Celtic and Pre-Germanic

[MOESAN]

hello!

I take on this old thread given it anew life by a very recent post -
My knowledge is not so vaste as the oneof some hobbyists here but reading some old posts I want to do someremarks :
about 'r' : Kentel saysbreton 'r' is uvular (I suppose the MODERN french 'r' and LITTERARYgerman 'r' ): it is very untrue : yet nowaday50% of the native breton speakers (born about the 1930-40's)pronounce a « trilled » 'r' (I don't know the englishspecific linguistic word for it) : this 'r' is not so« trilled » as do the Scotmen and the Spaniards, strongonly when explosive and following some stops ; it is weak atimplosive position and then tends to fade out as in english and somescandinavic dialects ; on an other hand, it was blown at theinitial as welsh 'rh' in some subdialects of breton ; I add thatin Tregor dialect the explosive 'r' was trilled but take an « irish »or even « american texan » colour when implosive, as itcan do too in Scotland in the same position –
at the beginning of the 1900's thetrilled 'r' was the dominant one - I remember a 'bigouter' breton ofPont-an-Abad (Pont-L'Abbé, SW Finistère) that wrote his comradesmocked the Kemper (Quimper) inhabitants that spoke breton with a'uvular french r', giving even a kind of 'a' (look at german) at theimplosive position when the 'Bigouters' pronounced a vigorous trilled'r' : nowaday, in the same small region, Quimper inhabitantsignore breton language for the most, and the 'Bigouters' pronouncethe uvular french 'r' their fathers laughed at ! Thingschange... and yes, in some small regions of brittophoneBrittany, old trilled /r/ is unknown today -
in France the most of the people,speaking 'oil' as well as 'oc' trilled the 'r' – in France, theuvular 'r' modern expansion is a social phenomenon linked to socialclasses and snobism (and school), so big towns to begin – BUT forcopying a new pronounciation you need a source ; I don't knowwhat was or are the theories concerning uvular 'r' in french, but, asI wrote in another thread, I believe the first occurrences ofuvular 'r' or some close sound could be linked to Franks elites :flemish speaking Belgians have two kinds of 'r' : one trilled asin the Netherlands as a whole (but maybe in dutch Limburg you canfind a sort of uvular 'r') and one close enough to the uvular 'r',but « trilled » in a certain way – as I knowScandinavians (Norway, Denmark, Sweden) has the trilled 'r' and theuvular 'r', I'm obliged to think that the origin of the uvular onecame from ONE or ONES of the germanic dialects : it could bepassed in Scandinavia through the geographic road of Denmark northGermany AND TOO in Sweden passed by the social mediation of a lot ofGermans immigrants (they were very numerous in Sweden at some timebut I forgot the precise dates : in the XVIII and XIXcenturies ?) or maybe at the time when Denmark ruled southernSweden, because uvular 'r' seams commoner in today Denmark than inother scandinavian lands ; I add than in danish the uvular 'r'seams attached to social statute too - a speculation could be : ?the pre-germanic I-Ean /kr-/ >> /hr-/ >> /[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]ʁ[/FONT]/(uvular or close to it) in some ethnies of Western Germany, betweenbelgium and Rhine ?
The local evolution of something closeto it, in breton and in flemish, push me to imagine that :
a) in breton(ish) even the trillingpronouncers of 'r' (# /R/) pronounce nowaday / -[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]ʁX/or even simply /-X/ what was previoulsy '-rc'h' /-rX/ or /-rɣ/ -[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]b)in some flemish (maybe not western vlaamsch but zuid-brabantisch) theorigin of a 'r' close to french /ʁ/ but stronger could be found inthe frequency of the group 'gr-' occurrence : /ɣr/ >>/ɣR/ leading to the lost of traditional trilled 'r' ? itdoesn't contradict at all the hypothesis about ancient 'hr' germanicgroup ...[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]&:I red somewhere (touring billingual handooks) that in portuguese andbrazilian 'r' knows /r/ and /ʁ/ according to position in words anddouble 'rr' is pronounced /ʁ/ - which origin ?[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Concerningbelgic tribes in Ireland H. HUBERT thought that the 'fir bolg' couldbe translated the « men of the bags » if I don't mistake('bola' << 'bolg' = « belly » in today welsh,'bolc'h' << 'bolg' = « chesnut bug » in breton),it's to say « the men in large 'bracae' (breeches) »evocating continental Celts of the North as Belgae...[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Veryoften I red that personal names and tribal names of Antiquity are ofno worth to [/FONT]tell us the ethnicity and the language of theirbearers, and someones take the present day mode of internationalchristian names for children as a proof of that ; can we be surethat the mentality of these times was exactly the same as presently ?Had they handbooks proposing them a bunch of names with translationsfor them or their children ? Snobism is not new but at this timeI think there was higher exigences than today : the autonegationwas not « in the wind » as today, I suppose, a little bitmore of proud (sometimes ridiculous unfounded proud) was the rule inthese times and I have some difficulty to think Germanic tribes tookceltic names only by snobism or admiration... Even the elite of Gaultribes allied to well famed Roma kept their celtic naming, changingonly slowly when Gauls were definitely vainquished – even the'roman-britton' nobility of Brittain, after having taken latin names,came back to celtic names when they cut the links with Roma ;and the nobility of Europe speaking french is another thing :allied almost « incestuous » cousins living in anartificial bubble disconnected society, far from any folk, so I amnot sure it could be compared to other times and societiessituations...


