celtic/venetic

4. Conclusion
By analyzing critically the arguments proposed for the classification of Northern Adriatic Venetic,
this study has reached the conclusion about its significant Celticity. The basis for this
statement is provided by the morphological inventory and the functional distribution of the
morphological elements. As to the phonology, areal phenomena have been observed in the
similarities between Northern Adriatic Venetic and the neighbouring Italic. This confirms the
increasing awareness among Celtic specialists (e.g. Sims-Williams 2007) that the classificatory
parameters for Celticity are not as clear-cut as traditionally assumed. Our analysis has reached
exactly this conclusion concerning areal phenomena shared between Venetic and Italic with the
result that Northern Adriatic Venetic occupies an intermediate position on the traditional classificatory
parameters, but belongs to the Celtic type on the basis of the phonological patterning
(including lenition in the consonant system based on the tense vs, lax opposition). This fact, combined
with morphology which can be identified as Celtic, leads to the conclusion that Northern
Adriatic Venetic was a variety of Celtic which was subject to areal common developments with
Italic in the phonology and the lexicon, but remained entirely Celtic in the grammar.
On the linguistic classification of Venetic
45
The present investigation of East European Venetic has shown that its conjectured phonological
type fits the phonological type of both Northern Adriatic Venetic and — even more
so — of Vannetais as a surviving variety of Armorican Venetic. The Armorican Vannetais,
originally surrounded by Celtic, has never raised any doubt about its Celticity. The fundamental
similarity of Northern Adriatic Venetic, the conjectured East European Venetic and of
Vannetais on the level of the phonological type, and the specific similarity of both of the latter
varieties in the realm of palatalization combined with asymmetrical lenition, enable the conclusion
that these were genetically related varieties of Venetic within the realm of Celtic that
later became differentiated due to areal phenomena.

http://www.jolr.ru/files/(83)jlr2012-7(33-46).pdf

year 2012 investigation

Thanks for the link, I red quickly, and I'll read it more acutely after


I have very weak knowledge about old celtic languages but I spoke fluently «breton venetic» (!) or «vannetais» (gwenedeg) dialect(s)and have some knowledge about all the breton dialects and history of breton language:
comparing present days 'gwenedeg' to ancient different areas 'venetic' is a dangerous sport even if i don't discard the possibility of old causes doing full effects in modern times -
the modern palatization in 'gwenedeg' doesn't trace back to an old gaulish dialect but is the result of a gallo-roman (in fact local gallic and not roman) phonologic-phonetic influence upon insular brittonic dialects, – contrary to some explanations, I think it's more the result of an ethnic stratum phonetic habits than the result of bilinguism celtic-latin (against FLEURIOT theory I respect very much nevertheless); I think some gaulish dialect could have been spoken yet in western Brittany but this doesn't change the question: where the «Gallo-Romans» seam having been the densest you find the same phonetic phenomenon imposed upon and celtic and latin – it paralleles the oïl french palatization, not going as far, surely enough by the fact that some proportion of insular Celts played a role in this limitation of palatization in S-E breton ('gwenedeg') – this phenomenon affects also more partially yet other breton dialects BUT not all of them – it seams that it is not a palatization tightly linked to ancient Veneti territory but a question of non-palatization linked to the densest settlements of insular Brittons (here I'm partly in accord with FALC'HUN).
If celtic had been kept by Gauls in present days France, the most palatized celtic languages would have been the ones of the central 'oïl french' zone (Paris <> Auvergne) - in 'gwenedeg', palatization doesn't go as far as in french -
&: I saw an error in the stating that palatization of 'G' could go to french 'J' /zh/ through /dzh/ -
it never occurred in 'gwenedeg' – what occurred in 'gwenedeg' and other breton dialects is the palatization and simplification of the internal group '-DI-' in hiatus >> /dzh/ >> /zh/ -
welsh neidio >> breton nijal, neijal – welsh cydio >> breton kejañ, keijiñ (the ending '-ñ' <<
'-ñv' << '-m' marks a nasalisation of the preceding vowel, and has nothing to do with spanish 'ñ' )- in colloquial welsh its occurred too but stayed in the /dzh/ stage -
to conclude I find this theory of old links between peculiar ancient celtic«venetics» all over Europe is based upon superficially studied rare facts even if I've not the knowledge to discuss a possible celtic origin of N-W venetic ancient languages, even if I 've some doubts...
&&: I didn't understand the meaning of «assymetrical lenition»???

