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Gaulish

Gaulish

Gaulish is the name given to the Celtic language that was spoken in Gaul before the Vulgar Latin of the late Roman Empire became dominant in Roman Gaul. The language is known from several hundred inscriptions on stone, on ceramic vessels and other artefacts, and on coins, and occasionally on metal (lead, and on one occasion zinc). They are found in the entire area of Roman Gaul, i.e., mostly in the area of modern France, as well as parts of Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Belgium (Meid 1994). Gaulish is paraphyletically grouped with Celtiberian, Lepontic, and Galatian as Continental Celtic.

Phonology

- vowels:
- short: a, e, i, o u
- long ā, ē, ī, (ō), ū
- semivowels: w, y
- occlusives:
- voiceless: p, t, k
- voiced: b, d, g
- resonants
- nasals: m, n
- liquids r, l
- sibilant: s
- affricate: t^s [χ] is an allophone of /k/ before /t/.

Orthography

Continental Celtic The alphabet of Lugano used in Gallia Cisalpina for Lepontic: :AEIKLMNOPRSTΘUVXZ The alphabet of Lugano does not distinguish voiced and unvoiced occlusives, i.e. P represents /b/ or /p/, T is for /t/ or /d/, K for /g/ or /k/. Z is probably for /t^s/. U /u/ and V /w/ are distinguished. Θ is probably for /t/ and X for /g/. The Eastern Greek alphabet used in southern Gallia Transalpina: :αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρστυχω χ is used for [χ], θ for /t^s/, ου for /u/, /ū/, /w/, η and ω for both long and short /e/, /ē/ and /o/, /ō/, while ι is for short /i/ and ει for /ī/. Note that the Sigma in the Eastern Greek alphabet looks like a C (lunate sigma). Latin alphabet (monumental and cursive) in use in Roman Gaul: :ABCDÐEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTUVXZ :abcdðefghiklmnopqrstuvxz G and K are sometimes used interchangeably. Ð/ð, ds and s may represent /t^s/. X, x is for [χ] or /ks/. EV can be used interchangeably with OV (e.g. L-3, L-12). Q is only used rarely (e.g. Sequanni, Equos) and may be an archaism. Ð and ð are used here to represent the letter Tau Gallicum (Eska 1998), which has not yet been added to Unicode. In contrast to Ð the central bar extends right across the glyph.

Sound laws

- NOrthern/Eastern Gaulish changed PIE voiceless labiovelars k^w to p (hence P-Celtic), a development also observed in Brythonic (as well as Greek and some Italic languages), while the other Celtic, 'Q-Celtic', retained the labiovelar. Thus the Northern/Eastern Gaulish word for "son" was mapos (Delmarre 2003 pp. 216-217), contrasting with Primitive Irish maqi (Sims-Williams 2003 pp.430-431). Similarly one NOrthern/Eastern Gaulish word for "horse" was epos while Old Irish has ech; Southern/Western Gaulish had eqos, all derived from Indo-European
- ekuos (Delmarre 2003 pp.163-164)
- Voiced labiovelar g^w became w, e. g. uediiumi < g^wediūmi "I pray".
- PIE t^st became /t^s/, spelled ð, e.g. neððamon from
- nedz-tamo (Old Irish nesa 'nearer/nearest').
- PIE ew became ow, and later ō, e.g.
- teutā > touta, tota (tribe, tribal land, Old Irish tuath).

Grammar

There was some areal (or genetic, see Italo-Celtic) similarity to Latin grammar, and the French historian A. Lot argued that this helped the rapid adoption of Latin in Roman Gaul.

Cases

Gaulish has six or seven cases (Lambert 2003 pp.51-67). In common with Latin it has nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive and dative; where Latin has an ablative, Gaulish has an instrumental and may also have a locative. There is more evidence for common cases (nominative and accusative) and for common stems (-o- and -a- stems) than there is for cases less frequently used in inscriptions, or rarer stems such as -i-, -n- and occlusive. The following table summarizes the case endings which are most securely known. A blank means that the form is unattested. In some cases a historical evolution is known, for example the dative singular of -a- stems is -ai in the oldest inscriptions, becoming first -e and finally -i.

Numerals

Ordinal numerals from the La Graufesenque graffiti #cintux[so (Welsh cyntaf, Old Irish cétae, Modern Irish 'céad', Breton kentañ = "first") #allos (Welsh ail, OIr aile (Modern Irish 'eile') = other, Breton all ="other") #tritios (Welsh trydydd, OIr treide (not found in Modern Irish)) #pentuar[ios (Welsh pedwerydd, OIr cethramad (Modern Irish ceathrú) #pinpetos (Ml Welsh pymhet (now pumed), OIr cóiced(Modern Irish cúigiú) #suexos (maybe mistaken for suextos, Welsh chweched, OIr seissed (Modern Irish 'séú') #sextametos (Welsh seithfed, OIr sechtmad, Modern Irish 'seachtú') #oxtumeto[s (Welsh wythfed, OIr ochtmad, Modern Irish 'ochtú') #namet[os (Welsh nawfed, OIr nómad, Modern Irish 'naoú', Breton navet) #decametos, decometos (Welsh degfed, OIr dechmad, Modern Irish 'deichniú', Celtiberian dekametam)

Corpus

The Gaulish corpus is edited in the Receuil des Inscriptions Gauloises (R.I.G.), in four volumes:
- Vol. 1: Inscriptions in the Greek alphabet, edited by Michel Lejeune (items G-1 –G-281)
- Vol. 2.1: Inscriptions in the Etruscan alphabet (Lepontic, items E-1 – E-6), and inscriptions in the Latin alphabet in stone (items L1 – L-16), edited by Michel Lejeune
- Vol. 2.2: inscriptions in the Latin alphabet on instruments (ceramic, lead, glass etc.), edited by Pierre-Yves Lambert (items L-18 – L-139)
- Vol. 3: The calendars of Coligny (73 fragments) and Villards d'Heria (8 fragments), edited by Paul-Marie Duval and Georges Pinault
- Vol. 4: inscriptions on coins, edited by Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Beaulieu and Brigitte Fischer (338 items) The longest known Gaulish text was found in 1983 in L'Hospitalet-du-Larzac () in Aveyron. It is inscribed in Latin cursive script on two small sheets of lead. The content is a magical incantation regarding one Severa Tertionicna and a coven of witches (mnas brictas "magical women"), but the exact meaning of the text remains undeciphered. The Coligny calendar was found in Coligny near Lyons, France with a statue identified as Apollo. The Coligny Calendar is a lunisolar calendar that divides the year into two parts with the months underneath. SAMON "summer" and GIAMON "winter". The date of SAMON- xvii is identified as TRINVX[tion] SAMO[nii] SINDIV. Another major text is the lead tablet of Chamalières (L-100), written on lead in Latin cursive script, in twelve lines, apparently a curse or incantation addressed to the god Maponos. It was buried near a spring. The graffito of La Graufesenque, Millau ([http://pedagogie.ac-toulouse.fr/culture/divers/lagraufesenque.htm] ), inscribed in Latin cursive on a ceramic plate, is our most important source for Gaulish numerals. It was probably written in a ceramic factory, referring to furnaces numbered 1 to 10. A number of short inscriptions are found on whorls. They are among the latest testimonies of Gaulish. These whorls were apparently presented to young girls by their suitors, and bear inscriptions such as moni gnatha gabi / buððutton imon (L-119) "my girl, give my a kiss" and geneta imi / daga uimpi (L-120) approx. "I am a pretty girl". Inscriptions found in Switzerland are rare, but a lot of modern placenames are derived from Gaulish names as they are in the rest of Gaul. There is a statue of a seated goddess with a bear, Artio, found in Muri near Berne, with a Latin inscription DEAE ARTIONI LIVINIA SABILLINA, suggesting a Gaulish Artiyon- "bear goddess". A number of coins with Gaulish inscriptions in the Greek alphabet have been found in Switzerland, e.g. RIG IV Nrs. 92 (Lingones) and 267 (Leuci). A sword dating to the La Tène period was found in Port near Bienne, its blade inscribed with KORICIOC, probably the name of the smith. The most notable inscription found in Helvetic parts is the Berne Zinc tablet, inscribed ΔΟΒΝΟΡΗΔΟ ΓΟΒΑΝΟ ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ ΝΑΝΤΑΡΩΡ, and apparently dedicated to Gobannus, the Celtic god of smithcraft. Caesar relates that census accounts written in the Greek alphabet were found among the Helvetii.

History

The earliest Continental Celtic inscriptions, dating to as early as the 6th century BC, are in Lepontic (sometimes considered a dialect of Gaulish), found in Gallia Cisalpina and were written in a form of the Old Italic alphabet. Inscriptions in the Greek alphabet from the 3rd century BC have been found in the area near the mouths of the Rhone, while later inscriptions dating to Roman Gaul are mostly in the Latin alphabet. Gregory of Tours wrote in the 6th century that some people in his area could still speak Gaulish.

