Ancient and ArchaeologyΜύ permalink
Latin influence on Celtic languages
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Message 1.Μύ
Posted by anyaang (U2269779) on Thursday, 20th October 2005
Can anybody help me? I'd like to know something about the influence of Latin on Celtic languages in Roman Britain. Is there more than just names, places?
Thanks a lot... -
Message 2
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Thursday, 20th October 2005
This is probably one for Alaric to anser, as he is more of an expert than I am. As far as surviving Celtic languages are concerned, I don't believe there was a huge influence.
Anecdotally, my grandfather once recounted how he used to hear the local farmers in the west of Scotland summon their cattle by calling, "puella, puella" which is Latin for "girl". -
Message 3
Posted by regnagleppod (U2272733) on Thursday, 20th October 2005
Welsh I believe has about 600 words from the Roman occupation. For example , Latin fenestra Welsh ffenestra.
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Message 4
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Friday, 21st October 2005
Re: Message 1.
Anyaang,
I know it is a bit of topic but I did research for Gaulish, while I didn't find that much about a comparison Celtic-Latin.
The Continental Gaulish comes from the Proto- Celtic, as the Insular Celtic, which seems to be there be divided into the Goedilic branch and the Brythonic branch.
I heard that the Gaulish was comparable with Latin and that there were many words related to each other. I came on it doing research for the etymology of my name. I learned it 8 years old in our national history lesson in Belgium. The fierce Ambiorix resisting the Romans. He has a statue in Tongeren (Belgian Limburg) (the Tungri). This ending -rix is the same as the Latin: rex. It comes also in riki, rihhi, rike, rice, old Irish: rige, Irish: ri. Even the old Indian: rajan is related. I agree this one word is not a prove, as it can be from the Indo-European motherlanguage as the word "mother", but there are other examples.
Type once: "comparison gaulish latin" in Google.
Gaulish belongs to the Celtic language group, whose modern derivates include Gaelic, Welsh and Irish. The ancient Celts were variously called Keltoi, Celtae, Galatae or Galli.
The longest and most famous findings of Gaulish language is the "Coligny calendar". Parallels Latin-Gaulish: and, -que, -cue; sea, mare, more; king, rex, rix.
I found the most interesting data in a site on these Google windows: comparison gaulish latin: "Toward a phylogenetic Chronology of ancient Gaulish, Celtic, and Indo-European".
See also Proto-Celtic language in Wikipedia.
As an aside if you look to the Google sites I mentioned you will come probably to a discussion board about the English language.
some "Englishlover" asked: "Latin or German (someone said it had to be Germanic)? Which languages have influenced English more?
One came up with: Origins of the english words: Germanic: 35%, French: 30%, Latin: 30%, Greek 2%.
Someone said Greek should be 5%. Nikolaos???
Another said: I think a Frenchman: then some 60% of English words are French related...
Another said: in normal talk the most words are Germanic, but if people start to talk "elegant", (posh? Minette?) it becomes suddenly a French-Norman-Latin related language. Minette, what are your thoughts about this?
Anyaang, I hope I have given a start for the study of the Celtic-Latin relationship?
Kind regards. -
Message 5
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Monday, 24th October 2005
From a grammatical point of view, English is very much a Germanic language - you only have to look at languages such as the Scandinavian (not including modern Icelandic) languages to see the similarities, such as how we form past and perfect tenses of verbs, and word order (adjectives before the noun). If you've also studied some Old English too, then the similarities with modern German or Icelandic are more than evident (we had three genders, four grammatical cases at least, full inflexional verb and noun systems, definate and indefinate adjective inflections... It's not that much fun studying Old English!!).
From a vocabulary point of view it becomes a bit more problematic. As mentioned, most of the everyday words that we cannot converse without are Anglo-Saxon or Germanic in origin. Of the 100 most-used words in the English languages only the word "very" is not Germanic. But if we go for a pure count of word origins then Latin-based words (either from Latin direct or via mostly French) are the more common. It has been said though that for conveying ideas and thoughts simply (i.e. in an easy-to-understand way) then people tend to lean towards the Anglo-Saxon origin words. -
Message 6
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 24th October 2005
Re: Message 5.
Stoggler,
thank you very much for your interesting enlightenment about the English language.
Kind regards. -
Message 7
Posted by Alaric the Goth (U1826823) on Monday, 31st October 2005
Thanks, TonyG for the compliment, but it may be somewhat misplaced!
Philologists reckon that the Celtic and Italic branches of Indo-European are more closely related to each other than to any other branches of IE. This makes it hard to say whether e.g certain Welsh words are from pre-Roman times or are borrowings from Latin. Welsh is after all descended from the language of the Romano-Britons rather than directly from Iron Age Brittonic.