Speaking about the Cimbers/Cimri, I amstill not sure of a true far germanic origin of them – there'urheimat' should not be in Denmark and considering placenames (citedby some of you) and Y-DNA, we can expect that Celts was previouslysettled far enough in the North and maybe Northeast – even ifignoring the D. FAUX thesis about scandinavian Y-R1b-U152 came therethrough Jutland from supposedly celtic Cimri, we can suppose that thepresent day Netherlands knew some celtic presence and yet we see that they are not so level the global surveys put us to believe :even if I have some defiance about STR studies, I have in mind thatthe Dutch people south the Rhine river show different enoughdistributions of haplotypes compared to Frisians or northernNetherlanders, a lot of these haplotypes showing more southern andwestern ties for Y-R1b (geographically closer to Iberia orneo-celtic countries); We lack regional detailed SNPs studies for theNetherlands – germanic Belgium shows that the united R-U152+RS116are everywhere stronger than « frisian » or « austrian »R-U106 (only in malines-Mechelen), being the most striking theWestern Antwerpen district with 16,2% of R-U152, 28,2% of R-S116 and27,5% only of R-U106 : this region is bordering the continentalZeeland where the Netherlanders was the smallest for stature in thelast century – I know the cemeteries of southernNetherlands-Zeeland showed a lot of brachycephals in the last MiddleAges ('alpine's + some 'borreby's are to be bet) but one can objectthat these populations could have settled the Netherlands latelyenough (Duchy of Lorraine or Burgundy?) and not at the supposedceltic times – but reading C.COON can help sometimes : withoutlooking for explications we can do this statement : the metriccranial means of ancient Franks (a medly of phenotypes with somenordic dominent) was closer to the Celts ones (Iron Ages elites only?La Tène Celts as Goidels) than to the means of Anglo-Saxons or otherGermanics tribes of these times... I know that this argumentationfalls far from linguistic purposes but perharps it could help making sense?


Just to finish with Taraniswho have great knowledge in linguistic, I'll say that common ancientgrammatical structures conserved well enough by two families oflanguages doesn't assure an (even hard) inter-understanding :yet some recentdialects ofthe same family have difficulties for understanding, more by lexicallosts and gains than by phonetic evolution : I had send a littlelist of latin and gaulish words showing that very well, spite anattested even if remote common origin between italic and celtic...sure enough the nobility people of those times was moving more thanwe do nowaday and lexical break and isolation did not occur so easilythan in modern sedentary dialects but... the links you mentionedbetween (pre-?proto-?)germanic and (pre?-proto- ?) balto-slavicseam to me prove that Germanics grandfathers was not kept so close toCelts as a whole (see 'sister'/'sestra' # *'swor', 'son'/'syn' #*'makw', *'khwol'/*'kol' # *'rot', *'melk'/*'m-l-k' # '*lakt' ...+with italic or others : *'khop-t'/'kaput' # *kwen(d),*'phot'/'ped'/'pod' # *'tro-id' (sorry,my reconstructed forms are not the conventionnal ones, but they areeasy to read) – peoplehere put some good examples to improve this too short list -


sorryfor a so indigest text !
Takea drink to put all that bad stuff down !