References

- Delamarre, X. (2003). Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise (2nd ed.). Paris: Editions Errance. ISBN 2-287772-237-6
- Eska, Joseph F. (1998) "Tau Gallicum". Studia Celtica 32
- Lambert, Pierre-Yves (2003) La language gauloise (2nd ed.) Paris: Editions Errance. ISBN 2-87772-224-4
- Meid, Wolfgang (1994) Gaulish Inscriptions. Budapest: Archaeolingua. ISBN 963-846-06-6
- Sims-Williams, Patrick (2003) The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: phonology and chronology, c.400-1200 Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 1-4051-0903-3

External links

- [http://www.orbilat.com/Encyclopaedia/G/Gaulish_language.html L.A. Curchin, "Gaulish language"]
- [http://indoeuro.bizland.com/tree/celt/gaulish.html Gaulish language on TIED]
- [http://technovate.org/web/coligny.htm The Coligny Calendar]
- [http://www.tartanplace.com/hcustom/allsaints.html All Saints Day: Coligny Calendar]
- [http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/kelt/gallbs.htm two sample inscriptions on TITUS]
- [http://www.musee-antiquitesnationales.fr/documents/FPlangues.pdf Langues et écriture en Gaule Romaine] by Hélène Chew of the Musés des Antiquites Nationale (in French) Category:Continental Celtic languages Category:Languages of France Category:Ancient Gauls Category:Ancient languages als:Gallische Sprache

Celt

:This article is about the European people. For the tool, see celt (tool). celt (tool) The term Celts (pronounced "kelts") refers to any of a number of ancient peoples in Europe using the Celtic languages, which form a branch of Indo-European languages, as well as others whose language is unknown but where associated cultural traits such as Celtic art are found in archaeological evidence. Historical theories were developed that these factors were indicative of a common origin, but later theories of culture spreading to differing indigenous peoples have recently been supported by genetic studies. Though the spread of the Roman empire led to continental Celts adopting Roman culture, the development of Celtic Christianity in Ireland and Britain brought an early medieval renaissance of Celtic art between 400 and 1200. Antiquarian interest from the 17th century led to the term Celt being developed, and rising nationalism brought Celtic revivals from the 19th century in areas where the use of Celtic languages had continued. Today, "Celtic" is often used to describe the languages and respective cultures of Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and the French region of Brittany, but correctly corresponds to the Celtic language family in which are still spoken Scottish, Irish and Manx (Gaelic languages) and Welsh, Breton and Cornish (Brythonic languages).

Development of the term "Celt"

The first literary reference to the Celtic people, as keltoi or hidden people, is by the Greek historian Hecataeus in 517 BC. According to Greek mythology, Celtus was the son of Heracles and Celtine, the daughter of Bretannus. Celtus became the primogenitor of Celts (Ref.: Parth. 30.1-2). In Latin Celta, in turn from Herodotus' word for the Gauls, Keltoi. The Romans used Celtae to refer to continental Gauls, but apparently not to insular Celts, which were divided into Goidhels and Britons, and possibly other peoples. This is likely due to the possibility that, at those times, the term "Celta/Keltos" was tied to those cultures or people descendant from the Central Europe Celts, while no ties were known to the insular people (especially the Gaels whose language was extremely different from that of Brythonic Celts). The English word is modern, attested from 1707. In the late 17th century the work of scholars such as Edward Lhuyd brought academic attention, then in the 18th century the interest in "primitivism" which led to the idea of the "noble savage" brought a wave of enthusiasm for all things Celtic and Druidic. The "Irish revival" came after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 as a conscious attempt to demonstrate an Irish national identity, and with its counterpart in other countries subsequently became the "Celtic revival". Nowadays "Celt" is usually pronounced as and "Celtic" as (in IPA) when referring to the ethnic group and its languages, while the pronunciation remains in use mainly for certain sports teams (eg. the NBA team, Boston Celtics, and the SPL side, Celtic F.C., in Glasgow). (The pronunciation with /s/ reflects historical palatalization of the letter 'C' when it occurs before 'I' or 'E' in words of Latin origin; in the Classical era Latin 'C' was always pronounced as /k/. The modern pronunciation with /k/ is a reversion to the original, whereas the pronunciation with /s/ has not been reverted.) The word spelt as "Celtic" is (arguably) English, as the Latin was "Celticus" or "Celticum", the Welsh is "Celtaidd", and the Irish Gaelic is "Ceilteach". By this argument, a pronunciation with /s/ should therefore be acceptable. The term "Celt" or "Celtic" can be used in several senses: it can denote a group of peoples who speak or descend from speakers of Celtic languages; or the people of prehistoric and early historic Europe who share common cultural traits which are thought to have originated in the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. In contemporary terms, there are typically six nations defined as 'Celtic Nations'. To be defined as a Celtic nation, that nation must have ownership of a Celtic language. The first six are usually defined as Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany. The additional nations of Galicia and Asturias in Spain are sometimes considered to be modern Celtic nations based on the survival of Celtic traditions similar to the traditions of other Celtic nations, however, the Celtic language has not survived in either. England retains many Celtic influences but is not Celtic, but the languages of Pre-Anglo Celtic peoples influences dialects of some of its more rural regions, particularly those bordering Scotland and Wales, the best known of which are Cumbric which was spoken from Strathclyde to Derbyshire as recently as the 11th century, and the language centred on Devon — both languages are under-going a modern revival. Other areas of Europe are associated with being Celtic as well, including France, which traces its roots to the Gauls. In Scotland, the Gaelic language traces at least some of its roots to migration and settlement by the Irish Dalriada/Scotti. Due to the settlement of English speaking Angles in the lowlands, which — among other things — drove out the Gaelic language, Scots Gaelic survives only in the country's northern and western fringes in the areas where Scotti tribes settled and dominated over the indigenous Brythonic culture. The use of the word 'Celtic' as a valid umbrella term for the pre-Roman peoples of Britain has been challenged by a number of writers — including Simon James of the British Museum. His book The Atlantic Celts - Ancient People Or Modern Invention? makes the point that the Romans never used the term 'Celtic' in reference to the peoples of the Atlantic archipelago, i.e. the British Isles, and points out that the modern term "Celt" was coined as a useful umbrella term in the early 18th century to distinguish the non-English inhabitants of the archipelago when England united with Scotland in 1707 to create the United Kingdom. Nationalists in Scotland, Ireland and Wales looked for a way to differentiate themselves from England and assert their right to independence. James then argues that, despite the obvious linguistic connections, archaeology does not suggest a united Celtic culture and that the term is misleading, no more (or less) meaningful than 'Western European' would be today. This is somewhat misleading, however, since the Romans and Greeks did describe the Atlantic and continental Celts as being related to each other, having military alliances (and rivalries) with one another, sharing similar languages and traditions, as well as having a common religion and priest class. Additionally, archeological evidence shows quite clearly that the Atlantic and continental Celts were engaged in commerce with each other via regular trade routes. No one on either side of the debate argues that Celtic people have ever been a single homogenous political or social unit, but to argue that the Atlantic Celts were not Celts at all simply because hostile Romans never described them as such betrays a rather unscholarly bias. Miranda Green, author of Celtic Goddesses, describes archaeologists as finding "a certain homogeneity" in the traditions in the area of Celtic habitation including Britain and Ireland — an assertion backed up by recent genetic evidence which shows the populations of Ireland and Wales to be virtually indistinguishable from each other. She sees the inhabitants of the British Isles and Ireland as having become thoroughly Celticized by the time of the Roman arrival, mainly through spread of culture rather than a movement of people. In his book Iron Age Britain, Barry Cunliffe concludes that "...there is no evidence in the British Isles to suggest that a population group of any size migrated from the continent in the first millennium BC...". Cunliffe tempers his remarks by pointing out that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but modern archaeological thought tends to disparage the idea of large population movements without facts to back them up, a caution which appears to be vindicated by genetic studies. In other words, Celtic culture in the Atlantic Archipelago and continental Europe most probably emerged through the peaceful convergence of local tribal cultures bound together by networks of trade and kinship — not by war and conquest. This type of peaceful convergence and cooperation is actually relatively common among tribal peoples; other well known examples of the phenomenon include the Six Nations of the Iroquois League and the Nuer of East Africa. The ancient Celts are thus best depicted as a loose and highly diverse collection of indigenous tribal societies bound together by trade, a common druidic religion, and similar political institutions — but each having its own local language and traditions. Michael Morse in the conclusion of his book How the Celts came to Britain concedes that the concepts of a broad Celtic linguistic area and recognizably Celtic art have their uses, but argues that the term implies a greater unity than existed. Despite such problems he suggests that the term Celt is probably too deep-rooted to be replaced and — what is more important — it has the definition that we choose to give it. The problem is that the wider public reads into the term quite anachronistic concepts of ethnic unity that no one on either side in the academic debate holds.