MOESAN said:

Thanks for the link, I red quickly, and I'll read it more acutely after


I have very weak knowledge about old celtic languages but I spoke fluently «breton venetic» (!) or «vannetais» (gwenedeg) dialect(s)and have some knowledge about all the breton dialects and history of breton language:
comparing present days 'gwenedeg' to ancient different areas 'venetic' is a dangerous sport even if i don't discard the possibility of old causes doing full effects in modern times -
the modern palatization in 'gwenedeg' doesn't trace back to an old gaulish dialect but is the result of a gallo-roman (in fact local gallic and not roman) phonologic-phonetic influence upon insular brittonic dialects, – contrary to some explanations, I think it's more the result of an ethnic stratum phonetic habits than the result of bilinguism celtic-latin (against FLEURIOT theory I respect very much nevertheless); I think some gaulish dialect could have been spoken yet in western Brittany but this doesn't change the question: where the «Gallo-Romans» seam having been the densest you find the same phonetic phenomenon imposed upon and celtic and latin – it paralleles the oïl french palatization, not going as far, surely enough by the fact that some proportion of insular Celts played a role in this limitation of palatization in S-E breton ('gwenedeg') – this phenomenon affects also more partially yet other breton dialects BUT not all of them – it seams that it is not a palatization tightly linked to ancient Veneti territory but a question of non-palatization linked to the densest settlements of insular Brittons (here I'm partly in accord with FALC'HUN).
If celtic had been kept by Gauls in present days France, the most palatized celtic languages would have been the ones of the central 'oïl french' zone (Paris <> Auvergne) - in 'gwenedeg', palatization doesn't go as far as in french -
&: I saw an error in the stating that palatization of 'G' could go to french 'J' /zh/ through /dzh/ -
it never occurred in 'gwenedeg' – what occurred in 'gwenedeg' and other breton dialects is the palatization and simplification of the internal group '-DI-' in hiatus >> /dzh/ >> /zh/ -
welsh neidio >> breton nijal, neijal – welsh cydio >> breton kejañ, keijiñ (the ending '-ñ' <<
'-ñv' << '-m' marks a nasalisation of the preceding vowel, and has nothing to do with spanish 'ñ' )- in colloquial welsh its occurred too but stayed in the /dzh/ stage -
to conclude I find this theory of old links between peculiar ancient celtic«venetics» all over Europe is based upon superficially studied rare facts even if I've not the knowledge to discuss a possible celtic origin of N-W venetic ancient languages, even if I 've some doubts...
&&: I didn't understand the meaning of «assymetrical lenition»???

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To me, it makes sense and irons out a lot of history, including why the celts did not invade the venetics, but swept into lombardy destroying the etruscans and moving around to romagna on the adriatic, carefully not to vialate venetic lands....can only occur if allied or similar race.
makes amber trade to the baltic more sensible.
I do not know, I am not a linguistic, but all I can look at is G.Hull ( sydney expert on north italian languages) texts and see if he says anything.

zanipolo said:

To me, it makes sense and irons out a lot of history, including why the celts did not invade the venetics, but swept into lombardy destroying the etruscans and moving around to romagna on the adriatic, carefully not to vialate venetic lands....can only occur if allied or similar race.
makes amber trade to the baltic more sensible.
I do not know, I am not a linguistic, but all I can look at is G.Hull ( sydney expert on north italian languages) texts and see if he says anything.

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I was not saying these links are impossible, but just doubting about the strength of these elements as soound proofs of them.
a question (I'm ignorant sometimes): was the Venetic tribes or NE Italy already well settled when first celts occupied NC Italy?