 

[MOESAN]

sorry, it is the second time that I see afterhand that my 'copy & patch' became incorrect when executed here: lack of separation between words - could somebody explain me what is the cause and how find a solution
?
Thanks

 

[LeBrok]

sorry, it is the second time that I see afterhand that my 'copy & patch' became incorrect when executed here: lack of separation between words - could somebody explain me what is the cause and how find a solution
?
Thanks

This version of Bulletin Board is not fully compatible with MS Explorer or Windows7 in general. I have same problems.

 

[MOESAN]

This version of Bulletin Board is not fully compatible with MS Explorer or Windows7 in general. I have same problems.

thanks
it is not so hard to me, just annoying for readers - I 'll hold on without any drug or any kind of euphorizant...

 

[Kentel]

hello!

I take on this old thread given it anew life by a very recent post -
My knowledge is not so vaste as the oneof some hobbyists here but reading some old posts I want to do someremarks :
about 'r' : Kentel saysbreton 'r' is uvular (I suppose the MODERN french 'r' and LITTERARYgerman 'r' ): it is very untrue : yet nowaday50% of the native breton speakers (born about the 1930-40's)pronounce a « trilled » 'r' (I don't know the englishspecific linguistic word for it) : this 'r' is not so« trilled » as do the Scotmen and the Spaniards, strongonly when explosive and following some stops ; it is weak atimplosive position and then tends to fade out as in english and somescandinavic dialects ; on an other hand, it was blown at theinitial as welsh 'rh' in some subdialects of breton ; I add thatin Tregor dialect the explosive 'r' was trilled but take an « irish »or even « american texan » colour when implosive, as itcan do too in Scotland in the same position –
at the beginning of the 1900's thetrilled 'r' was the dominant one - I remember a 'bigouter' breton ofPont-an-Abad (Pont-L'Abbé, SW Finistère) that wrote his comradesmocked the Kemper (Quimper) inhabitants that spoke breton with a'uvular french r', giving even a kind of 'a' (look at german) at theimplosive position when the 'Bigouters' pronounced a vigorous trilled'r' : nowaday, in the same small region, Quimper inhabitantsignore breton language for the most, and the 'Bigouters' pronouncethe uvular french 'r' their fathers laughed at ! Thingschange... and yes, in some small regions of brittophoneBrittany, old trilled /r/ is unknown today -

Sorry to answer so late, I haven't checked this thread for a while. Moesan, your reply is very interesting and challenges my own belief as far as the uvular R is concerned. It is very interesting because Pont'n Abad, the Breton village you mention in your post, is the place where I was born I questioned some native Breton speakers from there, and none of them remember having heard the trilled R in their childhood.

Another thing : in his Grammar of Breton (historically the first), Le Gonidec states that the R is pronounced "as in French", i.e. as an uvular : "R se prononce comme en français" (p.6). The book has been written in 1807, hence it gives a rather interesting account about the pronounciation of the language two centuries ago.

The "prestige hypothesis" (the Bretons - and the French - are supposed to have been using the uvular R instead of the trilled R by social imitation) sounds very dubious to me, not only because it does not look very realistic, but especially because the places of articulation of the two sounds are too different. When you hear people learning French as a second language, among the (many) phonetic obstacles they bump in, there is the uvular R. It is extremely difficult for a speaker who does not have this sound in his/her language to imitate it, and many do not even succeed in doing so. Most Spanish or Italians I've heard speaking French couldn't articulate it. Some can, obviously, but at a cost of a considerable effort.

Well, I don't say you're wrong - nor that I am right as a matter of fact, but we have here contradictory assesments.

 

[dublin]

hi guys

can i suggest couple of possible explanations for this:

Well yeah, it gets confusing there. What has to be added is that the Uvular Trill is far from ubiquitous in German, because there's a number of dialects which have a very different "R" sounds: some southern dialects have the alveolar trill, and certain dialects in the west (the region around the town of Siegen, specifically) even have an alveolar approximant!

The other main theory posits that the uvular r originated within Germanic languages through a process where the alveolar r was weakened and then replaced by an imitation of the alveolar r (vocalisation).^[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvular_trill

La Tène culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age (from 450 BCE to the Roman conquest in the 1st century BCE) in eastern France, Switzerland, Austria, southwest Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Romania.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Tène_culture

Can i suggest that the original hard r ( alveolar r) came from a languages spoken in central europe at the time of the la tene culture and that the sound was best preserved in western and south slavic languages which developed from this common "celtic" language?
what i am suggesting here is that there could have been a mix of tribes at that time in central europe speaking a common language which contained hard r. Their western and northern cousins used the hard r words but adopted them to suit their speech apparatus and thus produced uvular r or alveolar approximant.