Population genetics

With the information gathered recently by population geneticists, it is becoming increasingly clear that the old idea of large-scale replacement by newer invaders is often a misleading concept. The Celtic ethnicity debate took off at a particularly early stage in population genetic studies. In his book, "Neanderthal", the archaeologist, Douglas Palmer, refers to genetic research conducted across Europe, and then states that the original modern genetic group in Europe arrived between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago with the spread of farming, displacing the earlier hunter gatherer populations. Such displacement occurred by population explosion, since farming is capable of supporting up to a 60 times greater population than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the same area; :"None of Europe's subsequent historic upheavals - even catastrophic wars and famines - has seriously dented the old pattern set by the influx of farmers. The Goths, Huns and Romans have come and gone without any significant impact on the ancient gene map of Europe". -Douglas Palmer It seems futile to suggest that people who were once part of a wider Celtic cultural group, cannot be considered Celtic, in the same way that it would seem futile to suggest that their direct descendants in places like Devon or Cumbrian cannot be considered English in modern times. Perhaps our percepion of race and culture need to change, as European population genetic history seems to indicate that the latter is independent of the former.

Origins and geographical distribution

Huns style. The red area indicates an idea of the possible region of Celtic influence around 400 BC.]] The Celtic language family is a branch of the larger Indo-European family, which leads some scholars to a hypothesis that the original speakers of the Celtic proto-language may have arisen in the Pontic-Caspian steppes (see Kurgan). However, as the Celts enter history from around 600 BC, they are already split into several languages groups, and spread over much of Central Europe, the Iberian peninsula, Ireland and Britain, and studies now suggest that some of the Celtic peoples - including the ancestors of all the modern Celtic nations - had a largely pre-Celtic genetic ancestry, shared with the Basque people and possibly going back to the Palaeolithic. . Some scholars think that the Urnfield culture represents an origin for the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European family. This culture was preeminent in central Europe during the late Bronze Age, from ca. 1200 BC until 700 BC, itself following the Unetice and Tumulus cultures. The Urnfield period saw a dramatic increase in population in the region, probably due to innovations in technology and agricultural practices. The spread of iron-working led to the development of the Hallstatt culture directly from the Urnfield (c. 700 to 500 BC). Proto-Celtic, the latest common ancestor of all known Celtic languages, is thought to have been spoken at the time of the late Urnfield or early Hallstatt cultures, in the early 1st millennium BC. The spread of the Celtic languages to Britain and to Iberia would have occurred during the first half of the 1st millennium, the earliest chariot burials in Britain dating to ca. 500 BC. Over the centuries they developed into the separate Celtiberian, Goidelic and Brythonic languages. Whether Goidelic and Brythonic are descended from a common Insular-Celtic language, or if they reflect two separate waves of migration is disputed. The La Tène culture, in any case, can be associated with the Gauls, but it is entirely too late for a candidate for the Proto-Celtic culture. The Hallstatt culture was succeeded by the La Tène culture, and during the final stages of the Iron Age gradually transformed into the explicitly Celtic culture of early historical times. The La Tène culture was distributed around the upper reaches of the Danube, Switzerland, Austria, southern and central Germany, eastern France, Bohemia and Moravia, and parts of Hungary. The technologies, decorative practices and metal-working styles of the La Tène were to be very influential on the continental Celts. The La Tène style was highly derivative from the Greek, Etruscan and Scythian decorative styles with whom the La Tène settlers frequently traded. It is not known whether the Picts of Scotland were Celts or the remnant of an earlier population of the British Isles who had been pushed to the margin by Celtic invasions, or indeed whether they spoke a Brythonic language. The lack of any evidence to support the Celtic Invasion model, however, leads many scholars to favor the former model. In historical times western Scotland was colonised by Celtic Scotti from Ireland, who subsequently formed a political union with the Picts under Kenneth mac Alpin who had both Scots and Pictish ancestry. Additional forays into Greece and central Italy during the historical period did not result in settlement, though the same movement that brought Celtic invaders to Greece pushed on through to Anatolia, where they settled as the Galatians. As there is no archaeological evidence for large scale invasions in some of the other areas, one current school of thought holds that Celtic language and culture spread to those areas by contact rather than invasion. However, the Celtic invasions of Italy, Greece, and western Anatolia are well documented in Greek and Latin history. Examine the Map of Celtic Landsfor more information. Stonehenge and the other megalithic monuments long predate the Iron Age Celtic culture, but Genetic evidence indicates that the Celtic populations of the Atlantic Archipelago have been relatively stable for at least 6,000 years, in which case the modern Celts would be the direct descendants of their builders. There is no evidence that they used these sites as areas of worship from the Iron Age on, however, and indeed most evidence suggest that the Druidic Celtic religion(s) preferred to use groves of Oak trees as places of worship. The connection between these monuments and the Celts largely stems from 18th century romantics such as William Stukely.

Celts in Ireland and Britain

The indigenous populations of Britain and Ireland today are primarily descended from the ancient peoples that have always inhabited these lands. As to their culture, little is known but remnants remain primarily in the naming of certain geographical features, such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar, Thames and Tyne. By the Roman period most of the inhabitants of the isles of Ireland and Great Britain (the ancient Britons) were speaking Goidelic or Brythonic languages, close counterparts to Gaulish languages spoken on the European mainland. Historians explained this as the result of successive invasions from the European continent by diverse Celtic-speaking peoples over the course of several centuries. In 1946 the Celtic scholar T. F. O'Rahilly published his extremely influential model of the early history of Ireland which postulated four separate waves of Celtic invaders. What languages were spoken by the peoples of the British Isles before the arrival of the Celts is unknown. early history of Ireland Later research indicated that the language and culture had developed gradually and continuously, and in Ireland no archaeological evidence was found for large intrusive groups of Celtic immigrants, suggesting to historians such as Colin Renfrew that the native Late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed influences to create "Celtic" culture. The very few continental La Tène culture style objects which had been found in Ireland could have been imports, or the possessions of a few rich immigrants. Julius Caesar had written of people in Britain who came from Belgium (the Belgae), but archaeological evidence which was interpreted in the 1930s as confirming this was contradicted by later interpretations and it was suggested that there might have been only a handful of élite Belgae in Britain. In the 1970s this model was popularised by Colin Burgess in his book The Age of Stonehenge which theorised that Celtic culture in Great Britain "emerged" rather than resulted from invasion and that the Celts were not invading aliens, but the descendants of the people of Stonehenge. More recently a number of genetic studies have supported this model of culture being absorbed by native populations. The study by Cristian Capelli, David Goldstein and others at University College, London showed that genes associated with Gaelic names in Ireland and Scotland are also common in Wales, Cornwall and most parts England, and are similar to the genes of the Basque people, who speak a non-Indo-European language. This similarity supported earlier findings in suggesting a largely pre-Celtic genetic ancestry, possibly going back to the Paleolithic. They suggest that 'Celtic' culture and the Celtic language were imported to Britain by cultural contact not mass invasions, either by Indo-Europeans bringing farming or by Celts in 600 BC. Recent studies have proven that, contrary to long-standing beliefs, the Teuton tribes did not wipe out the Romano-British of England but rather, over the course of six centuries, conquered the native Brythonic people of what is now England and south east Scotland and imposed their culture and language upon them, in a manner similar to the Irish spread over the west of Scotland.

Roman influence

At the dawn of history in Europe, the Celts in present-day France were known as Gauls. Their descendants were described by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars. There was also an early Celtic presence in northern Italy. Other Celtic tribes invaded Italy, establishing there a city they called Mediolanum (modern Milan) and sacking Rome itself in 390 BC following the Battle of the Allia. A century later the defeat of the combined Samnite, Celtic and Etruscan alliance by the Romans in the Third Samnite War sounded the end of the Celtic domination in Europe, but it was not until 192 BC that the Roman armies conquered the last remaining independent Celtic kingdoms in Italy. Under Caesar the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul, and from Claudius onward the Roman empire absorbed parts of the Celtic British Isles. Roman local government of these regions closely mirrored pre-Roman 'tribal' boundaries, and archaeological finds suggest native involvement in local government. Latin was the official language of these regions after the conquests. The native peoples under Roman rule became Romanized and keen to adopt Roman ways. Celtic art had already incorporated classical influences, and surviving Gallo-Roman pieces interpret classical subjects or keep faith with old traditions despite a Roman overlay.

Examples of Romanization

Examples of Romanization include the slow dissapperence of druids. This was because under Roman rule the druids lost power. Before Roman rule druids were important and made almost all desicions. When Rome came to rule druids no longer made these desicions. The use of stone by Celts. Before Rome they almost only used mud and sticks. When they started to interact with Rome more they started to use stone. Appearence of Roman-Celt hybrid gods. With more interaction with Rome celtic gods started to have names such as Mars.

Celtic Christianity

While the regions under Roman rule adopted Christianity along with the rest of the Roman empire, unconquered areas of Scotland and Ireland moved from Celtic polytheism to Celtic Christianity which was a major source of missionary work in other parts of Britain and central Europe. This brought the early medieval renaissance of Celtic art between 400 and 1200, developing many of the styles now thought of as typically Celtic, and found through much of Ireland and Britain, including the north-east and far north of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland Islands. This was brought to an end by Roman Catholic and Norman influence, though the Celtic languages and some minor influences of the art continued.

