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79-505: Vercassivellaunus (died 46 BC) was a Gaulish commander of the Arverni who led a relief force to assist Vercingetorix , who was besieged and low on supplies, in the Battle of Alesia . Caesar refers to him as a cousin of Vercingetorix. He encamped with his generals to the west of the battle. According to Caesar, their names were Commius, Viridomarus and Eporedorix. Sedullos , chief of

158-599: A "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain". There was much less inward migration during the Iron Age, so it is likely that Celtic reached Britain before then. Barry Cunliffe suggests that a Goidelic branch of Celtic may already have been spoken in Britain, but that this middle Bronze Age migration would have introduced the Brittonic branch. Brittonic languages were probably spoken before

237-682: A "ten-night festival of ( Apollo ) Grannus ", decamnoctiacis Granni , is mentioned in a Latin inscription from Limoges . A similar formation is to be found in the Coligny calendar, in which mention is made of a trinox[...] Samoni "three-night (festival?) of (the month of) Samonios". As is to be expected, the ancient Gaulish language was more similar to Latin than modern Celtic languages are to modern Romance languages. The ordinal numerals in Latin are prīmus / prior , secundus / alter (the first form when more than two objects are counted,

316-473: A Celtic word that might mean 'painted ones' or 'tattooed folk', referring to body decoration. Knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. The early language's information is obtained from coins, inscriptions, and comments by classical writers as well as place names and personal names recorded by them. For later languages, there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, together with place names. The names recorded in

395-580: A common "Gallo-Brittonic" branch. Other scholars place more emphasis on shared innovations between Brittonic and Goidelic and group these together as an Insular Celtic branch. Sims-Williams (2007) discusses a composite model, in which the Continental and Insular varieties are seen as part of a dialect continuum , with genealogical splits and areal innovations intersecting. Though Gaulish personal names written by Gauls in Greek script are attested from

474-595: A common ancestral language termed Brittonic , British , Common Brittonic , Old Brittonic or Proto-Brittonic , which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic or early Insular Celtic by the 6th century BC. A major archaeogenetics study uncovered a migration into southern Britain in the middle to late Bronze Age , during the 500-year period 1,300–800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from Gaul . During 1,000–875 BC, their genetic markers swiftly spread through southern Britain, but not northern Britain. The authors describe this as

553-428: A discussion, see Celtic languages .) Other major characteristics include: Initial s- : Lenition: Voiceless spirants: Nasal assimilation: The family tree of the Brittonic languages is as follows: Brittonic languages in use today are Welsh , Cornish and Breton . Welsh and Breton have been spoken continuously since they formed. For all practical purposes Cornish died out during the 18th or 19th century, but

632-572: A group of women (often thought to be a rival group of witches), but the exact meaning of the text remains unclear. The Coligny calendar was found in 1897 in Coligny , France, with a statue identified as Mars . The calendar contains Gaulish words but Roman numerals, permitting translations such as lat evidently meaning days, and mid month. Months of 30 days were marked matus , "lucky", months of 29 days anmatus , "unlucky", based on comparison with Middle Welsh mad and anfad , but

711-655: A late survival in Armorica and language contact of some form with the ascendant Breton language ; however, it has been noted that there is little uncontroversial evidence supporting a relatively late survival specifically in Brittany whereas there is uncontroversial evidence that supports the relatively late survival of Gaulish in the Swiss Alps and in regions in Central Gaul. Drawing from these data, which include

790-572: A legal or magical-religious nature, the three longest being the Larzac tablet , the Chamalières tablet and the Lezoux dish . The most famous Gaulish record is the Coligny calendar , a fragmented bronze tablet dating from the 2nd century AD and providing the names of Celtic months over a five-year span; it is a lunisolar calendar trying to synchronize the solar year and the lunar month by inserting

