Gallaecian language

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The Nicer Clutosi stele inscription. Galician-Celtic princeps - albioni.jpg
The Nicer Clutosi stele inscription.

Gallaecian or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic is the name given to a pre-Roman Celtic language, spoken by the ancient Gallaeci in northwestern Iberia. [1] [2] [3] The linguistic situation of pre-Roman north-west Iberia is complex, as it includes inscriptions that contain clearly Celtic linguistic features and others that do not and are probably related to Lusitanian. [4] The region became the Roman province of Gallaecia, which is now divided between the Spanish regions of Galicia, the western parts of Asturias, León and Zamora, and the Norte Region of Portugal.

Contents

Overview

As with the Illyrian, Ligurian and Thracian languages, the surviving corpus of Gallaecian is composed of isolated words and short sentences contained in local Latin inscriptions or glossed by classical authors, together with a number of names – anthroponyms, ethnonyms, theonyms, toponyms – contained in inscriptions, or surviving as the names of places, rivers or mountains.[ citation needed ] Classical author Pomponius Mela wrote about the existence of Celtic populations from the lower reaches of the Douro River, north and then along Hispania's northern Atlantic coast as far as the Cantabri. [5]

Possible Celtic elements in Gallaecia

Below are listed some hypothetical Celtic etymologies for various linguistic records from ancient Gallaecia.

Features shared with Celtiberian and the other Celtic languages

Examples
  • place names C(ASTELLO) OLCA from *φolkā- 'Overturned', C(ASTELLO) ERITAECO from *φerito- 'surrounded, enclosed'
  • personal name ARCELTIUS, from *φari-kelt-y-os
  • place name C(ASTELLO) ERCORIOBRI, from *φeri-kor-y-o-brig-s 'Overshooting hillfort'
  • place name C(ASTELLO) LETIOBRI, [11] from *φle-tyo-brig-s 'wide hillfort', or *φlei-to-brig-s 'grey hillfort'; [12]
  • place name Iria Flavia, from *φīweryā- (nominative *φīwerī) 'fertile' (feminine form, cf. Sanskrit feminine pīvari- "fat"); [13]
  • place name ONTONIA, from *φont-on- 'path'; [14]
  • personal name LATRONIUS, [15] to *φlā-tro- 'place; trousers'
  • personal name ROTAMUS, to *φro-tamo- 'foremost'; [16]
  • modern place names Bama (Touro, Vama 912) to *uφamā- [17] 'the lowest one, the bottom' (feminine form), Iñobre (Rianxo) to *φenyo-brix-s [18] 'Hill (fort) by the water', Bendrade (Oza dos Ríos) to *Vindo-φrātem 'White fortress', and Baiordo (Coristanco) to *Bagyo-φritu-, where the second element is proto-Celtic for 'ford'. [19] Galician-Portuguese appellative words leira 'flat patch of land' from *φlāryā, [20] lavego 'plough' from *φlāw-aiko-, [21] laxe/lage 'flagstone', from medieval lagena, from *φlagĭnā, [22] rega and rego 'furrow' from *φrikā. [23]
The frequent instances of preserved PIE /p/ are assigned by some authors, namely Carlos Búa [24] and Jürgen Untermann, to a single and archaic Celtic language spoken in Gallaecia, Asturia and Lusitania, while others (Francisco Villar, Blanca María Prósper, Patrizia de Bernado Stempel, Jordán Colera) consider that they belong to a Lusitanian or Lusitanian-like dialect or group of dialects spoken in northern Iberia along with (but different from) Western Hispano-Celtic: [25]
  • in Galicia: divinity names and epithets PARALIOMEGO, PARAMAECO, POEMANAE, PROENETIAEGO, PROINETIE, PEMANEIECO, PAMUDENO; place names Lapatia, Paramo, Pantiñobre if from *palanti-nyo-brig-s (Búa); Galician-Portuguese appellative words lapa 'stone, rock' (cfr. Lat. lapis) and pala 'stone cavity', from *palla from *plh-sa (cfr. Germ. fels, O.Ir. All).
  • in Asturias the ethnic name Paesici; personal names PENTIUS, PROGENEI; divinity name PECE PARAMECO; in León and Bragança place names PAEMEIOBRIGENSE, Campo Paramo, Petavonium.
  • in other northwestern areas: place names Pallantia, Pintia, Segontia Paramica; ethnic name Pelendones.

