Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic tribes, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, and parts of Northern Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, particularly the west bank of the Rhine. It covered an area of . According to Julius Caesar, Gaul was divided into three parts: Gallia Celtica, Belgica, and Aquitania. Archaeologically, the Gauls were bearers of the La Tène culture, which extended across all of Gaul, as well as east to Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia, and southwestern Germania during the 5th to 1st centuries BC. During the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, Gaul fell under Roman rule: Gallia Cisalpina was conquered in 203 BC and Gallia Narbonensis in 123 BC.
Introduction
Gaul
Gaul | Introduction
Celtic tribes, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, and parts of Northern Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, particularly the west bank of the Rhin Celtic tribes, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, and parts of Northern Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, particularly the west bank of the Rhine. Gaulish was the language spoken by the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul. Celtic inhabitants of Gaul (modern-day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, Northern Italy)
how long does it take for painted turtles to hatch
user
Hatched turtles grow until sexual maturity: 2–9 years for males, 6–16 for females.
assistant
where are they most commonly found?
user
North America
assistant
and what is their preferred domain of habitation?
user
It lives in slow-moving fresh waters, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific
assistant
who labelled this species for the first time?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
what do they mostly feed on?
user
It also consumes plants and skims the surface of the water with its mouth open to catch small particles of food.
assistant
are they preyed on by other animals?
user
Garter snakes, crows, chipmunks, thirteen-lined ground and gray squirrels, skunks, groundhogs, raccoons, badgers, gray and red fox, and humans.
assistant
where did this particular species of fox you just mentioned originate?
user
The species is Eurasian in origin, and may have evolved from either "Vulpes alopecoides" or the related Chinese "V. chikushanensis", both of which lived during the Middle Villafranchian
assistant
when did they migrate to north america?
user
Red foxes colonised the North American continent in two waves: during or before the Illinoian glaciation, and during the Wisconsinan glaciation.
assistant
do they appear in any myths or legends?
user
Yes, In Greek mythology, the Teumessian fox or Cadmean vixen, was a gigantic fox that was destined never to be caught. The fox was one of the children of Echidna. In Celtic mythology, the red fox is a symbolic animal
assistant
can you name some of historical records from which the myths of the last culture you mentioned has been gleaned?
user
As a result of the scarcity of surviving materials bearing written Gaulish, it is surmised that the most of the Celtic writings were destroyed by the Romans, although a written form of Gaulish using Greek, Latin and North Italic alphabets was used
assistant
who were the people using the language you are talking about?
user
In the pre-Roman era, Gaul (an area of Western Europe that encompassed all of what is known today as France, Belgium, part of Germany and Switzerland, and Northern Italy) was inhabited by a variety of peoples who were known collectively as the Gaulish tribes. Their ancestors were Celts who came from Central Europe in the 7th century BCE or earlier, and non-Celtic peoples including the Ligures, Aquitanians and Basques in Aquitaine. The Belgae, who lived in the northern and eastern areas, may have had Germanic admixture; many of these peoples had already spoken Gaulish by the time of the Roman conquest.
French people | Celtic and Roman Gaul
At least 13 references to Gaulish speech and Gaulish writing can be found in Greek and Latin writers of antiquity. The word "Gaulish" ("gallicum") as a language term is first explicitly used in the "Appendix Vergiliana" in a poem referring to Gaulish letters of the alphabet. Julius Caesar reported in his "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" of 58 BC that the Celts/Gauls and their language are separated from the neighboring Aquitanians and Belgae by the rivers Garonne and Seine/Marne, respectively. Caesar relates that census accounts written in the Greek alphabet were found among the Helvetii. He also notes that as of 53 BC the Gaulish druids used the Greek alphabet for private and public transactions, with the important exception of druidic doctrines, which could only be memorised and were not allowed to be written down.