869-553: A progressive aspect form has evolved which is formally similar to those found in Celtic languages, and somewhat less similar to the Modern English form, e.g. 'I am working' is Ich bin am Arbeiten , literally: 'I am on the working'. The same structure is also found in modern Dutch ( Ik ben aan het werk ), alongside other structures (e.g. Ik zit te werken , lit. 'I sit to working'). These parallel developments suggest that

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948-738: A revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by Goidelic and Anglic speech. The Isle of Man and Orkney may also have originally spoken a Brittonic language, but this was later supplanted by Goidelic on the Isle of Man and Norse on Orkney. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in Y Wladfa (the Welsh settlement in Patagonia ). The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to

1027-571: A revival movement has more recently created small numbers of new speakers. Also notable are the extinct language Cumbric , and possibly the extinct Pictish . One view, advanced in the 1950s and based on apparently unintelligible ogham inscriptions, was that the Picts may have also used a non- Indo-European language. This view, while attracting broad popular appeal, has virtually no following in contemporary linguistic scholarship. The modern Brittonic languages are generally considered to all derive from

1106-442: A single language. Among those regions where substantial inscriptional evidence exists, three varieties are usually distinguished. The relationship between Gaulish and the other Celtic languages is also debated. Most scholars today agree that Celtiberian was the first to branch off from other Celtic. Gaulish, situated in the centre of the Celtic language area, shares with the neighboring Brittonic languages of Britain, as well as

1185-431: A special purpose, such as an imperative, emphasis, contrast, and so on. Also, the verb may contain or be next to an enclitic pronoun or with "and", "but", etc. According to J. F. Eska, Gaulish was certainly not a verb-second language, as the following shows: Whenever there is a pronoun object element, it is next to the verb, as per Vendryes' Restriction . The general Celtic grammar shows Wackernagel's rule , so putting

1264-621: A stop + s became ss , and a nasal + velar became ŋ + velar. The lenis plosives seem to have been voiceless, unlike in Latin, which distinguished lenis occlusives with a voiced realization from fortis occlusives with a voiceless realization, which caused confusions like Glanum for Clanum , vergobretos for vercobreto , Britannia for Pritannia . The alphabet of Lugano used in Cisalpine Gaul for Lepontic: The alphabet of Lugano does not distinguish voicing in stops: P represents /b/ or /p/ , T

1343-676: A thirteenth month every two and a half years. There is also a longish (11 lines) inscribed tile from Châteaubleau that has been interpreted as a curse or alternatively as a sort of wedding proposal. Many inscriptions are only a few words (often names) in rote phrases, and many are fragmentary. It is clear from the subject matter of the records that the language was in use at all levels of society. Other sources contribute to knowledge of Gaulish: Greek and Latin authors mention Gaulish words, personal and tribal names, and toponyms . A short Gaulish-Latin vocabulary (about 20 entries headed De nominib[us] Gallicis ) called " Endlicher's Glossary "

1422-607: A vast arc extending from Britain and France through the Alpine region and Pannonia in central Europe, and into parts of the Balkans and Anatolia . Their precise linguistic relationships are uncertain due to fragmentary evidence. The Gaulish varieties of central and eastern Europe and of Anatolia (called Noric and Galatian , respectively) are barely attested, but from what little is known of them it appears that they were quite similar to those of Gaul and can be considered dialects of

1501-432: Is a far greater overlap in terms of Celtic vocabulary than with English, it is not always possible to disentangle P- and Q-Celtic words. However, some common words such as monadh = Welsh mynydd , Cumbric monidh are particularly evident. The Brittonic influence on Scots Gaelic is often indicated by considering Irish language usage, which is not likely to have been influenced so much by Brittonic. In particular,

1580-419: Is evidently an account or a calculation and contains quite different ordinals: Other Gaulish numerals attested in Latin inscriptions include * petrudecametos "fourteenth" (rendered as petrudecameto , with Latinized dative-ablative singular ending) and * triconts "thirty" (rendered as tricontis , with a Latinized ablative plural ending; compare Irish tríocha ). A Latinized phrase for