The fact that we have all 3 types of r in germanic languages but only alveolar r in slavic languages leads me to beleave that the development went from east to west from slavic to germanic and gaulish simultaniously and then to other languages that developed from germanic and gaulish.

The fact that we have hard r present in some germanic language dialects today is a result of the fact that these countries had large slavic population up to medieval times which preserved their pronounciation. example are germany, scandinavian countries, england...

i know that this would require proto slavs to be present in central europe (baltic - balkan) at about 500 bc and that they were there either intermingled with celts or were celts, and that some people don't even want to talk about it, but i believe that it is a possibility and it would answer the above question nicely.
as for slavs in britan, ireland, scandinavia, island they arrived there in multiple consecutive waves as part of various tribal confederations which settled these lands from the bronze age onward to the time of the vikings.

hope this helps

as for the development of the irish language i believe that it was a result of a population replacement and or merge, where new elite replaced old language with the new one on certain territories within ireland which were originally settled by tribes speaking either completely different languages or different dialects. ireland has never been a homogeneous genetic, national, linguistic or cultural space. it became homogenized in the early medieval period due to goidelic wars and their eventual cultural supremacy which was helped by the forced christianization, in the same way cultural and linguistic conversion of the slavs was achieved in the baltic region in the 12-14th century and even more extremely in hungary in 17-19th century. so the apparent cultural replacement and at the same time cultural continuity in ireland can be explained through the fact that goidelic territories of ireland show cultural evolution wheres the territories which were originally settled by baltic people show cultural replacement. this is visible in many names which were transliterated into goidelic and have acquired a weird new meaning that has nothing to do with the original name apart from sounding similar, which is a thing found in all conquered territories where there was population replacement that happened in a short period of time. the example is albania and kosovo. most toponims in albania are of slavic origin but a lot of them have no meaning or have changed meaning because most of the population is albanian and in a lot of case they just continued using the name without understanding the meaning. we can see how this is done right now in kosovo, wher serbian population is replaced by albanian, and we have transliteration of names being done before our eyes. for instance Kosovo (black bird field) has become Kosova which has no meaning. also all Ls are being softened to Lj...



there is a lot of cultural, archaeological and linguistics puzzles in western europe that can only be explained by a presence of a significant slavic population in these areas in the past.

i have found very interesting things that point to the cultural migration spreading by sea from south baltic along the atlantic coast to scandinavia, low countries, france, britan and ireland from the time of the lake dwellers onward.

the most interesting is slavic (or balto slavic) cultural layer that existed in some parts of ireland before the goidelic conquest in the early medieval time...

let me know if you would like to talk about it

 

[zanipolo]

hi guys

can i suggest couple of possible explanations for this:





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvular_trill



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_T%C3%A8ne_culture

Can i suggest that the original hard r ( alveolar r) came from a languages spoken in central europe at the time of the la tene culture and that the sound was best preserved in western and south slavic languages which developed from this common "celtic" language?
what i am suggesting here is that there could have been a mix of tribes at that time in central europe speaking a common language which contained hard r. Their western and northern cousins used the hard r words but adopted them to suit their speech apparatus and thus produced uvular r or alveolar approximant.

The fact that we have all 3 types of r in germanic languages but only alveolar r in slavic languages leads me to beleave that the development went from east to west from slavic to germanic and gaulish simultaniously and then to other languages that developed from germanic and gaulish.

The fact that we have hard r present in some germanic language dialects today is a result of the fact that these countries had large slavic population up to medieval times which preserved their pronounciation. example are germany, scandinavian countries, england...

i know that this would require proto slavs to be present in central europe (baltic - balkan) at about 500 bc and that they were there either intermingled with celts or were celts, and that some people don't even want to talk about it, but i believe that it is a possibility and it would answer the above question nicely.
as for slavs in britan, ireland, scandinavia, island they arrived there in multiple consecutive waves as part of various tribal confederations which settled these lands from the bronze age onward to the time of the vikings.

