36: The love for Gaulish

 

Written & published by Linden Alexander Pentecost in the UK. This article contains a brief description of how my opinions about what Gaulish is have changed, looking at the non-Indo-European perspective and the Indo-European perspective as well, followed by a short poetic text in revived Gaulish, with translation and reference notes and publication notes. This article (the one in front of you titled 36: The love for Gaulish) contains 990 words. Published in early august 2024.

 

Over time I have come to the personal realisation that a lot of what we call “Celtic” may, in my opinion, more likely be an interplay of pre-Indo-European languages which were in part, later manifested through and transformed by various integrations of formulaic Indo-European language into these indigenous languages.

There never was a “Celtic” people. The Welsh and Irish, whilst having been connected for thousands of years, were never one people, they always had their own identities and cultures, and the people we call “The Celts” really only had the affect of a later formulisation and integration of ancient linguistic and cultural features into new standards.

Subsequently this new understanding that I have, come across, found, discovered, changes the way in which I understand attested literary continental languages like Gaulish and Celtiberian.

Many of the Gaulish inscriptions are not fully translated. That there is evidence of Indo-European and “Celtic” language present in these inscriptions is absolutely true; however, I think it possible that Gaulish inscriptions also simultaneously incorporate elements or pre-IE language, as is especially the case with Lepontic, but not necessarily with Celtiberian, which, in comparison to Gaulish, I find relatively straightforward to read and understand etymologically, even if the semantic meanings of these roots in Celtiberian are sometimes not typical of their meaning in other Celtic languages.

So what is Gaulish, in my opinion? I personally feel that what we call “Gaulish” was once a relatively standard, trans-European, formulaic measuring, mathematical, dedicational and religious set of principles and ideas that we identify as “Indo-European”, which were then used accordingly as a culture-wide way of communicating mathematical, industrial and religious knowledge of a particular form that people understood, all the way from Galatia to parts of Britain.

Was Gaulish also a spoken language? To a degree, I would say absolutely. But did ALL THE PEOPLE from Galatia to Britain speak this language? I think that is very unlikely. I find it hard to believe that much of Europe spoke Gaulish, and then, that all of a sudden, fully developed families of Slavic, Romance and Germanic languages would just happen to develop with little to no influence of the Gaulish language over such a vast area. In addition, a lot of the “Gaulish” words in French can as easily be explained as coming from a Pre-IE language. If a word in French has cognates in Celtic languages, that does not prove by any means that the word is “Celtic” in origin, which becomes especially clear, when we understand that the “Celts” never even existed as a single people and language to begin with.

This is not to say, by any means, that I do not greatly appreciate the word that has gone into studying Gaulish from an Indo-European perspective. I am not saying that Gaulish can’t be Indo-European as well as being pre-Indo-European. It is naturally of this nature for that the underlying vocabulary will, at least in certain senses, be commonly pre-IE in origin. And in addition, when we speak of Gaulish as this “Indo-Europeanised” language in the texts, it is a language that I love speaking.

When I was 16, I initially came across Gaulish through the Band Eluveitie. I fell in love with Eluveitie’s music and with the sound of the language. To me, Gaulish is a very gentle sounding language, gentle like the breeze in oak trees, and yet strong and roaring like a flood, moving like the goddess Epona. It has a very different “sound” and feel to other “archaic Indo-European languages”, but the similarities to Greek, Latin and Lithuanian can be heard and felt through the way in which the prosody matches the formulaic case and gender systems so typical of “Indo-European” languages.

If Gaulish, is, as I suggest, a kind of formulaic language, where older languages are structurally reorganised in a way to communicate common measurement, mathematical, familial and religious ideas, then technically Gaulish can be literally spoken by identifying the common vocabulary of the Gaulish world (including many words recognised as being Celtic), and to then formulate these back into the Gaulish language. For example, take the following small poetic text I have written in Revived Gaulish:

 

sedû urit senom daru

nertom esti in cridiei imon

et senoi ateres labaranti do-mî

do-swi-que

I sit beside the old oak
Strength is in my heart

And the old fathers speak to me
And to you (plural) too

This can be broken down as: sedû – I sit, urit – beside, senom daru – accusative and nominative form meaning “old oak”, nertom – strength, esti – is, in – in, cridiei imon – locative form of cridiom imon – my heart, et – and, senoi ateres – (the) old fathers, labaranti – they speak, do-mî – to me, do-swi – to you (plural), plus -que – “and”.

I hope that you enjoyed this short article. The revived Gaulish poetic text was written by me, however, I did check some of the Proto-Celtic lemmas on Wiktionary for some of the equivalent words in Proto-Celtic to some of the revived Gaulish words above, namely the forms: sedû, senom, daru, ateres, for which I looked at the Wiktionary pages for Proto-Celtic *sedeti, *senos, *daru and *ɸatīr to check some of the endings.

 

I have written other poetry in revived Gaulish elsewhere. This article (the one in front of you) is not connected to my recently published Kindle ebook, titled Historic and mysterious Cumbria and Britain (only published in Kindle format). See also my other article on Gaulish on this website: https://www.bookofdunbarra.co.uk/website-articles-10-19/16-an-introduction-to-gaulish-and-lepontic