1659-565: Is for /d/ or /t/ , K for /g/ or /k/ . Z is probably for /t / . U /u/ and V /w/ are distinguished in only one early inscription. Θ is probably for /t/ and X for /g/ (Lejeune 1971, Solinas 1985). The Eastern Greek alphabet used in southern Gallia Narbonensis . Latin alphabet (monumental and cursive) in use in Roman Gaul : G and K are sometimes used interchangeably (especially after R). Ꟈ / ꟈ , ds and s may represent /ts/ and/or /dz/ . X, x

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1738-467: Is for [x] or /ks/ . Q is only used rarely ( Sequanni, Equos ) and may represent an archaism (a retained *k ), borrowings from Latin, or, as in Latin, an alternate spelling of -cu- (for original /kuu/ , /kou/ , or /kom-u/ ). Ꟈ is the letter tau gallicum , the Gaulish affricate. The letter ꟉꟉ / ꟊꟊ occurs in some inscriptions. Gaulish had some areal (and genetic, see Indo-European and

1817-528: Is found in some 800 (often fragmentary) inscriptions including calendars, pottery accounts, funeral monuments, short dedications to gods, coin inscriptions, statements of ownership, and other texts, possibly curse tablets . Gaulish was first written in Greek script in southern France and in a variety of Old Italic script in northern Italy. After the Roman conquest of those regions, writing shifted to Latin script . During his conquest of Gaul, Caesar reported that

1896-478: Is not a verb-final language, it is not surprising to find other "head-initial" features: Brittonic languages The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic ; Welsh : ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig ; Cornish : yethow brythonek/predennek ; and Breton : yezhoù predenek ) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages; the other is Goidelic . It comprises

1975-572: Is preserved in a 9th-century manuscript (Öst. Nationalbibliothek, MS 89 fol. 189v). French now has about 150 to 180 known words of Gaulish origin , most of which concern pastoral or daily activity. If dialectal and derived words are included, the total is about 400 words. This is the highest number among the Romance languages . Gaulish inscriptions are edited in the Recueil des inscriptions gauloises (RIG), in four volumes, comprising text (in

2054-561: Is probable that at the start of the Post-Roman period, Common Brittonic was differentiated into at least two major dialect groups – Southwestern and Western. (Additional dialects have also been posited, but have left little or no evidence, such as an Eastern Brittonic spoken in what is now the East of England .) Between the end of the Roman occupation and the mid-6th century, the two dialects began to diverge into recognizably separate varieties,

2133-409: Is the origin of Derwent, Darent, and Darwen (attested in the Roman period as Deru̯entiō ). The final root to be examined is went/uent . In Roman Britain, there were three tribal capitals named U̯entā (modern Winchester, Caerwent, and Caistor St Edmunds), whose meaning was 'place, town'. Some, including J. R. R. Tolkien , have argued that Celtic has acted as a substrate to English for both

2212-457: Is traceable to Brittonic influence. Others, however, find this unlikely since many of these forms are only attested in the later Middle English period; these scholars claim a native English development rather than Celtic influence. Ian G. Roberts postulates Northern Germanic influence, despite such constructions not existing in Norse. Literary Welsh has the simple present Caraf = 'I love' and

2291-727: The Celtic languages of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated Common Brittonic , in contrast to the Goidelic languages originating in Ireland. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as "British" and "Cymric". "Brythonic" was coined in 1879 by the Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython . "Brittonic", derived from " Briton " and also earlier spelled "Britonic" and "Britonnic", emerged later in

2370-713: The Helvetii were in possession of documents in the Greek script, and all Gaulish coins used the Greek script until about 50 BC. Gaulish in Western Europe was supplanted by Vulgar Latin . It is thought to have been a living language well into the 6th century. The legacy of Gaulish may be observed in the modern French language and the Gallo-Romance languages , in which 150–400 words , mainly referring to pastoral and daily activities, are known to be derived from