Gaulish language | Early period
The collection of pharmacological recipes by Marcellus of Bordeaux (late 4th- or early 5th-century) contains several Gaulish words, mainly plant names, and seems to indicate that the language remained in use for at least some purposes such as traditional medicine and magic. Sulpicius Severus (363–425), also from Gallia Aquitania, takes note of Gaulish-Latin bilingualism, with Gaulish as the first language. Other mentions of people who speak "in the Gallic manner" "(gallice)" or similar may refer to speaking Latin with a regional Gaulish accent. Much of historical linguistics scholarship postulates that Gaulish was indeed still spoken as late as the mid to late 6th century in France.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Celtic
Before Roman incursion, most of Gaul spoke Celtic dialects that are today considered to be the Gaulish language, with considerable variation. The south-western region that would later become Gascony spoke the Aquitanian language, which may have been the parent language of Basque, while parts of the coast near Marseille spoke Ligurian with some Greek-speaking colonies on the Mediterranean coast, notably including Massilia. In the northeastern zone of Belgica, there may have been some presence of Germanic languages, although this is disputed. In the late empire, there was some settlement in Gaul by tribes speaking Germanic or Eastern Iranian languages, such as the Alans.
Gallo-Roman culture | Language
Written Celtiberian ceases early in the reign of Augustus, if not before. Several references to Gaulish in late antiquity may indicate that it continued to be spoken. Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum (present-day Lyon) from 177 AD, complains that he has to communicate with his parishioners in their "barbarous tongue", probably Gaulish. The jurist Ulpian (170–228) mentions the need to recognize Gaulish verbal contracts. Lampridius says that a druidess made a prophecy in Gaulish to Alexander Severus (208–235). Jerome (331–420), who had first-hand knowledge, observes that the Gallic Treveri speak a language "more or less the same" as that of the Galatians.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Celtic
Covering large parts of modern-day France, Belgium, northwest Germany and northern Italy, Gaul was inhabited by many Celtic and Belgae tribes whom the Romans referred to as Gauls and who spoke the Gaulish language roughly between the Oise and the Garonne ("Gallia Celtica"), according to Julius Caesar. On the lower Garonne the people spoke Aquitanian, a Pre-Indo-European language related to (or a direct ancestor of) Basque whereas a Belgian language was spoken north of Lutecia but north of the Loire according to other authors like Strabo. The Celts founded cities such as Lutetia Parisiorum (Paris) and Burdigala (Bordeaux) while the Aquitanians founded Tolosa (Toulouse).
History of France | Gaul
The last record of spoken Gaulish deemed to be plausibly credible concerned the destruction by Christians of a pagan shrine in Auvergne "called Vasso Galatae in the Gallic tongue". Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French.
Gaul | Roman Gaul
After the Roman conquest of those regions, writing shifted to the use of the Latin alphabet. During his conquest of Gaul, Caesar reported that the Helvetii were in possession of documents in the Greek script, and all Gaulish coins used the Greek script until about 50 BC.
Gaulish language | Introduction
They spoke the now extinct British language, which evolved into the Breton, Cornish, and Welsh languages.
History of France | Roman Gaul
The Gaulish language is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture. The last record of spoken Gaulish deemed to be plausibly credible was when Gregory of Tours wrote in the 6th century (c. 560–575) that a shrine in Auvergne which "is called Vasso Galatae in the Gallic tongue" was destroyed and burnt to the ground. Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including "oui", the word for "yes"), sound changes, and influences in conjugation and word order.
Gallo-Roman culture | Language
The population remained 90% indigenous in origin, and instead of Roman settlers, the Romanizing class was the local native elite, whose children learned Latin in Roman schools; at the time of the collapse of the Empire, this local elite had been slowly abandoning Gaulish entirely, but the rural and lower class populations remained Gaulish speakers who could sometimes also speak Latin or Greek. The final language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin among rural and lower class populations occurred later, when both they and the incoming Frankish ruler/military class adopted the Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin speech of the urban intellectual elite.
French language | Vulgar Latin in Gallia
Gaul was militarily conquered in 58–51 BCE by the Roman legions under the command of General Julius Caesar, except for the south-east which had already been conquered about one century earlier. Over the next six centuries, the two cultures intermingled, creating a hybridized Gallo-Roman culture. In the late Roman era, in addition to colonists from elsewhere in the Empire and Gaulish natives, Gallia also became home to some immigrant populations of Germanic and Scythian origin, such as the Alans. The Gaulish language is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture.