hope this helps

as for the development of the irish language i believe that it was a result of a population replacement and or merge, where new elite replaced old language with the new one on certain territories within ireland which were originally settled by tribes speaking either completely different languages or different dialects. ireland has never been a homogeneous genetic, national, linguistic or cultural space. it became homogenized in the early medieval period due to goidelic wars and their eventual cultural supremacy which was helped by the forced christianization, in the same way cultural and linguistic conversion of the slavs was achieved in the baltic region in the 12-14th century and even more extremely in hungary in 17-19th century. so the apparent cultural replacement and at the same time cultural continuity in ireland can be explained through the fact that goidelic territories of ireland show cultural evolution wheres the territories which were originally settled by baltic people show cultural replacement. this is visible in many names which were transliterated into goidelic and have acquired a weird new meaning that has nothing to do with the original name apart from sounding similar, which is a thing found in all conquered territories where there was population replacement that happened in a short period of time. the example is albania and kosovo. most toponims in albania are of slavic origin but a lot of them have no meaning or have changed meaning because most of the population is albanian and in a lot of case they just continued using the name without understanding the meaning. we can see how this is done right now in kosovo, wher serbian population is replaced by albanian, and we have transliteration of names being done before our eyes. for instance Kosovo (black bird field) has become Kosova which has no meaning. also all Ls are being softened to Lj...



there is a lot of cultural, archaeological and linguistics puzzles in western europe that can only be explained by a presence of a significant slavic population in these areas in the past.

i have found very interesting things that point to the cultural migration spreading by sea from south baltic along the atlantic coast to scandinavia, low countries, france, britan and ireland from the time of the lake dwellers onward.

the most interesting is slavic (or balto slavic) cultural layer that existed in some parts of ireland before the goidelic conquest in the early medieval time...

let me know if you would like to talk about it

la tene culture was neither germanic or slavic in language because these groups where not there in the iron age. you are over 1000 years in error.
la tene culture was dead by the Roman times

 

[Taranis]

Dublin,

before you, or indeed anybody else, make speculations based on the occurence of a certain sound, let me give you an educative counterexample: the Welsh language has a distinct sound, the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative(written as "ll" in Welsh orthography). This does not occur in Cornish or Breton (which have an "l" in it's place), nor does it occur in the Gaelic languages, nor does it occur in English or other languages in Europe. It does, however, occur frequently in Native American languages such as Nahuatl (the language of the former Aztec empire) or Navajo. Does this mean that Indians immigrated into medieval Wales? I guess you can answer that question for yourself...

Besides, in linguistics, there is a very sharp definition of what a Celtic, what a Germanic, and what a Slavic language is. All three language families are defined by sets of sound laws by which they are derived from Proto-Indo-European. Because of this, you could never transmute into language A into B. The 'philosopher's stone' for languages does not exist.

la tene culture was neither germanic or slavic in language because these groups where not there in the iron age. you are over 1000 years in error.
la tene culture was dead by the Roman times

Slight correction: the Romans killed the La Téne Culture when they conquered Gaul.

 

[dublin]

before you, or indeed anybody else, make speculations based on the occurence of a certain sound, let me give you an educative counterexample: the Welsh language has a distinct sound, the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative(written as "ll" in Welsh orthography). This does not occur in Cornish or Breton (which have an "l" in it's place), nor does it occur in the Gaelic languages, nor does it occur in English or other languages in Europe. It does, however, occur frequently in Native American languages such as Nahuatl (the language of the former Aztec empire) or Navajo. Does this mean that Indians immigrated into medieval Wales? I guess you can answer that question for yourself...

hi Taranis. how are you these days?

the above is not an argument. you can find an example like this for everything.
concentrate on europe. we are not talking about the whole world. in europe we see clear pattern. i don't know what it means, but you have no explanation for it, so i postulated mine.

Besides, in linguistics, there is a very sharp definition of what a Celtic, what a Germanic, and what a Slavic language is.

we already talked abut this. what you call celtic languages are goidelic languages and have very little to do with celts.

slavic, galic, germanic languages developed under great influence of central european celtic language.

this is my oppinion anyway

zanipolo

go to politics forum and fight your wars over there

 

[Taranis]

hi Taranis. how are you these days?

the above is not an argument. you can find an example like this for everything.
concentrate on europe. we are not talking about the whole world. in europe we see clear pattern. i don't know what it means, but you have no explanation for it, so i postulated mine.

I'm precisely having an explanation here, and I've tried to elaborate that using the example of "ll" in Welsh: that there may be no clear pattern here.

we already talked abut this. what you call celtic languages are goidelic languages and have very little to do with celts.

Are Cornish, Breton, Welsh, Celtiberian, Gaulish and Galatian all Goidelic languages for you? I'm sorry, but linguists have a very clear definition of what a Celtic language is, and it's different from yours.

slavic, galic, germanic languages developed under great influence of central european celtic language.

this is my oppinion anyway

Just no. Unless you consider Gaulish (which, as you have stated, you believe to be something else), there was no such language.