Celts pushed west by Germanic migration

Celts were pushed westwards by successive waves of Germanic invaders, perhaps themselves at times pressured by Huns and Scythians or simply population pressures in their homeland of Scandinavia and Northern Germany. With the fall of the Roman Empire the Celts of Gaul, Iberia and Britannia were "conquered" by tribes speaking Germanic languages. Elsewhere, the Celtic populations were assimilated by others, leaving behind them only a legend and a number of place names such as Bohemia, after the Boii tribe which once lived there, or the Kingdom of Belgium, after the Belgae, a Celtic tribe of Northern Gaul and south-eastern England. Their mythology has been absorbed into the folklore of half a dozen other countries. For instance, the famous Medieval English Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is almost certainly partially derived from the medieval Irish text Fled Bricrend (The Feast of Bricriu). Argument rages in the academic world as to whether the Celts in England were mostly wiped out/pushed west as the lack of evidence for influence of the Celts on Anglo-Saxon society suggests, or whether the Teuton migration consisted merely of the social elite and that the genocide was cultural rather than physical due to such relatively few numbers of Anglo-Saxons mixing with the far larger native population, enabled to do so due to the civil strife in Britain after the Roman withdrawal and the unity of the incoming invaders. Recent DNA studies have confirmed that the population of England maintains a predominately ancient British element, equal in most parts to Cornwall and Wales. The general indigenous population of Yorkshire, East Anglia and the Orkney and Sheltand Islands are those populations with the least traces of ancient British continuation . Ironically, it is Viking genetic influence and not Anglo-Saxon which has had a more profound impact on British bloodlines.

Celtic social system and arts

The pre-Christian Celts had a well-organized social structure, based on class and kinship, with the religion we call Celtic polytheism. Elected Kings led the tribes, and society was divided into three groups: a warrior aristocracy, an intellectual class including druids, poets, and jurists, and everyone else. Women participated both in warfare and in kingship, and all the offices of high and low kings were filled by election under the system of tanistry, both factors which would confuse Norman writers expecting the feudal principle of primogeniture where the succession goes to the first born son. Little is known of family structure, but Athenaeus in his Deipnosophists, 13.603, claims that "the Celts, in spite of the fact that their women are very beautiful, prefer boys as sexual partners. There are some of them who will regularly go to bed – on those animal skins of theirs – with a pair of lovers," implying with a woman and a boy. Celtic societies were organised around warfare, but this seems to have been more of a sport focussed on raids and hunting rather than organised territorial conquest, drawing obvious comparisons to warfare among Native Americans prior to European contact. This was the age of Hillforts and duns, but there was apparently no urbanization. There is strong archeological evidence to suggest that the pre-Roman Celtic nations were tied into a network of overland trade routes that spanned Eurasia from Ireland to China. Celtic traders were also in contact with the Phoenicians, gold works made in Pre-Roman Ireland have been unearthed in archeological digs in Palestine, and trade routes between the Celtic nations and Palestine date back to at least 1600 BC. Local trade was largely in the form of barter, but as with most tribal societies they probably had a reciprocal economy in which goods and other services are not exchanged, but are given on the basis of mutual relationships and the obligations of kinship. Though they had a written language, the Ogham script, it was only used for ceremonial purposes and they produced little in the way of literary output. Instead, Celtic peoples preferred the oral Bardic tradition. The oldest recorded rhyming poetry in the world is of Irish origin and is a transcription of a much older epic poem, leading some scholars to claim that the Celts invented Rhyme. They were highly skilled in visual arts and Celtic art produced a great deal of intricate and beautiful metalwork, examples of which have been preserved by their distinctive burial rites. In some regards the Atlantic Celts were conservative, for example they still used chariots in combat long after they had been reduced to ceremonial roles by the Greeks and Romans, though when faced with the Romans, and in the Atlantic islands their chariot tactics defeated the invasion attempted by Julius Caesar.

Celtic Religous Patterns

Although Celtic gods varied from region to region and tribe to tribe, the Celtic religion had some patterns. For example like Mediterranean cultures most early Celts worshipped in sacred groves. This was once postulated to have occured because of Celts trading with Mediterranean cultures; however, evidence from Hallstatt era finds show that the earliest Celts practiced this before such trade took place. More reasonably, it is a byproduct of most primitive religion to worship in such a way. However, La Tene Celts also built temples of varying size and shape, though they still usually maintained sacred trees, or votive pools. Worship was, in this way, defered to temples, when they were available. Numerous temples were converted by the Romans, and with little difficulty; the design was rather similar to Roman temples, as they were both highly influenced by the Greeks, architecturally speaking. They druids postitions vary; a druid is not always a priest. Druids are any members of a Celtic society who had what we would view today as a college education. The most educated druids were usually doctors, priests, and heralds, as these occupations required the most memorization and skill for their practices. Priests from this class were in charge of a great deal of religious festivals, as well as organizing the calendar; a daunting task as the Celtic calendar is incredibly accurate, but required manual correction about every 40 years, meaning lengthy mathematic discourse. Druids also carried out sacrifices of crops, animals, and during specific festivals, humans. In a Celtic society, people were not executed for crimes, except during these festivals. Such executions varied, depending on what god the execution was dedicated to. Among the most famous is the human sacrifices practiced in the course of Essus worship. Essus was, more or less, a benevolent law god to many Celts, particularly Gauls. However, Essus worship also intoned a sense of merciless behavior toward repeated criminals, rapists, traitors, and other societal dregs. The offender, if found guilty, would be taken to the temple of Essus, where an oak would be growing through an opening in the temple roof. His stomach would be cut open, and he would be hung from an oak branch. The Celts' gods were often named after natural things. For example the source of rivers would often have their own goddesses, though rarely many gods. Another theme with Celt gods were triple deities; not only goddesses, but numerous gods. For example the Mothers of Britain, or Cromm Cruach's slovenly, deific, and humanistic forms. The main deities of Celtic religion, contrary to much misconception, were usually male. The world in some remaining myths is often depicted as having been forged by a god with a hammer, such as Dagda or Sucellos, who then poured all life from a magic cauldron or cup; a source of pre-Christian 'Holy Grail' myths in Celtic societies. While deities varied, several constant deities or demigods existed over a wide area. A great example is Lugos, a heroic sun god from Gaul and the southern, Gallic parts of Britain. He is also known as Lugh (in Ireland), Llew (in non-Gallic Britain), and Lug (among Celtiberians, who were not culturally true Celts). Early depictions of him exist as early as the Hallstatt era, suggesting him as one of the longest existing gods of Celtic religion. Similar is the horse and fertility goddess, Epona, who was also worshipped by the Romans when they came to rule Gaul. She also seems to have existed from the early era. Finally, there is Sucellos, who is argued by some to have been the 'creator of the universe' in some Celtic religions. He is party to Dagda of Ireland, and was worshipped over an enormous area, including by non-Celtic peoples such as the Lusitani. He was the patron god of the Ordovices tribe of Britain, and was built up by the Arverni and their allies to replace the druidic god Cernunnos, as the Gallic druids were allies of their enemies in the rule for Gaul; the Aedui. Other religious practices also existed; Celts seem to have universally removed body hair. Some postulate this as religious, but was more realistically part of the Celtic propensity for cleanliness. Body hair kept dirt close to the body, and Celts were an extremely cleanly people, so this was unacceptable. However, Celts also took heads from dead enemies. This was definitely a religious practice in origin. However, even post-Christian Gaels continued this practice into the middle ages; some Irish even took to scalping the heads that they took, so they could braid the scalp through rings on their weapons. The religious connotations by that point were slim, but it does imply that taking heads had incredible cultural importance to have persisted so long after the religious background had been removed. To our understanding, Celts believed the soul resided in the head, and that capturing a head meant that one captured the soul of an opponent, and that when a Celt died, the dead whom he had collected would serve him as slaves for eternity.

Celts as head-hunters

"Amongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world." - Paul Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art. The Celtic cult of the severed head is documented not only in the many sculptured representations of severed heads in La Tene carvings, but in the surviving Celtic mythology, which is full of stories of the severed heads of heroes and the saints who carry their decapitated heads, right down to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight who picks up his own severed head after Gawain has struck it off, just as St. Denis carried his head to the top of Montmartre. Separated from the mundane body, although still alive, the animated head acquires the ability to see into the mythic realm. Diodorus Siculus, in his 1st century History had this to say about Celtic head-hunting: "They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and carry off as booty, while striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold; thus displaying what is only a barbarous kind of magnanimity, for it is not a sign of nobility to refrain from selling the proofs of one's valour. It is rather true that it is bestial to continue one's hostility against a slain fellow man." The Celts also believed that if they attached the head of their enemy to a pole or a fence near their house, the head would start crying when the enemy was near. The Celtic headhunters venerated the image of the severed head as a continuing source of spiritual power. If the head is the seat of the soul, possessing the severed head of an enemy, honorably reaped in battle, added prestige to any warrior's reputation. According to tradition the buried head of a god or hero named Bran the Blessed protected Britain from invasion across the English Channel.