French people | Celtic and Roman Gaul
Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including "oui", the word for "yes"), sound changes, and influences in conjugation and word order. Today, the last redoubt of Celtic language in France can be found in the northwestern region of Brittany, although this is not the result of a survival of Gaulish language but of a 5th-century AD migration of Brythonic speaking Celts from Britain.
French people | Celtic and Roman Gaul
In an interview, Swiss folk metal band Eluveitie said that some of their songs are written in a reconstructed form of Gaulish. The band asks scientists for help in writing songs in the language. The name of the band comes from graffiti on a vessel from Mantua (c. 300 BC). The inscription in Etruscan letters reads "eluveitie," which has been interpreted as the Etruscan form of the Celtic "(h)elvetios" ("the Helvetian"), presumably referring to a man of Helvetian descent living in Mantua.
Gaulish language | Modern usage
The Celts settled in Armorica toward the 8th century BCE. Some of early groups mentioned in the written records of the Greeks were the Redones and the Namnetes. They spoke dialects of the Gaulish language and maintained important economic ties with the British Isles. Julius Caesar's invasion of Armorica in 56 BC led to a sort of Romanization of the population. Gaulish continued to be spoken in this region until the 6th century CE, especially in less populated, rural areas. When the Bretons emigrated to Armorica around this time, they found a people who had retained their Celtic language and culture.
Gallo language | Celtic, Latin and Germanic roots
Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul. The exact time of the final extinction of Gaulish is unknown, but it is estimated to have been in the late 5th or early 6th century AD, after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The language shift was uneven in its progress and shaped by sociological factors. Although there was a presence of retired veterans in colonies, these did not significantly alter the linguistic composition of Gaul's population, of which 90% was autochthonous; instead, the key Latinizing class was the coopted local elite, who sent their children to Roman schools and administered lands for Rome.
Gaulish language | Conditions of final demise
Before the Roman conquest of what is now France by Julius Caesar (58–52 BC), much of present France was inhabited by Celtic-speaking people referred to by the Romans as Gauls and Belgae. Southern France was also home to a number of other remnant linguistic and ethnic groups including Iberians along the eastern part of the Pyrenees and western Mediterranean coast, remnant Ligures on the eastern Mediterranean coast and in the alpine areas, Greek colonials in places such as Marseille and Antibes, and Vascones and Aquitani (Proto-Basques) in much of the southwest. The Gaulish speaking population is held to have continued speaking Gaulish even as considerable Romanization of the local material culture occurred, with Gaulish and Latin coexisting for centuries under Roman rule, and the last attestation of Gaulish deemed credible having been written in the second half of the 6th century about the destruction of a pagan shrine in Auvergne.
History of French | Roman Gaul ("Gallia")
The Gauls (; , "Galátai") were a group of Celtic peoples of Continental Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period (roughly from the 5th century BC to the 5th century AD). The area they originally inhabited was known as Gaul. Their Gaulish language forms the main branch of the Continental Celtic languages. The Gauls emerged around the 5th century BC as the bearers of La Tène culture north of the Alps (spread across the lands between the Seine, Middle Rhine and upper Elbe). By the 4th century BC, they had expanded over much of what is now France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, by virtue of controlling the trade routes along the river systems of the Rhône, Seine, Rhine, and Danube.
Gauls | Introduction
the "people's language". Urban T. Holmes has proposed that a Germanic language continued to be spoken as a second tongue by public officials in western Austrasia and Neustria as late as the 850s, and that it completely disappeared as a spoken language from these regions only during the 10th century.
Frankish language | Gaul
In the 5th century, at the time of the Western Roman collapse, the vast majority (non-elite and predominantly rural) of the population remained Gaulish speakers, and acquired Latin as their native speech only after the demise of the Empire, as both they and the new Frankish ruling elite adopted the prestige language of their urban literate elite. Bonnaud maintains that while Latinisation occurred earlier in Provence and in major urban centrers, while Gaulish persisted longest, possibly as late as the tenth century with evidence for continued use according to Bonnaud continuing into the ninth century, in Langres and the surrounding regions, the regions between Clermont, Argenton and Bordeaux, and in Armorica.