MOESAN said:

I was not saying these links are impossible, but just doubting about the strength of these elements as soound proofs of them.
a question (I'm ignorant sometimes): was the Venetic tribes or NE Italy already well settled when first celts occupied NC Italy?

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The main archeologist still working there is Elisa Perego ....you can search her and find a dozen different topics in regards to venetics
http://www.academia.edu/497066/Text...1050_BC_-_AD_25_a_reappraisal_of_the_evidence

so, the oldest so far is 1050BC........this does not say that the venetics spoke celtic from the start because the language was found to be from 800BC

Strabo states 1.5 million people in 50 "towns" prior to Roman occupation i.e 100BC

IIRC this end date 100BC is the earliest date for the armorica veneti

Just one stupid question : what do we actually know about Venetic ?

Well, I'll answer my own question I found a few links about Venetic here and there and all that does not sound very convincing to me. Maybe I'm wrong.

A few remarks :

1- in linguistic typology, you need a specific set of sound changes in order to define a new language or linguistic family. I don't see it for Venetic : all the sound changes I can see are similar to the ones which occured in Latin (ie. spirantisation of the PIE voiced aspirated, the "quinque" exception).

2- The same for the morphology : innovative -i genitives and mediopassive -r endings and -nd particples also occur in Latin.

3- It is said about the lexicon that "About 600 names are known, but many of them are borrowed from Etruscan and Latin"; hence, nothing specific here either.

I am just discovering the matter, and I may have missed something. But as far as I can read, I cannot find any evidence indicating a specific language family, everything is connected to Latino-Faliscan. All that sound very dubious to me : I have heard loads of contradictory speculations about Illyrian, a language about which we know roughly nothing, and considerations about Venetic sound pretty much the same way.

Kentel said:

Well, I'll answer my own question I found a few links about Venetic here and there and all that does not sound very convincing to me. Maybe I'm wrong.

A few remarks :

1- in linguistic typology, you need a specific set of sound changes in order to define a new language or linguistic family. I don't see it for Venetic : all the sound changes I can see are similar to the ones which occured in Latin (ie. spirantisation of the PIE voiced aspirated, the "quinque" exception).

2- The same for the morphology : innovative -i genitives and mediopassive -r endings and -nd particples also occur in Latin.

3- It is said about the lexicon that "About 600 names are known, but many of them are borrowed from Etruscan and Latin"; hence, nothing specific here either.

I am just discovering the matter, and I may have missed something. But as far as I can read, I cannot find any evidence indicating a specific language family, everything is connected to Latino-Faliscan. All that sound very dubious to me : I have heard loads of contradictory speculations about Illyrian, a language about which we know roughly nothing, and considerations about Venetic sound pretty much the same way.

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the paper I attached in post #1 is 2012 report and it seems in the later part of their linguistic history, the major part they spoke celtic ( read the article)
The only trade hub they had with etruscans was a place called - cologna veneta, althouth very very earlier they also had adria , which was overun by celts in around 550BC

Looks like you missed reading the article

Yes indeed I thought your quote was the relevant point in the paper, and I didn't bother to read it fully. The big issue, as far as I understand, is the morphological similarities with Celtic. The phonological issue is not convincing : *p remains in Venetic, and the aspirate yield fricatives, from that point of view Venetic cannot be Celtic and is clearly connected with Italic, the attempt to demonstrate the contrary sound rather speculative.

The lexicon is of no help here either.

We're thus left with morphologic specificities. I'll give a closer look a it and come back to you afterwards. The paper is very informative and very clear; I never read anything so informative about the subject, thanks for the link.

Kentel said:

Yes indeed I thought your quote was the relevant point in the paper, and I didn't bother to read it fully. The big issue, as far as I understand, is the morphological similarities with Celtic. The phonological issue is not convincing : *p remains in Venetic, and the aspirate yield fricatives, from that point of view Venetic cannot be Celtic and is clearly connected with Italic, the attempt to demonstrate the contrary sound rather speculative.

The lexicon is of no help here either.

We're thus left with morphologic specificities. I'll give a closer look a it and come back to you afterwards. The paper is very informative and very clear; I never read anything so informative about the subject, thanks for the link.