Features not shared with Celtiberian

Q-Celtic

Under the P/Q Celtic hypothesis, Gallaecian appears to be a Q-Celtic language, as evidenced by the following occurrences in local inscriptions: ARQVI, ARCVIVS, ARQVIENOBO, ARQVIENI[S], ARQVIVS, all probably from IE Paleo-Hispanic *arkʷios 'archer, bowman', retaining proto-Celtic *kʷ. [58] [59] It is also noteworthy the ethnonyms Equaesi ( < PIE *ek̂wos 'horse'), a people from southern Gallaecia, [60] and the Querquerni ( < *perkʷ- 'oak'). Nevertheless, some old toponyms and ethnonyms, and some modern toponyms, have been interpreted as showing kw / kʷ > p: Pantiñobre (Arzúa, composite of *kʷantin-yo- '(of the) valley' and *brix-s 'hill(fort)') and Pezobre (Santiso, from *kweityo-bris), [61] ethnonym COPORI "the Bakers" from *pokwero- 'to cook', [62] old place names Pintia, in Galicia and among the Vaccei, from PIE *penkwtó- > Celtic *kwenχto- 'fifth'. [47] [63]

Roman inscriptions

Revivalism

There is a strong Celtophile sentiment in Galicia. In the 19th century a group of Romantic and Nationalist writers and scholars, among them Eduardo Pondal and Manuel Murguía, [64] based Galician identity on the ancient Celtic heritage of the region. Currently the Celticist movement is strongest in Galicia and extends into Asturias, northern Portugal, and sometimes into Cantabria. Vincent F. Pintado, an amateur linguist, proposed to revive the pre-Roman Gallaecian language based on his reconstructions. [65]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Prósper, Blanca María (2002). Lenguas y religiones prerromanas del occidente de la península ibérica. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. pp. 422–427. ISBN   84-7800-818-7.
  2. ↑ Prósper, B.M. (2005). Estudios sobre la fonética y la morfología de la lengua celtibérica in Vascos, celtas e indoeuropeos. Genes y lenguas (coauthored with Villar, Francisco). Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, pp. 333–350. ISBN   84-7800-530-7.
  3. ↑ Cólera, Carlos Jordán (2007-03-16). "Celtiberian (Page_750)". E-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies. 6 (1): 750. ISSN   1540-4889.
  4. ↑ Cólera, Carlos Jordán (2007-03-16). "Celtiberian". E-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies. 6 (1): 750. ISSN   1540-4889. In the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, and more specifically between the west and north Atlantic coasts and an imaginary line running north-south and linking Oviedo and Merida, there is a corpus of Latin inscriptions with particular characteristics of its own. This corpus contains some linguistic features that are clearly Celtic and others that in our opinion are not Celtic. The former we shall group, for the moment, under the label northwestern Hispano-Celtic. The latter are the same features found in well-documented contemporary inscriptions in the region occupied by the Lusitanians, and therefore belonging to the variety known as LUSITANIAN, or more broadly as GALLO-LUSITANIAN. As we have already said, we do not consider this variety to belong to the Celtic language family.
  5. ↑ Pomponius, Mela. Chorographia, III.7–9 (in Latin). pp. 7, 9. Among them the Praestamarci, Supertamarci, Nerii, Artabri, and in general all people living by the seashore except for the Grovi of southern Galicia and northern Portugal: 'Totam Celtici colunt, sed a Durio ad flexum Grovi, fluuntque per eos Avo, Celadus, Nebis, Minius et cui oblivionis cognomen est Limia. Flexus ipse Lambriacam urbem amplexus recipit fluvios Laeron et Ullam. Partem quae prominet Praesamarchi habitant, perque eos Tamaris et Sars flumina non longe orta decurrunt, Tamaris secundum Ebora portum, Sars iuxta turrem Augusti titulo memorabilem. Cetera super Tamarici Nerique incolunt in eo tractu ultimi. Hactenus enim ad occidentem versa litora pertinent. Deinde ad septentriones toto latere terra convertitur a Celtico promunturio ad Pyrenaeum usque. Perpetua eius ora, nisi ubi modici recessus ac parva promunturia sunt, ad Cantabros paene recta est. In ea primum Artabri sunt etiamnum Celticae gentis, deinde Astyres.
