taranis, hyn
In Serbian there is an old word "Tušta" pronounced "tushta" which means all. The expression in Serbian "Tušta i tma" means lots and lots of people, so many it is impossible to count them all, like in this sentence: “Skupilo se sveta tušta i tma” meaning “So many people gathered, it was impossible to count them”. "Stuštiti se" means to all run down together like in a battle.
Maybe this is the missing Serbian equivalent of “tuatha” you were looking for.
"tušta" is not equivalent of "Tuatha"
"tušta" is word that in Celtic means same as in Serbian -heap, abundance of something
*heap (?) | *tus-tV- (Gall., B), *teus-t- (W, B) | tušta (abundance of something.. e.g. on heap)
tuatha is PIE word... for group of people
closest word in Serbian in sound and meaning is probably "četa" - which is group of people organized in military unit....
it is interesting that "tušta" is typically used in Serbian in phrase "
Tušta i tma" where neither "tušta" nor "tma" can be related to any other Slavic words.... like some other words I found here it is somehow not kind of language that literature professors would appreciate.... more like something in between archaic and slang... like part of some parallel alternative language that is still alive.... my guess is that it is a part of a vocabulary inhereted from a suppressed language.... question is where does it come from?
Scordisci did live practically in what is Serbia today... and ancient Celtic tribe that penetrates in Thrace from area of Scordisci and gradually become Thracanized has name Serdi which is in my opinion just thracanized version of Scordisci....Sc -> S same as Sclaveni are in fact Slaveni
hence S(c)ord - isci and Serd - i are in my opinion same tribal name with celtic and thracian endings...
from Serdi to Serbi there is just a little step... but important to notice is that this is just an idea...
alternatively, Celtic words in Serbian can come from words originating from language of Scordisci (previous inhabitants of Serbia) that were first adopted in vulgar latin that was imposed in region and than still preserved in Serbian.... however, while few words are exclusively linked to Serbian, most found matches also exist in other Slavic languages indicating that it is more than just adaption of words via vulgar latin, indicating that perhaps some celtic people participated in ethnogenesys of Slavic people
a clue for its correctness could be I2a-din (I2a1b1) as its other hotspot besides Serbo-Croat areas is in Ukraine in Galicia.... in my opinion Galicia same as Galatia in Asia minor is a name originally used for settlements of Celts or Gaels....
i also do remember sparkey (sparkey, correct me if i am wrong) mentioned some other rare I2a groups that some researchers speculate of belonging to Celtic people....
personally, I also suspect that I2a1a (dominant in Sardinia and found accross west Mediterraen including north Africa) in originally part of Celtic people because Celts were found in north Africa same as I2a1 (unlike other haplogroups common today in Europe) ... there is evidence of Strabo that Celts are found in Europe, Asia and Africa...
138 Few nations have wandered so far and wide as the Galatæ. We meet with them in Europe, Asia, andAfrica, under the various names of Galatæ Galatians, Gauls, and Kelts. Galatia, in Asia Minor, was settled by one of these hordes.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...99.01.0239:book=1:chapter=3&highlight=galatia
I also tend to relate these people to Gomer/Cimmerian and Gomerians in north Africa....
Gomer is a name of person in mythology that is traditionally related to Germanic people... in Asia this seems to correlate with
I2a2 (former I2b, which is together with I1 it is considered kind of marker of migrations of early Germanic tribes)....roman empire authors do speculate that name Germans means seed/source/ofshoot and they pinpoint that name is used for original Celts...they originally apply name essentially to Suebi or Swabians of today....
hence, it is not inconceivable that tribal names like Scordisci, Serdi, Sardinians and Suebi were originally spread by some I2 peoples who might have been among bearers of Celtic culture.... perhaps Serbi or Serbs would be the part of them who lived in east Europe and has merged with other east European people such as Thracians, Dacians, Venedi and Sarmatians to give modern Slavs...
on other hand, number of shared words between Slavic/Serbian and Celtic is not really too big... its probably much less than needed to establishing any hypothesys about direct legacy based on linguistic...