 

[dublin]

hi taranis

before you, or indeed anybody else, make speculations based on the occurence of a certain sound, let me give you an educative counterexample: the Welsh language has a distinct sound, the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative(written as "ll" in Welsh orthography). This does not occur in Cornish or Breton (which have an "l" in it's place), nor does it occur in the Gaelic languages, nor does it occur in English or other languages in Europe. It does, however, occur frequently in Native American languages such as Nahuatl (the language of the former Aztec empire) or Navajo. Does this mean that Indians immigrated into medieval Wales? I guess you can answer that question for yourself...

well let me answer this. you have picked really bad example, because there is actually a link between wales and some north american tribes both culturally and linguistically. this is because the same people which inhabited wales in prehistory also colonized parts of north america. i already tried to talk to you about it many months ago. i am talking about the atlantean people who spread megalithic culture along the atlantic coast and who in america were the ancestors of the megalith and mound builder culture. this culture is ancestral culture of all hokan language tribes as well as navajo tribes.

here are the references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_lateral_fricative

Although the sound is rare among European languages outside the Caucasus (being found notably in Welsh, where it is written ⟨ll⟩),^[1] it is fairly common among Native American languages such as Navajo^[2] and Caucasian languages such as Avar.

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/encyclopedia/entry/NatvAmlang

Native American languages cannot be differentiated as a linguistic unit from other languages of the world but are grouped into a number of separate linguistic stocks having significantly different phonetics, vocabularies, and grammars. Asia is generally accepted as the original home of the Native Americans, although linguistic investigations have not yet established any definite link between the Native American languages and those spoken in Asia or elsewhere in the Eastern Hemisphere. Some scholars postulate a connection between the Eskimo-Aleut family and several other families or subfamilies (among them Altaic, Paleosiberian, Finno-Ugric, and Sino-Tibetan). Others see a relationship between members of the Nadene stock (to which Navajo and Apache belong) and Sino-Tibetan, to which Chinese belongs; however, such theories remain unproved.

here is the book about berber (atlantic people). i recommend you read it. its interesting to say the least.

http://www.provincuns.com/books/berber-project.pdf

also i would suggest you read this book:

1421: The Year China Discovered America?

it might help to explain the above theory about asian american linguistic links.

 

[dublin]

a bit more about your "voiceless alveolar lateral fricative". look at the wiki page on this language an look at the list of languagese where it is found.

old Proto semitic languages, Berber, Icelandic, Greenlandic, Faroese, Trønder dialect Norway


The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for Proto-Semitic, usually transcribed as ś; it has evolved into Arabic [ʃ], Hebrew, :

Remember when we were talking about afro asiatic influences?

 

[MOESAN]

Sorry to answer so late, I haven't checked this thread for a while. Moesan, your reply is very interesting and challenges my own belief as far as the uvular R is concerned. It is very interesting because Pont'n Abad, the Breton village you mention in your post, is the place where I was born I questioned some native Breton speakers from there, and none of them remember having heard the trilled R in their childhood.

Another thing : in his Grammar of Breton (historically the first), Le Gonidec states that the R is pronounced "as in French", i.e. as an uvular : "R se prononce comme en français" (p.6). The book has been written in 1807, hence it gives a rather interesting account about the pronounciation of the language two centuries ago.

The "prestige hypothesis" (the Bretons - and the French - are supposed to have been using the uvular R instead of the trilled R by social imitation) sounds very dubious to me, not only because it does not look very realistic, but especially because the places of articulation of the two sounds are too different. When you hear people learning French as a second language, among the (many) phonetic obstacles they bump in, there is the uvular R. It is extremely difficult for a speaker who does not have this sound in his/her language to imitate it, and many do not even succeed in doing so. Most Spanish or Italians I've heard speaking French couldn't articulate it. Some can, obviously, but at a cost of a considerable effort.