Names for Celts

The origin of the various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts is obscure and has been controversial. It appears that none of the terms recorded were ever used by Celtic speakers of themselves. In particular, there is no record of the term "Celt" being used in connection with the inhabitants of Ireland and Britain prior to the 19th century.

The name "Gauls"

English Gaul(s), French Gaulois(es), Spanish Galo(s), Latin Gallus or Galli, German Gallier might be from an originally Celtic ethnic or tribal name (perhaps borrowed into Latin during the early 400s BC, Celtic expansions into Italy). Its root may be the Common Celtic
- galno, meaning "power" or "strength". Greek Galatai (see Galatia in Anatolia) seems to be based on the same root, borrowed directly from the same hypothetical Celtic source which gave us Galli (the suffix -atai is simply an ethnic name indicator).

The word "Welsh"

The word Welsh is a Germanic word, yet it may ultimately have a Celtic source. It may be the result of an early borrowing (in the 4th century BC) of the Celtic tribal name Volcae into early Germanic (becoming the Proto-Germanic
- Walh-, "Foreigner" and the suffixed form
- Walhisk-). The Volcae were one of the Celtic peoples that barred, for two centuries, the southward expansion of the German tribes in central Germany on the line of the Hartz mountains and into Saxony and Silesia. In the middle ages certain districts of what is now Germany were known as "Welschland" as opposed to "Deutschland", and the word is cognate with Vlach (see: Etymology of Vlach) and Walloon as well as the 'wall' in Cornwall. During the early Germanic period, the term seems to have been applied to the peasant population of the Roman Empire, most of whom were, in the areas immediately settled by the Germans, of ultimately Celtic origin.

The name "Celts"

English Celt(s), Latin Celtus pl. Celti (Celtae), Greek Κέλτης pl. Κέλτες seem to be based on a native Celtic ethnic name (singular
- Celtos or
- Celta with plurals
- Celtoi or
- Celta:s), of unsure etymology. The root would seem to be a Primitive Indo-European
- kel- or (s)kel-, but there are several such roots of various meanings to choose from (
- kel- "to be prominent",
- kel- "to drive or set in motion",
- kel- "to strike or cut" etc.)

References

- Collis, John. The Celts - Origins, Myths & Inventions. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0752429132.
- Cunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0198150105.
- Cunliffe, Barry. Iron age Britain. London: Batsford, 2004. ISBN 0713488395
- James, Simon. The Atlantic Celts - Ancient People Or Modern Invention? Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, August 1999. ISBN 0299166740.
- James, Simon & Rigby, Valerie. Britain and the Celtic Iron Age. London: British Museum Press, 1997. ISBN 0714123064.
- Kruta,V., O. Frey, Barry Raftery and M. Szabo. eds. The Celts. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1991. ISBN 0847821935.
- Laing, Lloyd. The Archaeology of Late Celtic Britain and Ireland c. 400--1200 AD. London: Methuen, 1975. ISBN 0416823602
- MacKillop, James. A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0192801201
- McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History. New York: Penguin, 1985. ISBN 0140708324
- Mallory, J. P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991. ISBN 0500276161.
- Powell, T. G. E. The Celts. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980. third ed. 1997. ISBN 0500272751.
- Raftery, Barry. Pagan Celtic Ireland: The Enigma of the Irish Iron Age. London: Thames & Hudson, 1994. ISBN 0500279837.
- Renfrew, Colin. Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN 0521386756.
- Ward-Perkins, Bryan. "Why Did The Anglo-Saxons Not Become More British?" in English Historical Review, June 2000.
- Weale, M. "Y Chromosome Evidence For Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration." in Society For Molecular Biology And Evolution, 2002.
- Lloyd and Jenifer Laing. Art of the Celts, London: Thames and Hudson, 1992 ISBN 0500202567

External links

- [http://www.resourcesforhistory.com Celts and Romans]
- [http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MA/CELTS.HTM The Celts]
- [http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/capelli2_CB.pdf "A Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles" (pdf)]
- BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2076470.stm "English and Welsh are races apart"]
- BBC [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/bloodofthevikings/genetics_results_07.shtml "Descendents of the ancient Britons in genetic survey results for Rush and Castlerea, Ireland, 2003".] Category:Ancient Roman enemies and allies Category:Ancient peoples Category:Celts Category:Ethnic groups of Europe als:Kelten ms:Celt ja:ケルト人

Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages — a distinction usually assigned to about the ninth century. This spoken Latin differed from the literary language of classical Latin in its pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Some features of Vulgar Latin did not appear until the late Empire. Other features are likely to have been in place in spoken Latin, in at least its basilectal forms, much earlier. Most definitions of "vulgar Latin" mean that it is a spoken language, rather than a written language, because the evidence suggests that spoken Latin broke up into divergent dialects during this period, and because no one phonetically transcribed the daily speech of any Latin speakers during the period in question, students of vulgar Latin must study it through indirect methods. Our knowledge of Vulgar Latin comes from three chief sources. First, the comparative method can reconstruct the underlying forms from the attested Romance languages, and note where they differ from classical Latin. Second, various prescriptive grammar texts from the late Latin period condemn linguistic errors that Latin users were likely to commit, providing insight into how Latin speakers used their language. Finally, the solecisms and non-Classical usages that occasionally are found in late Latin texts also shed light on the spoken language of the writer. solecism, was the language of the ordinary people of the Roman Empire, distinct from the Classical Latin of literature.]]

What was Vulgar Latin?

Classical Latin The name "vulgar" simply means "common": it derives from the Latin word vulgaris, meaning "common", or "of the people". "Vulgar Latin" to Latinists has a variety of meanings.
- First, it means the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire. Classical Latin was always a rather artificial literary language; the Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia or Dacia was not necessarily the Latin of Cicero. By this definition, Vulgar Latin was a spoken language, "late" Latin being used for writing (the general style being a bit different from the "classic" standards, usually considered as referring to texts of first century AD).
- Second, it means the hypothetical ancestor of the Romance languages. This is a language which cannot be directly known apart from a few graffiti inscriptions; it was Latin that had undergone a number of important sound shifts and changes, which can be reconstructed from the changes that are evident in its descendants, the Romance vernaculars.
- Third, in an even more restrictive sense, the name Vulgar Latin is sometimes given to the hypothetical proto-Romance of the Western Romance languages: the vernaculars found north and west of the La Spezia-Rimini Line, France, and the Iberian peninsula; and the poorly attested Romance speech of northwestern Africa. This view considers southeastern Italian, Romanian, and Dalmatian to have developed separately.
- Fourth, "vulgar Latin" is sometimes used to describe the grammatical innovations found in a number of late Latin texts, such as the fourth century Peregrinatio Aetheriae, a nun's account of a journey to Palestine and Mt. Sinai; or the works of St Gregory of Tours. Since written documentation of Vulgar Latin forms is scarce; these works are valuable to philologists largely because they occasionally let in "mistakes" that give some evidence of spoken usage during the period when they were written. Some literary works in a lower register of language from the Classical Latin period also give a glimpse into the world of Vulgar Latin. The works of Plautus and Terence, being comedies with many characters who were slaves, preserve some early basilectal Latin features, as does the recorded speech of the freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius Arbiter. Vulgar Latin developed differently in the various provinces of the Roman Empire, thus gradually giving rise to modern French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Romansh. Although the official language was Latin, Vulgar Latin was what was popularly spoken until the new localized forms diverged far enough from Latin that a new standard language became a clear necessity. Obviously Vulgar Latin is considered lost when the local dialects start collecting enough local characteristics to form a different language. They evolved into Romance languages when an independent value was recognisable in them (e.g. the word for "yes": Oïl, Oc, or Si). The third century AD is presumed to be the age in which, apart from declensions, much vocabulary was changing (i.e., equus → caballus, etc.). Recently, some studies (which still perhaps need more scientific development) have suggested that pronunciations too started to diverge, supposedly with already a similarity to modern local pronunciations, with the most spectacular (alleged) effect in the area of Naples. However, these changes were obviously not uniform in the Empire's territory, so the greatest differences were perhaps to be found among different forms of Vulgar Latin in different areas (also due to the acquisition of newer "local" roots), even if it should be noted that most of theory is based on reconstruction a posteriori rather than, evidently, on texts. For several centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Vulgar Latin continued to coexist with written Late Latin: for when people who spoke one of the Romance vernaculars set out to write using proper grammar and spelling, what they put down was language that at least paid lip service to the norms of classical Latin. However, at the third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered to preach in the vernacular language in order to be comprehensible — either the rustica lingua romanica, Vulgar Latin now recognisably distinct from the frozen Church Latin; or German. This could be a documented moment of the evolution. Within the space of a lifetime after the Council of Tours, in 842, the Oaths of Strasbourg, recording an agreement between two of Charlemagne's heirs, were spoken in a Romance language that was obviously not Latin: Charlemagne Extract of the full text which is at Oaths of Strasbourg. :Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo et in ajudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit son fradra salvar dift, in o quid il me altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai, qui, meon vol, cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit. :For the love of God and for Christendom and our common salvation, from this day onwards, as God will give me the wisdom and power, I shall protect this brother of mine Charles, with aid or anything else, as one ought to protect one's brother, so that he may do the same for me, and I shall never knowingly make any covenant with Lothair that would harm this brother of mine Charles. Late Latin, still based in Rome, presumably reflected these acquisitions, recording what was changing in a nearer area — fairly identifiable with Italy. Formal Latin was then "frozen" by the codifications of Roman law on one side (Justinian) and of the Church on the other side, finally unified by the medieval copyists and since then forever separated from already independent Romance vulgar idioms. The written language continued to exist as mediaeval Latin. The Romance vernaculars were recognised as separate languages, and began to develop local norms and orthographies of their own. "Vulgar Latin" ceases to be a useful name for either language. Vulgar Latin is then a collective name for a group of derived dialects with local — not necessarily common — characteristics, that don't make a "language", at least in a classical sense. It could perhaps be described as a sort of "magmatic" undefined matter that slowly locally crystallized into the several early forms of each Romance language, that consequently find their ultimate proper ancestry in formal Latin. Vulgar Latin was therefore an intermediate point of the evolution, not a source.

