Celtic language used to be everywhere in Europe, what went wrong /his/?
![julius_caesar-851x315[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/UYJ4sQL.jpg "julius_caesar-851x315[1].jpg")
They got Romanticized.
>tfw born too late sacking Rome
>>749307
Fucking Italians rolled through.
It was the last time anything nice happened for Italy so we constantly have to hear about it.
>>749307
Italians ruined Gaul and Celtiberia, saxons ruined britain,
>>749307
>Celtic language used to be everywhere in Europe
How do we know that all those tribes actually spoke Celtic languages? Do broken pots contain some recordings?
Sure, those were peoples influenced by the Halstatt and later La Tene cultures, but aside from some tiny bits, we have no fucking idea what languages most of them spoke.
>>749536
Well, have writting from the Gauls, Celtiberians and Galatians, as well as records of their words/names from Greek and Roman sources that prove they spoke Celtic languages. Not sure about the Belgae though, I've heard different theories about their language.
>>749307
First romans then germans happened
>>749307
What were picts?
>>749566
>Well, have writting from the Gauls, Celtiberians and Galatians, as well as records of their words/names from Greek and Roman sources that prove they spoke Celtic languages.
That evidence means shit. Writings were often done in prestige languages that were totally unlike spoken vvernacular. Especially things like magical formulas or religious inscriptions, which is the bulk of Celtic corpus that survived. Look at Latin in medieval Europe, Akkadian in Mesopotamia or Avestan in Ancient Iran.
Personal names are even less telling, since they can be easily transmitted through intermarriage (naming a child after maternal ancestor), prestige diffusion (naming a child after a famous warlord who made a lot of fuss) and God knows how many other ways. Finally, they can be simply translated or corrupted by secondhand informers that Romans or Greek writers some with.
>>749307
Their culture was too disassociated, their infrastructure too weak, their population too small, and their technology too poor to last against powerful Mediterranean (mostly Roman) expansion. But then when they finally settled in "safe zones" far to the north of Rome, they got trashed by various other, more militant European tribal cultures (which also decimated Rome while they were at it).
>>749605
Ok, but the evidence still shows that there were Celtic speakers in these areas. Whether they ever constituted the majority or not who can say. But we have no evidence of a non-Celtic language in Gaul for example, other than Aquitanian in the south.
I agree with you though that the idea of a monolithic Celtic ethnicity that migrated/conquered around Europe isn't very convincing.
>>749582
No-one knows for sure. People guess, but we don't really know. Probably a mixture of random pre-celtic Britons, Caledonians and some hodgepodge of bullshit from Ireland and the isles.
>>749743
Some Pictish names and Ogham inscriptions can be interpreted as Celtic, but others are still mysterious. It seems just as likely to me that there was no "Pictish" language. Just different languages, some of which might not have even been related, spoken by culturally similar people.
>>749307
There were Celts in Poland though, mount Ślęża was a Celtic place of worship.
>>749307
>Northern Caledonia
Were Picts not Celtic?
>>750457
No one knows what the Picts really were, there were obviously Celtic influences within the Picts, but they weren't Celtic. They were probably an indigenous pre-PIE culture similar to Iberians.
>>750484
how linguistically compatible were they to their neighbors? were they totally foreign in tongue? could nobody understand them?
>>750739
There are a lot of theories, but I don't know if we can ever know for sure. The answer could be anywhere from "they spoke the same language" to "their language was completely unrelated".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictish_language#Language_classification gives a summary of the main theories.
>>750750
seeing as the rest of the lads on the island spoke Celtic languages, id say its safe to say they were Celtic. to assume they were some Basque-like types is quite the assumption.
>>750457
"Celt" is a cultural term, not a racial one. British and Irish "Celts" are actually natives who adopted Celtic culture and language.
>>749307
>Gaul
The people who lived here called themselves "Celtoi", and thier country, "Gallia". Gual is derived from the Germanic term for "foreigner", and is an analogue of "Wales" and "Pay de Galles". No Celt or Roman would ever have used the term Gaul, or anything like it.
>>750759
I agree, and probably should have stressed that in my original post. We have evidence of pre-Celtic language in the form of place names (as is the case elsewhere in Europe), but there isn't any evidence of its survival into historic times.
>>750781
I agree. Also, the Ogham inscriptions are mostly in primitive Irish and some in Pictish. Id imagine they'd have to be something similar if they were to work.
>>749536
People still speak Celtic languages.
Breton, Irish, Scot
Vae Victis
>>749536
Culture is defined primarily linguistically. If you are finding consistent artifacts of a single culture, chances are they are directly linguistically related to that culture. Language is the home of what defines you as a people and the barrier that separates your culture from other cultures, discounting contemporary times where the world is globalized and grayed out.
I would cut off my dick if people using celtic tools, building celtic houses and wearing celtic cothes weren't speaking celtic languages.
>>749307
Latins and Germans.
Seriously.
It's hard to quantify what really occurred from 500-1066, it seems like Rome directed the Saxon invasion in part and then relied on Romano-Celts and Romano-Saxons to expand their missionary work.
Yet there's a huge continental role in Western Europe which gets overlooked. We later find the Catholic playwright William Shakespeare working heavily with Celtic tales but leaving off much of the early 'Anglo-Saxon era'.
That remains a very interesting subject; why is England's greatest playwright so disinterested in the Anglo-Saxon era? Why are there no truly Anglo-Saxon plays in Shakespeare?
>>750457
They were Celtised, thats for sure, but not pure Celts.
No one was pure Celts though, if they were then all the Celtic lands really would have had identical people.
>>750762
>Gual is derived from the Germanic term for "foreigner"
Which came from Proto-Germanic *walhaz, which came from the Celtic tribal name "Volcae", so yes, some Celts and Romans would have used that term, or something like it.
>>749307
you mean what went right?
celts are filth
>>749427
>Italians humanized Gaul and Celtiberia
ftfw
>>752410
because he had a massive boner for graecolatin stuff.