Well, I don't say you're wrong - nor that I am right as a matter of fact, but we have here contradictory assesments.

not so uneasy to answer
1- you DON'T know what Le Gonidec want to say about "french r" - I rather think he was speaking about old common french 'r' = a THRILLED one, not uvular!!! at his time the uvular 'r' was not the rule in France, even if the one of the high classes - but the second way to think would be: as other "grammarians" (scholars or not) he could have considered better to pronounce the uvular french 'r', AS DO the current breton teachers (what I find horrible)
2- uvular 'R' as in french is NOT SO FAR from a breton sound: the 'c'h' sound, that is close to german 'ch' or spanish 'j' in unvoicing environment, and close to dutch 'g' sound in voicing environment: the uvular 'R' is close enough IN MOUTH AND FOR EARS to this spired 'g' sound, kown by breton speakers; and do'nt forget that bretons speakers are BILINGUAL speakers for about 3 or 4 generations. as a breton teacher I heard a lot of time people writing R in place of C'H in breton words...
nos vad deoc'h, ken ur wezh all

 

[MOESAN]

Concerning breton, I believe the consensus today is to say that some remnants of gaulish were spoken yet in Western Brittany when brittonic was introduced - (we have also to keep in mind that Britton (& others) garnisons had been yet introduced in Western Aremorica long before the Brittons "emigration" there) - no surprise concerning such a conservation (look at Switzerland, Bohemia, Auvergne) - I red in a seamingly serious book that celtic names were in use in present day Brittany during the Gallo-Roman period spite of a strong enough roman colonization in eastern Brittany and the prestige that followed -
the conservation of demonstrative -se/-sen in southern breton dilaects in front of -he in northern ones and the so called "vannetaise" phonetic evolution in Morbihan (proxi) could prove that (phonetic palatizing evolution maybe too entirely put on the account of billinguism) - I think everywhere inbrittany a mix Brittonic-Gaulish (gaulic?) but with different percentages

entirely in accord with Taranis about afro-asiatic possible and ANCIENT influence and I recuse the phoenician explanation: they weighted very light for genetic and linguistic

 

[MOESAN]

chat-huant in western french dialects is an alteration for chouan << cauanos
these same dialects have 'bron' for 'sein', 'mamelle' = "female breast" (breton bronn) and 'bran' for 'son' = "bran" (celtic)
as says Taranis some gaulish words could too have crossed centuries mixed with latin words -

&: for lateral alveolar (voiceless) fricative in welsh 'll' I think as Taranis that the presence of a close sound in other far languages don't prove anyway a "genetical linguistic" link - some coincidences occur - but in the Isles, it is not so alone: yet the 'broad' gaelic 'L' opposed to the "slender" one (palatized)seams on the way of the welsh sound: this sound is long, and the tip of the tongue is keeped in firm contact with the palate, leaving some wind (breath) escape: a /lh/ or /lhl/ transcription could renter that as a proxi -

 

[Taranis]

hi taranis

well let me answer this. you have picked really bad example, because there is actually a link between wales and some north american tribes both culturally and linguistically. this is because the same people which inhabited wales in prehistory also colonized parts of north america. i already tried to talk to you about it many months ago. i am talking about the atlantean people who spread megalithic culture along the atlantic coast and who in america were the ancestors of the megalith and mound builder culture. this culture is ancestral culture of all hokan language tribes as well as navajo tribes.

Dublin, no offense, but I picked the example of Welsh as an obvious lark... yet you commited yourself to this idea.

Seriously, as far as I know, there is no evidence for trans-atlantic contact during the Neolithic. Every claim otherwise is a firm step towards archaeofantasy.

here is the book about berber (atlantic people). i recommend you read it. its interesting to say the least.

http://www.provincuns.com/books/berber-project.pdf

That is clearly pseudoscience, and it's clearly ideologically based: for instance, the author invokes Afrocentrism at the start of his first chapter and it gets increasingly more hair-raising from there, complete with trans-oceanic contact.

also i would suggest you read this book:

1421: The Year China Discovered America?

it might help to explain the above theory about asian american linguistic links.

Full Stop. Gevin Manzies is pseudoscientific nonsense, and that is not even debatable in any way: I mean, he argues in his first book that Zheng He discovered the Americas (for which there is no evidence in Chinese sources). He expands that in his second book that a fleet of Chinese merchant vessels "ignited the renaissance", despite being obviously approximately 150 years too late. And in his third book, he argues that there was a maritime "global" Minoan empire. Menzies is just a retired navy officer who enjoys telling swashbuckling tales, and not a historian or archaeologist who is to be taken seriously. I find it worrisome that you seem to sell him to us as precisely that.

What is next on your recommended literature list? Graham Hancock and Erich von Däniken?