Phonology

Vowels

One profound change that affected every Romance language reordered the vowel system of classical Latin. Latin had ten distinct vowels: long and short versions of A, E, I, O, V, and three diphthongs, AE, OE and AV (four according to some, including VI). There were also long and short versions of the Greek borrowing, Y. Apart from Sardinian, what happened to Vulgar Latin can be summarized as in the table to the right. Both the diphthongs AE and OE also fell in with . AV was initially retained, and turned from to after the original and experienced further changes. Thus, the ten-vowel system of Classical Latin (not counting diphthongs and the Greek Y), which relied on phonemic vowel length was newly modelled into a system in which vowel length distinctions were suppressed and alterations of vowel quality became phonemic. Because of this change, the stress on accented syllables became much more pronounced in Vulgar Latin than in Classical Latin. This tended to cause unaccented syllables to become less distinct, while working further changes on the sounds of the accented syllables. The results of short O and E proved to be unstable in the daughter languages, and tended to break up into diphthongs. Classical focus (accusative focum), "hearth", became the general word in proto-Romance for "fire" (replacing ignis), but its short 'O' sound became a diphthong — a different diphthong — in most daughter languages:
- French: feu (now no longer a diphthong but )
- Italian: fuoco
- Spanish: fuego In Portuguese, however, it did not become a diphthong: fogo (pronunced /'fogu/). In Romanian and Catalan it remained almost unchanged: foc Languages differed in the extent of this process. The in Latin ferrum, "iron", was retained in French fer and in Portuguese ferro , but diphthongized in Spanish hierro and in Romanian fier. Portuguese actually avoided some of the instability of its vowels by retaining the Latin distinction between long and short vowels to a certain extent in its system of closed and open vowels. Long Latin a, e, and o generally became closed vowels in Portuguese (written â, ê, and ô when accented), while the corresponding short vowels became open vowels in Portuguese (á, é, ó when accented). The pronunciation of these vowels is the same as is indicated in the table of Vulgar Latin vowels to the right. Some vowel instability did occur, however, particularly with unstressed o, which changes to , and unstressed e, which changes to or .

Consonants

Palatalization of Latin /k/, /t/, and often /g/ was almost universal in vulgar Latin; the only Romance dialect it did not affect was some varieties of Sardinian. Thus Latin caelum, pronounced /kaelu^m/ beginning with /k/, became French ciel, , and Portuguese céu, , beginning with /s/. The former semivowels written in Latin as U as in vinum, pronounced /w/, and I as in iocunda, pronounced /j/, came to be pronounced /v/ and , respectively. Between vowels, /b/ and /w/ or /v/ often merged into an intermediate sound /β/. Note that in the Latin alphabet, the letters U and V, I and J, were only graphic (and later in some areas, typographic) variations that were not distinguished until the early modern period, and lower-case letters did not exist. In the Western Romance area, an epenthetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with s and another consonant: thus Latin spatha ("sword") becomes Portuguese and Spanish espada, French épée. Eastern Romance languages preserved euphony rules by adding the epenthesis in the preceding article when necessary instead, so Italian preserves spada (f) as la spada, and changes the male il spaghetto to lo spaghetto to preserve euphony. Gender was remodelled in the daughter languages by the loss of final consonants. In classical Latin, the endings -US and -UM distinguished masculine from neuter nouns in the second declension; with both -S and -M gone, the neuters merged with the masculines, a process that is complete in Romance. By contrast, some neuter plurals such as gaudia, "joys", were re-analysed as feminine singulars. The loss of final -M is a process which seems to have begun by the time of the earliest monuments of the Latin language. The epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, who died around 150 BC, reads TAVRASIA CISAVNA SAMNIO CEPIT, which in classical Latin would be written Taurāsiam, Cisaunam, Samnium cēpit ("He captured Taurasia, Cisauna, and Samnium.") Final -M was, however, consistently written in the literary language, though it is often treated as silent for purposes of scansion in poetry.

Evidence of changes

Evidence of these and other changes can be seen in the late third century [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/appendix_probi.html Appendix Probi] (ext. link), a collection of glosses prescribing correct classical Latin forms for certain vulgar forms. These glosses describe:
- a process of syncope, the loss of unstressed vowels (MASCVLVS NON MASCLVS);
- the reduction of formerly syllabic /e/ and /i/ to /j/ (VINEA NON VINIA);
- the levelling of the distinction between /o/ and /u/ (COLVBER NON COLOBER) and /e/ and /i/ (DIMIDIVS NON DEMEDIVS);
- regularization of irregular forms (GLIS NON GLIRIS);
- regularization and emphasis of gendered forms (PAVPER MVLIER NON PAVPERA MVLIER);
- levelling of the distinction between /b/ and /v/ between vowels (BRAVIVM NON BRABIVM);
- the substitution of diminutives for unmarked words (AVRIS NON ORICLA, NEPTIS NON NEPTICLA)
- the loss of syllable final nasals (MENSA NON MESA) or their inappropriate insertion as a form of hypercorrection (FORMOSVS NON FORMVNSVS). Many of the forms castigated in the Appendix Probi proved to be the productive forms in Romance; oricla is the source of French oreille, Italian orecchio, Romanian ureche, Portuguese orelha, "ear", not the classical Latin form.

Vocabulary

Certain words from Classical Latin were dropped from the vocabulary. Classical equus, "horse", was consistently replaced by caballus, "nag". Classical aequor, "sea", yielded to mare universally. A very partial listing of words that are exclusively Classical, and those that were productive in Romance, is to be found in the table to the right. Some of these words, dropped in Romance, were borrowed back as learned words from Latin itself. The vocabulary changes affected even the basic grammatical particles of Latin; there are many that vanish without a trace in Romance, such as an, at, autem, donec, enim, ergo, etiam, haud, igitur, ita, nam, postquam, quidem, quin, quod, quoque, sed, utrum, and vel. On the other hand, since Vulgar Latin and Latin proper were for much of their history different registers of the same language, rather than different languages, some Romance languages preserve Latin words that usually were lost. For example, Italian ogni ("each/every") preserves Latin omnes. Other languages use cognates of totus (accusative totum) for the same meaning; for example tutto in Italian, tudo in Portuguese, todo in Spanish, tout in French and tot in Romanian. Frequently, Latin words reborrowed from the "higher" register of the language are found side by side with the evolved form. The (lack of) expected phonetic developments is a clue that one word has been borrowed. In Spanish, for example, Vulgar Latin fungus (accusative fungum), "fungus, mushroom", became hongo, with the F > H that was usual in Spanish (cf. filius > Spanish hijo, "son" or facere > Spanish hacer, "to do"). But hongo shares its semantic space with fungo, which by its lack of the expected sound shift displays that it has been re-borrowed from the higher register of classical Latin. In Portuguese, the shift to H from F did not happen, but some sounds became nazalized, fungum became fungo ; in Northern Portugal, fungum can be heard. Sometimes, a classical Latin word was kept along side a Vulgar Latin word. In Vulgar Latin, classical caput, "head", yielded to testa (originally "pot", a metaphor common throughout Western Europe — cf. English cup with German Kopf) in most forms of western Romance, including Italian. But Italian and French kept the Latin word under the form capo and chef, which retained many metaphorical meanings of "head", including "boss". The Latin word with the original meaning is preserved in Romanian cap, together with ţeastă, both meaning 'head' in the anatomical sense. Verbs with prefixed prepositions frequently displaced simple forms. The number of words formed by such suffixes as -bilis, -arius, -itare and -icare grew apace. These changes occurred frequently to avoid irregular forms or to regularise genders. Insight into the vocabulary changes of late Vulgar Latin in France can be seen in the Reichenau glosses [http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin_Vulgar/Vocabulary/Reichenau_Glosses.htm], written into the margins of a copy of the Vulgate Bible, which explain fourth-century Vulgate words no longer readily understood in the eighth century, when the glosses were likely written. These glosses are likely of French origin; some vocabulary items are specifically French. These glosses show vocabulary replacement:
- FEMVR > coxa (Portuguese coxa, French cuisse, Italian coscia, Romanian coapsă, "thigh")
- ARENA > sabulo (French sable, Italian sabbia, "sand")
- CANERE > cantare (Portuguese/Spanish cantar, French chanter, Italian cantare, Romanian cânta, "to sing") grammatical changes:
- OPTIMOS > meliores (Portuguese melhores, Spanish mejores, French meilleurs, Italian migliori, "better (plural)")
- SANIORE > plus sano (French plus sain, Italian più sano, "healthier") Germanic loan words:
- TVRBAS > fulcos (French foule, Italian folla, "mob")
- CEMENTARIIS > mationibus (French maçons, "stonemasons")
- NON PERPERCIT > non sparniavit (French épargner, "to spare")
- GALEA > helme (French heaume, Italian elmo, "helmet") and words whose meaning has changed:
- IN ORE > in bucca (Portuguese/Spanish boca, French bouche, Italian bocca, "mouth")
- ROSTRVM > beccus (French bec, Italian becco, Portuguese bico, "beak")
- ISSET > ambulasset (French allait, "he went")
- LIBEROS > infantes (French enfants, "children")
- MILITES > servientes (French sergents, "soldiers")