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I agree generally, but what constitutes a Celtic language is currently strongly debated. Venetic is not Celtic, but not necessarily because of *p retention. Example: Lusitanian is codified as, at least, Para-Celtic - and some distinguished linguists such as Untermman (1996) see it as fully Celtic, despite retaining *p.

I have to agree with Cambrius and Kentel. There's not much 'Celtic' about Venetic besides those features that the Celtic and Italic languages do have in common (eg. assimilation of *p > *kw before *kw, o-stem genitive -i). Doesn't come as a surprise that a language that was geographically sandwiched between the Celtic and Italic languages shared these features...

With regard for the disappearance of *p in Celtic, Stifter (2008), Eska (2010) and Koch (2012) are of the opinion that PIE *p was retained in Proto-Celtic as *ɸ, and that the complete loss of *p which occured in most Celtic languages happened only later.

Taranis said:

I have to agree with Cambrius and Kentel. There's not much 'Celtic' about Venetic besides those features that the Celtic and Italic languages do have in common (eg. assimilation of *p > *kw before *kw, o-stem genitive -i). Doesn't come as a surprise that a language that was geographically sandwiched between the Celtic and Italic languages shared these features... With regard for the disappearance of *p in Celtic, Stifter (2008), Eska (2010) and Koch (2012) are of the opinion that PIE *p was retained in Proto-Celtic as *ɸ, and that the complete loss of *p which occured in most Celtic languages happened only later.

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maybe, it's like ancient bavarian language becoming germanic over time. When does one classify it germanic , how many centruries?

zanipolo said:

maybe, it's like ancient bavarian language becoming germanic over time. When does one classify it germanic , how many centruries?

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What are you thinking when speaking opf "bavarian" becoming germanic"??? languages converge only when they are of same origin and are stayed close enough yet and keep exchanging as say, cousin dialects or a dialect in front of a dominant official language - when very different, one take the strong side upon the other, and in place of low convergence we have a brutal rupture and change, giving way to an almost pure adopted language and then by time a slow divergence caused by subtratum influence... is it not???

MOESAN said:

What are you thinking when speaking opf "bavarian" becoming germanic"??? languages converge only when they are of same origin and are stayed close enough yet and keep exchanging as say, cousin dialects or a dialect in front of a dominant official language - when very different, one take the strong side upon the other, and in place of low convergence we have a brutal rupture and change, giving way to an almost pure adopted language and then by time a slow divergence caused by subtratum influence... is it not???

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The vindelici are the original owners of bavaria and they where not germanic. Besides, bavarian is not a german word. The german word for bavaria is Bayern

zanipolo said:

maybe, it's like ancient bavarian language becoming germanic over time. When does one classify it germanic , how many centruries?

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That question makes no sense. The Bavarians have fairly little to do with the Vindelici (besides a few town names): they arrived from Bohemia during the Migration Period. What you are asking is like saying that the Gaulish language of Aremorica 'became Breton over time' whereas it actually only arrived with the Bretons in Armorica during the Migration Period.Modern Bavarian dialect is a West Germanic language, part of the upper german dialect continuum, and it evolved out of a common Proto-Germanic speech that was spoken around the 1st century AD.The classification of Bavarian as a Germanic (and West Germanic) language is based on a number of features, including:- Grimm's Law and Verner's Law (Proto-Germanic).- Umlaut process and Rhotacism *z > *r (only West & North Germanic).- High German Consonant Shift (only continental West Germanic).In the same manner, the various Celtic languages (Celtiberian, Gaulish, Lepontic, Old Brythonic, etc. etc.) have a number of features which they share. Ancient Venetic does not share them.