2449-625: The La Tène period, was found in Port , near Biel/Bienne , with its blade inscribed with ΚΟΡΙϹΙΟϹ ( Korisios ), probably the name of the smith. The diphthongs all transformed over the historical period. Ai and oi changed into long ī and eu merged with ou , both becoming long ō . Ei became long ē . In general, long diphthongs became short diphthongs and then long vowels. Long vowels shortened before nasals in coda . Other transformations include unstressed i became e , ln became ll ,

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2528-702: The Latin , Greek , and Etruscan alphabets ) written on public monuments, private instrumentum , two calendars, and coins. The longest known Gaulish text is the Larzac tablet , found in 1983 in l'Hospitalet-du-Larzac , France. It is inscribed in Roman cursive on both sides of two small sheets of lead. Probably a curse tablet ( defixio ), it clearly mentions relationships between female names, for example aia duxtir adiegias [...] adiega matir aiias (Aia, daughter of Adiega... Adiega, mother of Aia) and seems to contain incantations regarding one Severa Tertionicna and

2607-576: The Lemovices , joined Vercassivellaunus with 10,000 of his own men and was killed at the battle. According to Caesar's " Commentarii de Bello Gallico ", Vercassivellaunus was taken prisoner. It is speculated that he was subsequently strangled to death with the other Gaulish prisoners of war as part of the Triumph in which Caesar celebrated his victory over the Gauls. This biographical article related to

2686-643: The Medieval Latin lingua Britannica and sermo Britannicus and the Welsh Brythoneg . Some writers use "British" for the language and its descendants, although, due to the risk of confusion, others avoid it or use it only in a restricted sense. Jackson, and later John T. Koch , use "British" only for the early phase of the Common Brittonic language. Before Jackson's work, "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" were often used for all

2765-738: The P-Celtic languages , including not just the varieties in Britain but those Continental Celtic languages that similarly experienced the evolution of the Proto-Celtic language element /kʷ/ to /p/ . However, subsequent writers have tended to follow Jackson's scheme, rendering this use obsolete. The name "Britain" itself comes from Latin : Britannia~Brittania , via Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Breteyne , possibly influenced by Old English Bryten[lond] , probably also from Latin Brittania , ultimately an adaptation of

2844-712: The 19th century. "Brittonic" became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in Kenneth H. Jackson 's highly influential 1953 work on the topic, Language and History in Early Britain . Jackson noted by that time that "Brythonic" had become a dated term: "of late there has been an increasing tendency to use Brittonic instead." Today, "Brittonic" often replaces "Brythonic" in the literature. Rudolf Thurneysen used "Britannic" in his influential A Grammar of Old Irish , although this never became popular among subsequent scholars. Comparable historical terms include

2923-496: The 5th century through the settlement of Irish-speaking Gaels and Germanic peoples . Henry of Huntingdon wrote c.  1129 that Pictish was "no longer spoken". The displacement of the languages of Brittonic descent was probably complete in all of Britain except Cornwall , Wales , and the English counties bordering these areas such as Devon , by the 11th century. Western Herefordshire continued to speak Welsh until

3002-563: The 7th century onward and are possibly due to inherent tendencies. Thus the concept of a Common Brittonic language ends by AD 600. Substantial numbers of Britons certainly remained in the expanding area controlled by Anglo-Saxons , but over the fifth and sixth centuries they mostly adopted the Old English language and culture. The Brittonic languages spoken in what are now Scotland , the Isle of Man , and England began to be displaced in

3081-871: The Brittonic languages were displaced is that of toponyms (place names) and hydronyms (names of rivers and other bodies of water). There are many Brittonic place names in lowland Scotland and in the parts of England where it is agreed that substantial Brittonic speakers remained (Brittonic names, apart from those of the former Romano-British towns, are scarce over most of England). Names derived (sometimes indirectly) from Brittonic include London , Penicuik , Perth , Aberdeen , York , Dorchester , Dover , and Colchester . Brittonic elements found in England include bre- and bal- for 'hill', while some such as co[o]mb[e] (from cwm ) for 'small deep valley' and tor for 'hill, rocky headland' are examples of Brittonic words that were borrowed into English. Others reflect