Grammar

The loss of the noun case system

The sound changes that were occurring in Vulgar Latin made the noun case system of Classical Latin harder to sustain, and ultimately spelled doom for the system of Latin declensions. As a result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, vulgar Latin moved from being a synthetic language to an analytic language where word order is a necessary element of syntax. Consider what the loss of final /m/, the loss of phonemic vowel length, and the sound shift from AE /ae/ to E /e/ entailed for a typical first declension noun (see table). Similar changes occurred throughout the declensional patterns. As a result, with the exception of Old French, which retained for some time a nominative/oblique distinction (called cas-sujet/cas-régime), and Romanian, which still preserves elements of the genitive case, the only distinction marked on the noun was of singular versus plural. This distinction was marked in two ways in the Romance languages. North and west of the La Spezia-Rimini line, which runs through northern Italy, the singular was usually distinguished from the plural by means of final -s, which was present in the old accusative plurals in masculine and feminine nouns of all declensions. South and east of the La Spezia-Rimini Line, the distinction was marked by changes of final vowels, as in contemporary standard Italian and Romanian. This preserves and generalizes distinctions that were marked on the nominative plurals of the first and second declensions.

The Romance articles

It is difficult to place the point in which the definite article, absent in Latin but present in some form in all of the Romance languages, arose; largely because the highly colloquial speech it arose in seldom was written until the daughter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts in early Romance show the articles fully developed. Definite articles formerly were demonstrative pronouns or adjective; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative adjective ille, illa, (illud), in the Romance languages, becoming French le and la, Spanish el and la, and Italian il and la. The Portuguese articles o and a are ultimately from the same source. Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from ipsu(m), ipsa (su, sa). While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, eg. lupul ("the wolf") and omul ("the man" — from lupus ille and homo ille). This pronoun is used in a number of contexts in some early texts in ways that suggest that the Latin demonstrative was losing its force. The Vetus Latina Bible contains a passage Est tamen ille dæmon sodalis peccati, ("The devil is a companion of sin"), in a context that suggests that the word meant little more than an article. The need to translate sacred texts that were originally in Greek, which has a definite article, may have given Christian Latin an incentive to choose a substitute. Aetheria uses ipse similarly: per mediam vallem ipsam ("through the middle of the valley"), suggesting that it too was weakening in force. Another indication of the weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm with prædictus, supradictus, and so forth (all meaning, essentially, "aforesaid"), which seem to mean little more than "this" or "that". Gregory of Tours writes, Erat autem. . . beatissimus Anianus in supradicta ciuitate episcopus ("Blessed Anianus was bishop in that city.") The original Latin demonstrative adjectives were felt no longer to be specific enough. In less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded with ecce (originally an interjection: "look!"), the origin of Old French cil, Portuguese aquele (
- eccu ille) and of cest, Port. aquela (
- eccu illa), Port. aquilo (
- eccu illud), Port. cá, (
- eccu hac), aqui (
- eccu hic), Port. acolá (
- eccu illac), Port. aquém (
- eccu inde). On the other hand, even in the Oaths of Strasbourg, no demonstrative appears even in places where one would clearly be called for in all the later languages. (Pro Deo amur — "for the love of God".) Using the demonstratives as articles may have still been too slangy for a royal oath in the ninth century. Considerable variation exists in all of the Romance vernaculars as to their actual use: in Romanian, the articles can be suffixed to the noun, as in other members of the Balkan Sprachbund and the North Germanic languages. unus, una (one) supplies the indefinite article everywhere. This is anticipated in Classical Latin; Cicero writes cum uno gladiatore nequissimo ("with a quite immoral gladiator"). This suggests that unus was beginning to supplant quidam in the meaning of "a certain" or "some" by the first century BC.

Gender: loss of the neuter

Grammatical gender was also reordered by sound changes. The neuter gender of classical Latin disappeared, leading to the observed pattern in most Romance languages, where all nouns are either masculine or feminine. (Though see below.) This change is attested fairly early; in Petronius Arbiter, we find balneus for balneum ("bath") and fatus for fatum ("fate"); a graffito at Pompeii yields cadaver mortuus (for cadaver mortuum, "dead body"). Most neuter gender nouns of the second and third declensions were absorbed by the masculine gender, since the accusative endings -UM or -EM was the same for both. Many neuter nouns had plural forms ending in -A or -IA; some of these were reanalysed as feminine singulars, such as gaudium, plural gaudia, joy(s); the plural form lies at the root of French feminine singular la joie and Italian la gioia. Evidence suggests that the neuter gender was under pressure well during the time of the Roman Empire. French le lait, Spanish la leche, Portuguese o leite, and Italian il latte, "milk", all presuppose a Latin accusative
- lacte(m), which in fact did not occur in classical Latin in the neuter noun lac. Note also that Spanish assigned it to the feminine gender, while Portuguese, Italian and French made it masculine. Other neuter forms, however, were preserved in Romance; French nom, Spanish nombre, Portuguese nome, and Italian nome all preserve the Latin nominative/accusative nomen, rather than a hypothetical oblique stem
- nomine(m). These formations were especially common when they could be used to avoid irregular forms. In Latin, names of trees were usually feminine gender, but many were declined in the masculine or neuter second declension paradigm. Latin pirus, "pear tree", a feminine noun with a masculine looking ending, became French poirier, Spanish peral and Romanian păr, all masculine; while Italian retained the inherited form with pero but moved it to the masculine gender. In Portuguese, it became completely feminine as pereira. Fagus, "beech", another feminine noun in masculine dress, yielded to its adjective forms faegus or faega, "made of beechwood", the forms which underlie Italian faggio, Spanish haya, and Portuguese faia and Romanian fag which now name the tree itself. As usual, irregularities persisted longest in frequently used forms. From the fourth declension manus ("hand"), another feminine noun with a masculine ending, Italian and Spanish derived mano, and Portuguese mão, which preserves its feminine gender even though it remains masculine in appearance. Neuter nouns can arguably be said to persist in Italian. Forms such as l'uovo fresco (the fresh egg) / le uova fresche (the fresh eggs) are usually explained away by saying that they are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, and that they have an irregular plural in -a. However, it is also consistent with the facts to say that uovo is simply a regular neuter noun (< ovum, plural ova) and that the characteristic ending for words agreeing with these nouns is o in the singular and e in the plural, as in the table. Except for Romanian, other major Romance languages have no trace of neuter nouns, but all have neuter pronouns. French: celui-ci, celle-ci, ceci; Spanish: éste, ésta, esto (all meaning "this"); Italian: gli, le, ci ("to him", "to her", "to it"); Catalan: el, la, ho ("him", "her", "it"); Portuguese: todo, toda, tudo ("all" m., "all" f., "everything"). Some varieties of Astur-Leonese maintain endings for the three genders such as follows: bonu, bona, bono. (Note: Spanish has a neuter gender of sorts with the neuter article 'Lo', usually used with nouns denoting abstract categories: "lo bueno", i.e. that or everything which is 'good', from bueno: good; "lo importante", i.e. that or everything 'important'. "Sabes LO TARDE que es?", literally "Do you know 'that which is late' that it is?", or more idiomatically: "Do you know how late it is?" from tarde: late. As far as pronouns, Spanish also has a neuter singular ello, aside from the well cited él, ella.)