&: for lateral alveolar (voiceless) fricative in welsh 'll' I think as Taranis that the presence of a close sound in other far languages don't prove anyway a "genetical linguistic" link - some coincidences occur - but in the Isles, it is not so alone: yet the 'broad' gaelic 'L' opposed to the "slender" one (palatized)seams on the way of the welsh sound: this sound is long, and the tip of the tongue is keeped in firm contact with the palate, leaving some wind (breath) escape: a /lh/ or /lhl/ transcription could renter that as a proxi -

Moesan, the slenderized/broad "l" in Irish is a different sound from the lateral fricative in Welsh. Which is precisely the point why sound correspondence is important: "ll" in Welsh corresponds to "l" in other Celtic languages:

Irish "leathan", Welsh "llydan", Breton "ledan" (broad, wide).

It makes no sense comparing Welsh to Navajo or Nahuatl (which is precisely why I brought the example up :wink: ), because despite the languages have these sounds, it makes no sense comparing them and arguing for a close relationship, because it's obvious that they are not related.

a bit more about your "voiceless alveolar lateral fricative". look at the wiki page on this language an look at the list of languagese where it is found.

old Proto semitic languages, Berber, Icelandic, Greenlandic, Faroese, Trønder dialect Norway


The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for Proto-Semitic, usually transcribed as ś; it has evolved into Arabic [ʃ], Hebrew, :

Remember when we were talking about afro asiatic influences?

Are you suggesting that time-travelling proto-semites arrived in medieval Wales? That's the consequence if you say that the sound derives Proto-Semitic influence, as we established that it's not found in any other Celtic language.

 

[MOESAN]

Moesan, the slenderized/broad "l" in Irish is a different sound from the lateral fricative in Welsh. Which is precisely the point why sound correspondence is important: "ll" in Welsh corresponds to "l" in other Celtic languages:

Irish "leathan", Welsh "llydan", Breton "ledan" (broad, wide).

Taranis, I know they are today different sounds: what I was telling is that the gaelic L is ON THE WAY (without being "blowed") for the welsh LL (by the way, I don't speak gaelic (I speak a little bit of welsh) but I heard it I a'm very accustumed to imitate a lot of different languages sounds, by pleasure)

 

[Balder]

The oldest Baltic and Germanic loanwords are so old that their sources had not yet diverged considerably from Proto-Indo-European; we should remember that the break-up of Proto-Indo-European is surmised to have happened only 1,000 years before the appearance of the ‘hammer-axe’ culture.

 

[Rainbow Warrior]

Celtic runs in my ancestry, so I'm interested. It is well researched.

 

[Kentel]

not so uneasy to answer
1- you DON'T know what Le Gonidec want to say about "french r" - I rather think he was speaking about old common french 'r' = a THRILLED one, not uvular!!! at his time the uvular 'r' was not the rule in France,

There's no possible doubt here : Le Gonidec's "french r" is uvular, a fortiori during the XIXth century when his book was written; it's supposed to become uvular during the XVIIth century, hence there's no doubt what he's talking about. By the way, it's qualified "french" as opposed to "provençal R".

Moreover, and as I previously wrote, a change of articulation from an alveolar to an uvular is articulatory an unseen phenomenon : the two places of articulation are too remote from each other, and the myth about a population eager to imitate a germanic aristocracy is merely contradicted by the dating of this alleged sound change (during the 17th century the French kings & their mates did not speak germanic, as far as I know).

2- uvular 'R' as in french is NOT SO FAR from a breton sound: the 'c'h' sound, that is close to german 'ch' or spanish 'j' in unvoicing environment, and close to dutch 'g' sound in voicing environment: the uvular 'R' is close enough IN MOUTH AND FOR EARS to this spired 'g' sound, kown by breton speakers; and do'nt forget that bretons speakers are BILINGUAL speakers for about 3 or 4 generations. as a breton teacher I heard a lot of time people writing R in place of C'H in breton words...
nos vad deoc'h, ken ur wezh all

You're right, it's very close, but you can notice that in some regions of France, especially south of the Loire where the occitan dialects were in use, the old people are still reluctant to use the uvular "french" R. Why is it not the case in Brittany ?

Another relevant point : in Gaelic there is both the uvular R (gh) and the [x] sound (ch), which attests that we do have a minimal pair in Celtic.

As for your point regarding how Breton people write their language, I would stress that many old Breton speakers do not know how to write their own language (and don't care to). But the case is obvious : Le Gonidec hears a "french R", and the french R is an uvular trill. Plus it fits the witnesses I heard in my country (ar vro vigoudenn, evel ma ouzoc'h).

Noz vat deoc'h ivez