3160-522: The Celtic god of metalwork . Furthermore, there is a statue of a seated goddess with a bear , Artio , found in Muri bei Bern , with a Latin inscription DEAE ARTIONI LIVINIA SABILLINA , suggesting a Gaulish Artiū "Bear (goddess)". Some coins with Gaulish inscriptions in the Greek alphabet have also been found in Switzerland, e.g. RIG IV Nos. 92 ( Lingones ) and 267 ( Leuci ). A sword, dating to

3239-496: The English progressive is not necessarily due to Celtic influence; moreover, the native English development of the structure can be traced over 1000 years and more of English literature. Some researchers (Filppula, et al., 2001) argue that other elements of English syntax reflect Brittonic influences. For instance, in English tag questions , the form of the tag depends on the verb form in the main statement ( aren't I? , isn't he? , won't we? , etc.). The German nicht wahr? and

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3318-641: The French n'est-ce pas? , by contrast, are fixed forms which can be used with almost any main statement. It has been claimed that the English system has been borrowed from Brittonic, since Welsh tag questions vary in almost exactly the same way. Far more notable, but less well known, are Brittonic influences on Scottish Gaelic , though Scottish and Irish Gaelic, with their wider range of preposition-based periphrastic constructions, suggest that such constructions descend from their common Celtic heritage. Scottish Gaelic contains several P-Celtic loanwords, but, as there

3397-588: The French military is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Gaulish Together with Lepontic and the Celtiberian spoken in the Iberian Peninsula , Gaulish is a member of the geographic group of Continental Celtic languages . The precise linguistic relationships among them, as well as between them and the modern Insular Celtic languages , are uncertain and a matter of ongoing debate because of their sparse attestation . Gaulish

3476-632: The Gaulish language. Spindle whorls were apparently given to girls by their suitors and bear such inscriptions as: A gold ring found in Thiaucourt seems to express the wearers undying loyalty to her lover: Inscriptions found in Switzerland are rare. The most notable inscription found in Helvetic parts is the Bern zinc tablet , inscribed ΔΟΒΝΟΡΗΔΟ ΓΟΒΑΝΟ ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ ΝΑΝΤΑΡΩΡ ( Dobnorēdo gobano brenodōr nantarōr ) and apparently dedicated to Gobannus ,

3555-484: The Gaulish t-preterit, formed by merging an old third-person singular imperfect ending -t - to a third-person singular perfect ending -u or -e and subsequent affixation to all forms of the t-preterit tense. Similarly, the s-preterit is formed from the extension of -ss (originally from the third person singular) and the affixation of -it to the third-person singular (to distinguish it as such). Third-person plurals are also marked by addition of -s in

3634-461: The Greek alphabet for private and public transactions, with the important exception of druidic doctrines, which could only be memorised and were not allowed to be written down. According to the Recueil des inscriptions gauloises nearly three quarters of Gaulish inscriptions (disregarding coins) are in the Greek alphabet. Later inscriptions dating to Roman Gaul are mostly in Latin alphabet and have been found principally in central France. Latin

3713-492: The Roman invasion throughout most of Great Britain , though the Isle of Man later had a Goidelic language, Manx . During the period of the Roman occupation of what is now England and Wales (AD 43 to c.  410 ), Common Brittonic borrowed a large stock of Latin words, both for concepts unfamiliar in the pre-urban society of Celtic Britain such as urbanization and new tactics of warfare, as well as for rather more mundane words which displaced native terms (most notably,