  6. ↑ Curchin 2008: 117
  7. ↑ Prósper 2002: 357–358
  8. ↑ Prósper 2005: 282
  9. 1 2 Prósper 2005: 336
  10. ↑ Prósper 2002: 422
  11. ↑ Curchin 2008: 123
  12. ↑ Prósper 2005: 269
  13. ↑ Delamarre 2012: 165
  14. ↑ Delamarre 2012: 2011
  15. ↑ Vallejo 2005: 326
  16. ↑ Koch 2011:34
  17. ↑ Cf. Koch 2011: 76
  18. ↑ Prósper 2002: 377
  19. ↑ Búa 2007: 38–39
  20. ↑ cf. DCECH s.v. lera
  21. ↑ cf. DCECH s.v. llaviegu
  22. ↑ cf. DCECH s.v. laja
  23. ↑ cf. DCECH s.v. regar
  24. ↑ Búa 2007
  25. ↑ Prósper, Blanca M. "Shifting the evidence: new interpretation of Celtic and non-Celtic personal names of Western Hispania": 1. Retrieved 13 March 2014.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  26. ↑ Prósper 2005: 342.
  27. ↑ Moralejo 2010: 105
  28. ↑ Luján 2006: 727–729
  29. ↑ Prósper 2002: 357–382
  30. ↑ Prósper 2005: 338; Jordán Cólera 2007: 754.
  31. ↑ Prósper 2002: 425–426.
  32. ↑ Prósper 2005: 336.
  33. ↑ Prósper 2002: 205–215.
  34. ↑ Luján 2006: 724
  35. ↑ Prósper 2002: 397
  36. ↑ Prósper, B. M.; Francisco Villar (2009). "NUEVA INSCRIPCIÓN LUSITANA PROCEDENTE DE PORTALEGRE". EMERITA, Revista de Lingüística y Filología Clásica (EM). LXXVII (1): 1–32. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
  37. 1 2 Prósper 2002: 423.
  38. ↑ Prósper 2002: 211
  39. ↑ González García, Francisco Javier (2007). Los pueblos de la Galicia céltica. Madrid: Ediciones Akal. p. 409. ISBN   9788446036210.
  40. ↑ Jordán Cólera 2007: 755
  41. 1 2 Wodtko 2010: 356
  42. ↑ Prósper 2005: 266, 278
  43. ↑ Prósper 2002: 423
  44. ↑ Prósper 2005: 282.
  45. ↑ Moralejo 2010: 107
  46. ↑ Prósper, Blanca M. "Shifting the evidence: new interpretation of Celtic and non-Celtic personal names of Western Hispania": 6–8. Retrieved 13 March 2014.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  47. 1 2 John T., Koch (2015). "Some Palaeohispanic Implications of the Gaulish Inscription of Rezé (Ratiatum)". Mélanges en l'honneur de Pierre-Yves Lambert: 333–46. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  48. ↑ Prósper 2005: 266
  49. ↑ Jordán Cólera 2007: 763–764.
  50. ↑ Prósper 2002: 422, 427
  51. 1 2 Prósper 2005: 345
  52. ↑ Prósper, Blanca María. "El topónimo hispano–celta Bletisama: Una aproximación desde la lingüística". In: I. Sastre y F. J. Sánchez Palencia (eds.). El bronce de Pino del Oro Valladolid. 2010. pp. 217–23.
  53. ↑ Sometimes it has been read ELANIOBRENSI
  54. ↑ Luján 2006: 727
  55. ↑ Jordán Cólera 2007: 757.
  56. ↑ Prósper 2002: 426
  57. ↑ Prósper 2005: 346
  58. ↑ Koch, John T (2011). Tartessian 2: The Inscription of Mesas do Castelinho ro and the Verbal Complex. Preliminaries to Historical Phonology. Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK. pp. 53–54, 144–145. ISBN   978-1-907029-07-3. Archived from the original on 2011-07-23.
  59. ↑ Abad, Rubén Abad. (2008). "La divinidad celeste/solar en el panteón céltico peninsular". In: Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie II, Historia Antigua, 21: 101.
  60. ↑ Cf. Vallejo 2005: 321, who wrongly assign them to the Astures.
  61. ↑ Prósper 2002: 422, 378–379
  62. ↑ Prósper, Blanca M. "Shifting the evidence: new interpretation of Celtic and non-Celtic personal names of Western Hispania": 10. Retrieved 13 March 2014.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  63. ↑ de Bernardo Stempel, Patrizia (2009). "El nombre -¿céltico?- de la "Pintia vaccea"" (PDF). BSAA Arqueología: Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arqueología (75). Retrieved 14 March 2014.
  64. ↑ González García, F. J. (coord.) (2007). Los pueblos de la Galicia céltica. Madrid: Ediciones Akal. pp. 19–49. ISBN   9788446022602.
  65. ↑ "Gallaic Language Revival Movement - GLEUSSAXTA ATEBIVOCANA TENGUA GALLAICA". gallaicrevivalmovement.page.tl. Archived from the original on 2022-12-08. Retrieved 2022-11-28.

Bibliography

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