In the Dark Ages, if not before, Welsh/Brittonic, along with the Gaelic tongues, took on board words to do with 'new' concepts, so that we have 'eglwys' in Welsh from 'ecclesia' a word of ultimately Greek origin. And the Welsh and Irish words for 'book' are 'llyfr' and 'leabhar' respectively, deriving from Latin 'libra' (which gives us English 'library' and French 'livre' of course). But Old English did the same sort of thing, and has e.g. 'biscop' from Lat. 'episcopus' (again a word from Greek originally). -
Message 8
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Wednesday, 2nd November 2005
But Old English did the same sort of thing, and has e.g. 'biscop' from Lat. 'episcopus' (again a word from Greek originally).
Μύ
Old English did indeed do the same, and even before the Anglo-Saxons (or whoever!) crossed the North Sea into "England" - two words that I know of were borrowed by the Germanic tribes of northern Europe as a result of their contact with the Romans, and they were "wine" and "street". These words were then taken by the Anglo-Saxons with them to England.
The word wine comes from the Latin "vinum" and shows how the Romans used to pronounce the letter "v" - just like a "w" in English! So when Caesar said "veni, vedi, veci", it actually sounded like "weni, wedi, weki"! -
Message 9
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Wednesday, 2nd November 2005
Here are a few more Latin words found in modern Welsh:
pont (bridge), ffenest (window), pysgod (fish), milltir (mile), melys (sweet or honey), cyllell (knife), ceffyl (horse), perygl (danger), eglwys (church). -
Message 10
Posted by Alaric the Goth (U1826823) on Thursday, 3rd November 2005
Sorry, Stoggler, but Julius Caesar (pronounced Yulius Kaisar) wasn't as bad at Latin as that! He said "veni, vidi, vici!" ('I came I saw I conquered'), pronounced 'weni' 'weedi' 'weeki', so you are indeed correct about the Latin 'v' having a 'w' sound.
Are you sure about all those Welsh words being of Latin origin? I agree that 'eglwys' and 'milltir' are, but is 'pysgod'? As I said, the Celtic and Italic language families are closely related. Was the Brittonic for 'fish' not perhaps a similar word to Latin 'pisces'? -
Message 11
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Thursday, 3rd November 2005
Sorry, Stoggler, but Julius Caesar (pronounced Yulius Kaisar) wasn't as bad at Latin as that! He said "veni, vidi, vici!" ('I came I saw I conquered'), pronounced 'weni' 'weedi' 'weeki', so you are indeed correct about the Latin 'v' having a 'w' sound.
Are you sure about all those Welsh words being of Latin origin? I agree that 'eglwys' and 'milltir' are, but is 'pysgod'? As I said, the Celtic and Italic language families are closely related. Was the Brittonic for 'fish' not perhaps a similar word to Latin 'pisces'?Μύ
I thought the veni vidi vici quote didn't look right when I wrote it!
My Latin is rather rusty these days.
I agree with you Alaric about pysgod v pisces. I've not been able to verify where pysgod comes from but the other P-Celtic languages have pesk (Breton) and pysk (Cornish) as their words for fish. Again they could have been taken from Latin (or early French in the case of Breton) or could be Celtic words. On the other hand the Q-Celtic words for fish are iasc (Irish) and eeast or yeeast (Manx) (I don't have the Scots Gaelic word) which are rather different to the P-Celtic words and Latin, but they could be from sound changes over the centuries.
I should point out that that little list of words I used were taken from Wikipedia. I'll do a little more digging about to see if I can find an answer on this. -
Message 12
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Thursday, 3rd November 2005
Alaric
To be honest I think the Welsh word for "honey" coming from Latin is rather tenuous too - the other Celtic languages all have a word for honey that begin with an "m" sound followed by an "l"...! Think that word is a cognate rather than a borrowing.
That'll teach me to take what's on Wikipedia as gospel! -
Message 13
Posted by Alaric the Goth (U1826823) on Thursday, 3rd November 2005
Yes, the word for 'honey' also crossed my mind as not being a borrowing from Latin, but being from a common Celtic/Italic root. So did 'ceffyl': Latin has 'caballus' as the soldier's word for 'horse' (meaning something like 'nag'!) but Scots Gaelic has 'capull' so I think we are talking about another word where the ancient ancestor of both the Celtic and Italic words was the same.
Gothic has 'fisks' for 'fish', showing the usual Germanic 'p to f' consonant shift, so I'd reckon the original Indo-European word began 'pisk-' or very similar. I reckon the Q-Celtic (Old Irish) ancestor of your Irish 'iasc' was probably with an initial 'k' or 'p' sound thath it lost. The 'i' and the 'sc' are too strikingly similar to that in 'pisces', etc. for them not to have a common IE ancestor. -
Message 14
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Thursday, 3rd November 2005
My thoughts exactly!
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Message 15
Posted by LULUKYLIE (U12641327) on Sunday, 13th July 2008
Sorry cant help
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Message 16
Posted by LULUKYLIE (U12641327) on Sunday, 13th July 2008
WHAT THOUGHTS ESACTLY
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Message 17
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 18th July 2008
It looks as though 3 years ago Stoggler was agreeing with what Alaric had written in Message 13.
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