3792-761: The Roman period are given in Rivet and Smith. The Brittonic branch is also referred to as P-Celtic because linguistic reconstruction of the Brittonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme * kʷ is p as opposed to Goidelic k . Such nomenclature usually implies acceptance of the P-Celtic and Q-Celtic hypothesis rather than the Insular Celtic hypothesis because the term includes certain Continental Celtic languages as well. (For

3871-523: The Western into Cumbric and Welsh, and the Southwestern into Cornish and its closely related sister language Breton, which was carried to continental Armorica . Jackson showed that a few of the dialect distinctions between West and Southwest Brittonic go back a long way. New divergencies began around AD 500 but other changes that were shared occurred in the 6th century. Other common changes occurred in

3950-459: The alphabet. Julius Caesar says in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico of 58 BC that the Celts/Gauls and their language are separated from the neighboring Aquitani and Belgae by the rivers Garonne and Seine / Marne , respectively. Caesar relates that census accounts written in Greek script were found among the Helvetii . He also notes that as of 53 BC the Gaulish druids used

4029-401: The authors meant by those terms), though at first these only concerned the upper classes. For Galatia (Anatolia), there is no source explicitly indicating a 5th-century language replacement: Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul. The exact time of

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4108-416: The continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia . During the next few centuries, in much of Britain the language was replaced by Old English and Scottish Gaelic , with the remaining Common Brittonic language splitting into regional dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh , Cornish , Breton , Cumbric , and probably Pictish . Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while

4187-615: The controversial Italo-Celtic hypothesis) similarity to Latin grammar, and the French historian Ferdinand Lot argued that this helped the rapid adoption of Vulgar Latin in Roman Gaul. Gaulish had seven cases : the nominative , vocative , accusative , genitive , dative , instrumental and the locative case . Greater epigraphical evidence attests common cases (nominative and accusative) and common stems (-o- and -a- stems) than for cases less frequently used in inscriptions or rarer -i-, -n- and -r- stems. The following table summarises

4266-450: The difference between -n and -m relies on the length of the preceding vowel, with longer vowels taking -m over -n (in the case of -anom this is a result of its innovation from -a-om ). Gaulish verbs have present, future, perfect, and imperfect tenses; indicative, subjunctive, optative and imperative moods; and active and passive voices. Verbs show a number of innovations as well. The Indo-European s-aorist became

4345-511: The elements der-/dar-/dur- and -went e.g. Derwent, Darwen, Deer, Adur, Dour, Darent, and Went. These names exhibit multiple different Celtic roots. One is * dubri- 'water' (Breton dour , Cumbric dowr , Welsh dŵr ), also found in the place-name Dover (attested in the Roman period as Dubrīs ); this is the source of rivers named Dour. Another is deru̯o- 'oak' or 'true' (Bret. derv , Cumb. derow , W. derw ), coupled with two agent suffixes, -ent and -iū ; this

4424-621: The extant languages Breton , Cornish , and Welsh . The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython , meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael . The Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic language, spoken throughout Great Britain during the Iron Age and Roman period . In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to

4503-555: The extinct Continental Celtic language. Following the 1066 Norman Conquest , some of these words have also entered the English language , through the influence of Old French . It is estimated that during the Bronze Age , Proto-Celtic started splitting into distinct languages, including Celtiberian and Gaulish. Due to the expansion of Celtic tribes in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, closely related forms of Celtic came to be spoken in

4582-411: The final language death of Gaulish is unknown, but it is estimated to have been about the sixth century AD. The language shift was uneven in its progress and shaped by sociological factors. Although there was a presence of retired veterans in colonies, these did not significantly alter the linguistic composition of Gaul's population, of which 90% was autochthonous; instead, the key Latinizing class

4661-447: The inherited genitive singular -as is attested but was subsequently replaced by -ias as in Insular Celtic. The expected genitive plural -a-om appears innovated as -anom (vs. Celtiberian -aum ). There also appears to be a dialectal equivalence between -n and -m endings in accusative singular endings particularly, with Transalpine Gaulish favouring -n , and Cisalpine favouring -m . In genitive plurals

