h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I've been told that Celtic is closest to Italic"

I always said those guys spoke a different language to the rest of us! Or did I say they were on a different planet...?

Dasher is !

H.

HAve a look at this site for some info on the Indo-European language family.

http://www.scnt01426.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Articles/Language/Indo-European.htm

turvy

Interesting, that, but it doesn't tell me which of the families within Indo-European are closely related.

I don't know whether this is any more help, Gnomon:

http://www.danshort.com/ie/iecentum_c.shtml

It's presented in a more tree-like structure, so it is easier to see the relationships between the languages.

The Italic and Celtic groups of languages are all main branches of the Indo European tree, as are Germanic and Hellenic. What you can't tell from this website (or any other source that I can find at the moment) is how closely these main branches are related to each other. I think, but could be wrong, that this mostly reflects the historical development of the Indo European languages, as the different language groups split off at different stages. So you'd have to look at when and where each branch separated from their assumed common source, which is a very complex and contentious tale.

I've learnt Latin, a little classical Greek, French, German, Russian and a very little Welsh, and my feeling is that structurally the modern day Celtic languages are indeed closer to modern day Italic languages than they are to Germanic or Hellenic. I'm thinking of things like whether nouns have case endings (they do in German, but not in Italian, French or Welsh, I think). Looking for shared vocabulary is more complex, as there has been a great deal of borrowing between all these 'western' Europen languages.

Another useful source for language families is http://www.ethnologue.com/

Thanks for all the info...
marking

The words one to ten seem to be a good sign of the original language, because they are too well known in a language to need to be borrowed from another language. I'll have to do a study of them to see which language families are closest related.

hopeful voyager, the language that french/spanish/italian/romanian derived FROM had case endings, ie Latin. I don't think that would be much of an explanation for them being so similar.

maybe the structure of a language doesn't have much to do with its heritage?

The numbers are indeed good indicators of relationships between languages. In fact some linguists divide the IE languages based on the word for hundred (centum and satem languages). There are a number of sound/spelling changes that sometimes obscure the relationship. And you need to be able to unpick whether two languages which seem to share a feature do so because they are closely related (diverged at more or less the same time and comparatively "recently") or whether they do so because they diverged early, but just happened to develop along the same lines.

And you need to beware of superficially similar words from languages that are generally thought not to belong to the same family. It is generally understood that Finnish is not a member of IE, but if I remember rightly the Finnish word for "ten" is "deksan" (may have spelt that wrongly) which looks similar to the the latinate root "dec-" which underlies most European languages.

Also the words for close family members - mother father son, daughter may be useful indicators, though there are some schools of thought that some of the forms of these are actually universal, as they are based on the forst sounds that babies say (usually 'm's, 'b's and 'p's, abd an 'ah' type vowel).

Also appreciate your post, pedro. But I still believe that the fact that some of the modern languages which came from latin/greek have noun case endings does in fact show that they diverged from those that don't at some stage, and have followed a more common path since.

However, I have heard as many theories on all this as I have known linguists, so I'm trying to keep an open mind!

The Irish for a hundred is "céad" pronounced like the end of decade. Does that mean Irish (Gaelic) is a satem language?

To me céad and centum are very similar: the both start with a k sound, followed by e, followed by a t/d (dental) sound. Centum has an um on the end, but that's just a Latin word ending.

Irish (Gaelic) is a centum language. The web reference I posted earlier showed only the centum languages. If you follow the link at the left you can see the satem languages.

But your question highlights the difficulties of determining language evolution.

A proto-Celtic language was used as a 'lingua franca' all the way down the eastern seaboard of Europe in post Roman times, from the Hebrides to Spain. It wouldn't be at all surprising if there were a lot of borrowings from Italic languages spoken in France and Spain. Celtic languages subsequently split into 2 branches (? P-celtic and Q-celtic), which later solidified into Gallician, Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Gaelic and Manx.

Note: The idea of a 'Celtic people' is something of a myth. Many peoples shared the proto-Celtic Lingua Franca

"down the eastern seaboard of Europe in post Roman times, from the Hebrides to Spain" -- ah, the map was very different then

Edward, why do you call it a proto-Celtic language, if it was in post-Roman times? The Celtic language had already been spoken in Ireland and Wales at that time for more than 500 years.

I find your whole claim rather dubious. You say that the 'Celtic People' is a bit of a myth, but you don't say why. Are you disputing the fact that the Britons and the Goidels were Celtic?

As I understood it, the Celtic peoples came originally from Switzerland.. (I can't remember the name of the precise area.) I read that in a book by Gerhard Herm, back in 1985 or so...

Ah Jaysus are we back to the Brits? Last I heard they weren't Celtic, now they are again. Would they make up their minds?

In Ireland the worst insult you can give someone is "West Brit" (thrown at the unfortunate hero in Joyce's "The Dead"). It means a person living in Ireland who hankers after Great Britain (to which they may refer as "the mainland"). Typically they are supposed to own land and hunt foxes and get their education in England. I've never actually met any.

I remember reading (and seeing) a story a few years back about a mummy (well, body) discovered in Tibet or western China. She had red hair and was buried in green tartan. The story seemed to suggest that maybe the Celts had actually originated in central Asia but had been pushed westwards into Europe.
Didn't the ancient Greeks have bagpipes? Undeniable proof if you ask me...

For instance http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/prehistory/peoples_03.shtml
says "calling the British Iron Age 'Celtic' is so misleading that it is best abandoned."

The Mummies of Urumchi! I read a book about them last year, by a textile specialist. (Despite that, she still made it a fascinating book) AFAIK, she said she thought that they were Celtic people who had travelled to Mongolia, not that they'd originated there.
Marvellous book if you can find it. Apparently, one of the women has become a Mongolian folk hero(ine). She's on posters and CD covers.

I think the term refers to a shared language rather than a racial grouping. Looking around on Google it seems the Celts were a fusion of a small, dark haired people originating in the south German states and spreading across much of Europe and an immigrating group from around the southern Steppes.