Prepositions multiply

Loss of a productive noun case system meant that the syntax purposes it formerly served now had to be performed by prepositions and other paraphrases. These particles increased in numbers, and many new ones were formed by compounding old ones. The descendant Romance languages are full of grammatical particles such as Spanish donde, "where", from Latin de + unde, or French dès, "since", from de + ex or dans, "in" from de intus, "from the inside", while the equivalent Spanish and Portuguese desde is de + ex + de. Spanish después and Portuguese depois, "after" represents de + ex + post. Some of these new compounds appear in literary texts during the late empire; French dehors, Spanish de fuera and Portuguese de fora ("outside") all three represent de + foris (Romanian "afara" ad + foris), and we find St Jerome writing si quis de foris venerit ("if anyone goes outside"). Samples: As Latin was losing its case system, prepositions started to move in to fill the void. In colloquial Latin, the preposition ad followed by the accusative was sometimes used as a substitute for the dative case.
- Classical Latin:
- Iacobius geometrae librum dat.—James is giving the geometer the book.
- Vulgar Latin:
- Iacobius librum ad geometrem donat.—James is giving the book to the geometer. Just as in the disappearing dative case, colloquial Latin sometimes replaced the disappearing genitive case with the preposition de followed by the ablative.
- Classical Latin:
- Iacobius mihi librum geometrae dat.—James is giving me the geometer's book.
- Vulgar Latin:
- Iacobius mihi librum de geometre donat.—James is giving me the book of (belonging to) the geometer. or
- Vulgar Latin:
- Iacobius librum de geometre ad me donat.—James is giving the book of (belonging to) the geometer to me.

Adverbs

Classical Latin had a number of different suffixes that made adverbs from adjectives: carus, "dear", formed care, "dearly"; acriter, "fiercely", from acer; crebro, "often", from creber. All of these derivational suffixes were lost in Vulgar Latin, where adverbs were invariably formed by a feminine ablative form modifying mente, which was originally the ablative of mentis, and so meant "with a _____ mind". So velox ("quick") instead of velociter ("quickly") gave veloce mente (originally "with a quick mind", "quick-mindedly") This explains the nigh-invariable rule to form regular adverbs in almost all Romance languages: add the suffix -ment(e) to the feminine form of the adjective. This originally separate word becomes a suffix in Romance. This change was well under way as early as the first century B.C., and the construction appears several times in Catullus, most famously in Catullus VIII: :Nunc iam illa non vult; tu, quoque, impotens, noli :Nec quae fugit sectare, nec miser vive, :Sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura. :("Now she doesn't want you anymore; you, too, should not want her, neither chase her as she flees, nor pine in misery: but carry on obstinately [obstinate-mindedly]: get over it!")

Verbs

The verb forms were much less affected by the phonetic losses that eroded the noun case systems; indeed, an active verb in Spanish (or other modern Romance language) will still strongly resemble its Latin ancestor. One factor that gave the system of verb inflections more staying power was the fact that the strong stress accent of Vulgar Latin, replacing the pitch accent of Classical Latin, frequently caused different syllables to be stressed in different conjugated forms of a verb. As such, although the word forms continued to evolve phonetically, the distinctions among the conjugated forms did not erode (much). For example, in Latin the words for "I love" and "we love" were, respectively, āmo and amāmus. Because a stressed A gave rise to a diphthong in some environments in Old French, that daughter language had (j')aime for the former and (nous) amons for the latter. Though several phonemes have been lost in each case, the different stress patterns helped to preserve distinctions between them, if perhaps at the expense of irregularising the verb. Regularising influences have countered this effect in some cases (the modern French form is nous aimons), but some modern verbs have preserved the irregularity, such as je viens ("I come")/ nous venons ("we come"). Another set of changes already underway by the first century AD was the loss of certain final consonants. A graffito at Pompeii reads quisque ama valia, which in Classical Latin would read quisquis amat valeat ("whoever loves is strong/does well"). In the perfect tense, many languages generalized the -aui ending most frequently found in the first conjugation. This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong /au/ rather than containing a semivowel /awi/, and the /w/ sound was in many cases dropped; it did not participate in the sound shift from /w/ to /v/. Thus Latin amaui, amauit ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance
- amai and
- amaut, yielding for example Spanish amé, amó, Portuguese amei, amou. This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes in conjugation preceded the loss of /w/. Contrary to the millennia-long continuity of the much of the active verb system, the passive voice was utterly lost in Romance, which entailed its replacement with auxiliary verbs—forms of "to be" plus a passive participle—or impersonal reflexive forms. Another major systemic change was to the future tense, remodelled in Vulgar Latin with auxiliary verbs. This may have been due to phonetic merger of intervocalic /b/ and /v/, which caused future tense forms such as amabit to become identical to perfect tense forms such as amauit, introducing unacceptable ambiguity. A new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verb habere,
- amare habeo, literally "I have to love". This was contracted into a new future suffix in Romance forms which can be seen in the following modern examples of "I will love":
- French: j'aimerai (je + aimer + ai) < aimer ["to love"] + J'ai ["I have"].
- Portuguese: eu amarei (eu + amar + [h]ei) < amar ["to love"] + eu hei ["I have"]
- Spanish: amaré (amar + [h]e) < amar ["to love"] + he ["I have"].
- Italian: amerò (amar + [h]o) < amare ["to love"] + ho ["I have"]. The origins of the future suffix as an independent word is particularly evident in Portuguese, which adds direct and indirect pronouns as infixes in the future tense: "I will love" eu amarei, but "I will love you" Eu amar-te-ei, from amar + te ["you"] + Eu hei = Eu amar+te+[h]ei = Eu amar-te-ei.

External links

- [http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=_OzEl6nLsGIC&lpg=PR4&pg=PR1&printsec=4 An Introduction to Vulgar Latin] by C.H. Grandgent
- [http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin_Medieval/Dag_Norberg/01.html Latin at the End of the Imperial Age] by Dag Norberg

References

- N. Vincent: "Latin", in The Romance Languages, M. Harris and N. Vincent, eds., (Oxford Univ. Press. 1990), ISBN 0-19-520829-3
- K. P. Harrington, J. Pucci, and A. G. Elliott, Medieval Latin (2nd ed.), (Univ. Chicago Pres, 1997) ISBN 0-226-31712-9 Category:Ancient Rome Latin, Vulgar Category:Latin language ----- Vulgar Latin should not be confused with Pig Latin. ja:俗ラテン語

Roman Empire

:For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation) The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of Octavian (better known as Caesar Augustus), until its radical reformation in what was later to be known as the Byzantine Empire. Roman Empire is also used as translation of the expression Imperium Romanum, probably the best known Latin expression where the word "imperium" is used in the meaning of a territory, the "Roman Empire", as that part of the world where Rome ruled. The expansion of this Roman territory beyond the borders of the initial city-state of Rome had started long before the state organisation turned into an Empire. One of the first historians to describe this expansion of the Roman territory was the Greek Polybius, writing in the Epoch of the Roman Republic. In the centuries before the autocracy of Augustus, Rome had already accumulated a collection of tribute-states beyond the Italian Peninsula, including former Mediterranean competitors Syracuse and Carthage. In the late Republic Augustus (then still "Octavian") added Egypt definitively to the Imperium Romanum. The remainder of this article treats the Roman Empire as Imperial state (see Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic for development of the territory in earlier times). Augustus' reforms turning the Roman state into an Empire survived mostly unchanged until the Diocletian reform at end of the 3rd century, which turned the empire into a tetrarchy. While the political form given by Diocletian was short-lived, it led to the division of the Empire into two halves. This allowed Roman rule to continue for two more centuries over the whole empire, although divided into the Eastern and the Western Roman Empire. The end of the Western Empire is traditionally set in 476, when Odovacar deposed the last Emperor and sent the Imperial insignia to Constantinople; henceforth he nominally ruled as dux on behalf of Constantinople. After another millennium, in 1453, the Eastern Empire, better known as the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Ottoman Turks. From Augustus to the Fall of the Western Empire Rome dominated the region of Western Eurasia, comprising over half its population. The Roman Empire's influence on government, law, military, and monumental architecture, as well as many other aspects of Western life remains inescapable. The Greeks adopted the Roman name in the Middle Ages and were known as Romans, a trend that survives until today in Greece, a result of their cultural position (see Names of the Greeks). Roman titles of power were adopted by successor states and other entities with imperial pretensions, including the Frankish kingdom, the Holy Roman Empire, the first and second Bulgarian empires, the Russian/Kiev dynasties, and the German Empire. See also Roman culture.
Historians' viewpoints on the evolution of Imperial Rome
Because the empire of Rome lasted for such a long period of time (31 BC–1453), there are certain alternative names used by historians to distinguish various semantic periods or eras.

Gaulish

Phonology

Orthography

Sound laws

Grammar

Cases

Numerals

Corpus

History

References

See also

External links

Celt

Development of the term "Celt"

Population genetics

Origins and geographical distribution

Celts in Ireland and Britain

Roman influence

Examples of Romanization

Celtic Christianity

Celts pushed west by Germanic migration

Celtic social system and arts

Celtic Religous Patterns

Celts as head-hunters

Names for Celts

The name "Gauls"

The word "Welsh"

The name "Celts"

See also

Endnotes

References

External links

Vulgar Latin

What was Vulgar Latin?

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Evidence of changes

Vocabulary

Grammar

The loss of the noun case system

The Romance articles

Gender: loss of the neuter

Prepositions multiply

Adverbs

Verbs

See also

External links

References

Roman Empire

Historians' viewpoints on the evolution of Imperial Rome