4740-507: The late nineteenth century, and isolated pockets of Shropshire speak Welsh today. The regular consonantal sound changes from Proto-Celtic to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton are summarised in the following table. Where the graphemes have a different value from the corresponding IPA symbols, the IPA equivalent is indicated between slashes. V represents a vowel; C represents a consonant. The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which

4819-561: The lexicon and syntax. It is generally accepted that Brittonic effects on English are lexically few, aside from toponyms, consisting of a small number of domestic and geographical words, which "may" include bin , brock , carr , comb , crag and tor . Another legacy may be the sheep-counting system yan tan tethera in the north, in the traditionally Celtic areas of England such as Cumbria . Several words of Cornish origin are still in use in English as mining-related terms, including costean , gunnies , and vug . Those who argue against

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4898-725: The mapping of substrate vocabulary as evidence, Kerkhof argues that we may "tentatively" posit a survival of Gaulish speaking communities "at least into the sixth century" in pockets of mountainous regions of the Central Massif , the Jura , and the Swiss Alps . According to Recueil des inscriptions gauloises more than 760 Gaulish inscriptions have been found throughout France, with the notable exception of Aquitaine , and in northern Italy. Inscriptions include short dedications, funerary monuments, proprietary statements, and expressions of human sentiments, but also some longer documents of

4977-499: The meaning could here also be merely descriptive, "complete" and "incomplete". The pottery at La Graufesenque is the most important source for Gaulish numerals. Potters shared furnaces and kept tallies inscribed in Latin cursive on ceramic plates, referring to kiln loads numbered 1 to 10: The lead inscription from Rezé (dated to the 2nd century, at the mouth of the Loire , 450 kilometres (280 mi) northwest of La Graufesenque )

5056-399: The name of the river Trent simply comes from the Welsh word for a 'trespasser' (figuratively suggesting 'overflowing river'). Scholars supporting a Brittonic substrate in English argue that the use of periphrastic constructions (using auxiliary verbs such as do and be in the continuous/progressive) of the English verb , which is more widespread than in the other Germanic languages ,

5135-503: The native word for the island, * Pritanī . An early written reference to the British Isles may derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia ; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas' use of variants such as πρεττανική ( Prettanikē ), "The Britannic [land, island]", and νησοι βρεττανιαι ( nēsoi brettaniai ), "Britannic islands", with Pretani being

5214-484: The neighboring Italic Osco-Umbrian languages , the change of the Indo-European labialized voiceless velar stop /kʷ/ > /p/ , while both Celtiberian in the south and Goidelic in Ireland retain /kʷ/ . Taking this as the primary genealogical isogloss , some scholars divide the Celtic languages into a " q-Celtic " group and a " p-Celtic " group, in which the p-Celtic languages Gaulish and Brittonic form

5293-549: The plural instrumental had begun to encroach on the dative plural (dative atrebo and matrebo vs. instrumental gobedbi and suiorebe ), and in the modern Insular Languages , the instrumental form is known to have completely replaced the dative. For o-stems, Gaulish also innovated the pronominal ending for the nominative plural -oi and genitive singular -ī in place of expected -ōs and -os still present in Celtiberian ( -oś, -o ). In a-stems,

5372-687: The presence of Britons such as Dumbarton – from the Scottish Gaelic Dùn Breatainn meaning 'Fort of the Britons', and Walton meaning (in Anglo-Saxon) a tun 'settlement' where the Wealh 'Britons' still lived. The number of Celtic river names in England generally increases from east to west, a map showing these being given by Jackson. These include Avon, Chew, Frome, Axe, Brue and Exe, but also river names containing

5451-553: The present stative (al. continuous/progressive) Yr wyf yn caru = 'I am loving', where the Brittonic syntax is partly mirrored in English. (However, English I am loving comes from older I am a-loving , from still older ich am on luvende 'I am in the process of loving'). In the Germanic sister languages of English, there is only one form, for example Ich liebe in German, though in colloquial usage in some German dialects,

