding its history. Too long have
> old academic traditions of bigotry,
> racism and subservience to Empire
> obscured the underestimated Celtic
> influence in the modern world's
> lingua franca (not to mention other
> modern lnguages). [...]

It's funny how things may look completely different in different parts of
the world. As a citizen of Italy, leaving in the Lombardy region (in
Northern Italy, where Milan is), I rather instinctively associate racism
with the OVER-estimation of the Celtic influence in modern European culture
and languages.

Of course, the poor Celts (either ancient or modern) are absolutely not
guilty for this situation, no more than ancient Indians are guilty for
inventing the swastika and the word "Aryan". But it is a matter of fact that
the sub-culture of most fascist and xenophobic movements in Europe is based
on misunderstood "Celtic" myths.

For example, the symbol of most fascist and nazi groups in Italy, France and
elsewhere is the "Celtic Cross". A "Celtic Cross", per se, is an absolutely
innocent symbol: just a cross with a circle in the middle, a traditional
religious symbol of Celtic people, which is easily seen in the cemeteries
and churches in the British isles and Bretagne. But, voilà, this symbol is
"Celtic", so it became the flag of all the nazis crawling on the continent's
surface.

Here in Lombardy, there is a racist and xenophobic political party (now
sitting in the Government with other parties of fascist descent, damn 'em
all!), whose ideology is more or less this: Northern Italians (or "Padani",
in their newspeak) are a "superior race", compared to Southern Italians
other "Mediterranean races", because they are direct descendants of the
Celts who inhabited Northern Italy before the "Roman invaders" conquered the
place imposing their taxes and corrupted habits.

The linguistic side of this Gaulish madness is that these people are
seriously convinced that Northern Italian dialects (typical romance
languages, resembling Italian and French) are "Celtic languages". Italian
linguistic newsgroups are polluted by these guys with their incredible
pseudo-etymologic "demonstrations" of the Celticness of Milanese or Venetian
dialects.

Ciao.
Marco