Taranis said:

That question makes no sense. The Bavarians have fairly little to do with the Vindelici (besides a few town names): they arrived from Bohemia during the Migration Period. What you are asking is like saying that the Gaulish language of Aremorica 'became Breton over time' whereas it actually only arrived with the Bretons in Armorica during the Migration Period.Modern Bavarian dialect is a West Germanic language, part of the upper german dialect continuum, and it evolved out of a common Proto-Germanic speech that was spoken around the 1st century AD.The classification of Bavarian as a Germanic (and West Germanic) language is based on a number of features, including:- Grimm's Law and Verner's Law (Proto-Germanic).- Umlaut process and Rhotacism *z > *r (only West & North Germanic).- High German Consonant Shift (only continental West Germanic).In the same manner, the various Celtic languages (Celtiberian, Gaulish, Lepontic, Old Brythonic, etc. etc.) have a number of features which they share. Ancient Venetic does not share them.

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Ok, then southern germany was not germanic in tongue until the early middle-ages ( as per net) , I wanted to compare similar times in history. so, we saying vindelici people spoke celtic from 900BC to compare to venetic at the same period and being wroughly neighbours. Surely all celtic tongues where different to each other over a huge area of Europe . For a language to last 800 years is an indication it adapted languages from it neighbours and vice a versa. The vocabulary was not great in number for any language at that time.

zanipolo said:

The vindelici are the original owners of bavaria and they where not germanic. Besides, bavarian is not a german word. The german word for bavaria is Bayern

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I'm criticizing your logic about linguistic (as you guess, not your person) - I take for my account the remarks of Taranis, I share with him, - some points yet: Bavaria and Bayern are the same "name", if not exactly the same "word": they show only different evolution in different languages of a same previous name (germanic? from "Bajuwars"?) - I think (it's not a "scoop") that before Germanic people, southern Germany was inhabited by celtic and celtized tribes,and in addition in S-E by Rethians tribes; and some (not all of them) of the specific features of the bavarian germanic dialect of today can be put on the account of substratum influence - BUT I KEEP thinking languages can loan words very easily for new things (trade) but don't change so easily of structure (and phonology), don't do as you think a kind of "osmosed grammar and structure", a sort of "mean" between all the surrounding languages, when there is no more any understanding between these languages - or only when a true BIlinguism exists during a long time among the bulk of the populations - for a long time french gave a huge amount of words to breton language but changed very poorly the breton structure (grammar) - even in a so "creolized' languages like english you found only some rare influences of britton-welsh in structure, and lesser yet of french structure if one, spite the huge amount of french words here too... just my way of looking at things - good night

zanipolo said:

Ok, then southern germany was not germanic in tongue until the early middle-ages ( as per net) , I wanted to compare similar times in history. so, we saying vindelici people spoke celtic from 900BC to compare to venetic at the same period and being wroughly neighbours. Surely all celtic tongues where different to each other over a huge area of Europe . For a language to last 800 years is an indication it adapted languages from it neighbours and vice a versa. The vocabulary was not great in number for any language at that time.

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It depends on how you define "Middle Ages": I was thinking about the 400s.

It should be added that the Vindelicians were conquered by the Roman Empire in the final decades of the 1st century BC, and the Romans held the south* of modern Germany until the early 400s: it's likely that the population of Vindelicia by then predominantly spoke some form of late Latin / early Romance, rather than Gaulish.

With regard for Moesan: languages obviously can take loanwords. What languages cannot do is reverse their sound laws, because they have no "memory" of them.

Taranis said:

It depends on how you define "Middle Ages": I was thinking about the 400s.

It should be added that the Vindelicians were conquered by the Roman Empire in the final decades of the 1st century BC, and the Romans held the south* of modern Germany until the early 400s: it's likely that the population of Vindelicia by then predominantly spoke some form of late Latin / early Romance, rather than Gaulish.

With regard for Moesan: languages obviously can take loanwords. What languages cannot do is reverse their sound laws, because they have no "memory" of them.

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venetic went from approx 1000BC to 100BC...the vindelici until 30BC, covering the same period. The link in post 1 , .how I read it states, they became celtic in language, I guess somewhere between 400BC to 100BC ( I think its called middle or late stage of Venetic ).

Don't you see its strange that the celts went to war against etruscans, ligurians, illyrians but not the venetics.....my guess is because they where related linguistically.

On south germany, .....bavarian was then introduced in the area after the romans left, below explains in a summary way
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_regiments_of_the_Roman_army