5530-654: The prestige language of their urban literate elite. Bonnaud maintains that Latinization occurred earlier in Provence and in major urban centers, while Gaulish persisted longest, possibly as late as the tenth century with evidence for continued use according to Bonnaud continuing into the ninth century, in Langres and the surrounding regions, the regions between Clermont , Argenton and Bordeaux , and in Armorica . Fleuriot, Falc'hun, and Gvozdanovic likewise maintained

5609-424: The preterit. Most Gaulish sentences seem to consist of a subject–verb–object word order: Some, however, have patterns such as verb–subject–object (as in living Insular Celtic languages) or with the verb last. The latter can be seen as a survival from an earlier stage in the language, very much like the more archaic Celtiberian language . Sentences with the verb first can be interpreted, however, as indicating

5688-650: The reconstructed endings for the words * toṷtā "tribe, people", * mapos "boy, son", * ṷātis "seer", * gutus "voice", and * brātīr "brother". In some cases, a historical evolution is attested; for example, the dative singular of a-stems is -āi in the oldest inscriptions, becoming first * -ăi and finally -ī as in Irish a -stem nouns with attenuated ( slender ) consonants: nom. lámh "hand, arm" (cf. Gaul. lāmā ) and dat. láimh (< * lāmi ; cf. Gaul. lāmāi > * lāmăi > lāmī ). Further,

5767-468: The region surrounding Massalia by the 3rd century BC, the first true inscriptions in Gaulish appeared in the 2nd century BC. At least 13 references to Gaulish speech and Gaulish writing can be found in Greek and Latin writers of antiquity. The word "Gaulish" ( gallicum ) as a language term is first explicitly used in the Appendix Vergiliana in a poem referring to Gaulish letters of

5846-406: The second form only when two, alius , like alter means "the other", the former used when more than two and the latter when only two), tertius, quārtus, quīntus, sextus, septimus, octāvus, nōnus , and decimus . An inscription in stone from Alise-Sainte-Reine (first century AD) reads: A number of short inscriptions are found on spindle whorls and are among the most recent finds in

5925-498: The theory of a more significant Brittonic influence than is widely accepted point out that many toponyms have no semantic continuation from the Brittonic language. A notable example is Avon which comes from the Celtic term for river abona or the Welsh term for river, afon , but was used by the English as a personal name. Likewise the River Ouse, Yorkshire , contains the Celtic word usa which merely means 'water' and

6004-538: The verb at the beginning of the clause or sentence. As in Old Irish and traditional literary Welsh, the verb can be preceded by a particle with no real meaning by itself but originally used to make the utterance easier. According to Eska's model, Vendryes' Restriction is believed to have played a large role in the development of Insular Celtic verb-subject-object word order. Other authorities such as John T. Koch , dispute that interpretation. Considering that Gaulish

6083-464: The word for 'fish' in all the Brittonic languages derives from the Latin piscis rather than the native * ēskos – which may survive, however, in the Welsh name of the River Usk , Wysg ). Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brittonic languages. Pictish may have resisted Latin influence to a greater extent than the other Brittonic languages. It

6162-506: Was quickly adopted by the Gaulish aristocracy after Roman conquest to maintain their elite power and influence, trilingualism in southern Gaul being noted as early as the 1st century BC. Early references to Gaulish in Gaul tend to be made in the context of problems with Greek or Latin fluency until around AD 400, whereas after c.  450 , Gaulish begins to be mentioned in contexts where Latin has replaced "Gaulish" or "Celtic" (whatever

6241-516: Was the coopted local elite, who sent their children to Roman schools and administered lands for Rome. In the fifth century, at the time of the Western Roman collapse, the vast majority (non-elite and predominantly rural) of the population remained Gaulish speakers, and acquired Latin as their native speech only after the demise of the Empire, as both they and the new Frankish ruling elite adopted

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