Gaulish language | Conditions of final demise
As a result of the scarcity of surviving materials bearing written Gaulish, it is surmised that the most of the Celtic writings were destroyed by the Romans, although a written form of Gaulish using Greek, Latin and North Italic alphabets was used (as evidenced by votive items bearing inscriptions in Gaulish and the Coligny calendar). Julius Caesar attests to the literacy of the Gauls, but also wrote that their priests, the druids, were forbidden to use writing to record certain verses of religious significance (Caesar, "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" 6.14) while also noting that the Helvetii had a written census (Caesar, "De Bello Gallico" 1.29).
Celtic mythology | Historical sources
The Celtic population of Gaul had spoken Gaulish, which is moderately well attested, with what appears to be wide dialectal variation including one distinctive variety, Lepontic. While the French language evolved from Vulgar Latin (i.e., a Latinised popular Italo-Celtic dialect called "sermo vulgaris"), it was nonetheless influenced by Gaulish. Chief among these are sandhi phenomena (liaison, resyllabification, lenition), the loss of unstressed syllables, and the vowel system (e.g. raising , → , , fronting stressed → , → or ). Syntactic oddities attributable to Gaulish include the intensive prefix "ro"- ~ "re"- (cited in the Vienna glossary, 5th century) (cf.
History of French | Roman Gaul ("Gallia")
In the five centuries between Caesar's conquest and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Gaulish language and cultural identity underwent a syncretism with the Roman culture of the new governing class, and evolved into a hybrid Gallo-Roman culture that eventually permeated all levels of society. Gauls continued writing some inscriptions in the Gaulish language, but switched from the Greek alphabet to the Latin alphabet during the Roman period. Current historical research suggests that Roman Gaul was "Roman" only in certain (albeit major) social contexts, the prominence of which in material culture has hindered a better historical understanding of the permanence of many Celtic elements.
Roman Gaul | Language and culture
The exact time of the final extinction of Gaulish is unknown, but it is estimated to have been around or shortly after the middle of the 1st millennium. Gaulish may have survived in some regions as the mid to late 6th century in France. Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and had coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul. Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish played a role in shaping the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques, sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and well as in conjugation and word order.
Gauls | Language
What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Roman writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language. Over the course of the 1st millennium BC the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC, and Roman forces under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC.
History of France | Prehistory
Gaulish or Gallic is the name given to the Celtic language that was spoken in Gaul before the Latin of the late Roman Empire became dominant in Roman Gaul. According to Julius Caesar in his "Commentaries on the Gallic War", it was one of three languages in Gaul, the others being Aquitanian and Belgic. In Gallia Transalpina, a Roman province by the time of Caesar, Latin was the language spoken since at least the previous century. Gaulish is paraphyletically grouped with Celtiberian, Lepontic, and Galatian as Continental Celtic. The Lepontic language and the Galatian language are sometimes considered to be dialects of Gaulish.
Gauls | Language
There was some areal (or genetic, see Italo-Celtic) similarity to Latin grammar, and the French historian Ferdinand Lot argued that it helped the rapid adoption of Vulgar Latin in Roman Gaul.
Gaulish language | Morphology
The Franks expanded south into Gaul. Although the Franks would eventually conquer all of Gaul, speakers of Old Franconian apparently expanded only into northern Gaul in numbers sufficient to have a linguistic effect. For several centuries, northern Gaul was a bilingual territory (Vulgar Latin and Franconian). The language used in writing, in government and by the Church was Latin. Eventually, the Franks who had settled more to the south of this area in northern Gaul started adopting the Vulgar Latin of the local population. This Vulgar Latin language acquired the name of the people who came to speak it (Frankish or "Français"); north of the French-Dutch language boundary, the language was no longer referred to as "Frankish" (if it ever was referred to as such) but rather came to be referred to as "Diets", i.e.
Frankish language | Gaul
Latin was quickly adopted by the Gaulish aristocracy after the Roman conquest to maintain their elite power and influence, trilingualism in southern Gaul being noted as early as the 1st century BC. Early references to Gaulish in Gaul tend to be made in the context of problems with Greek or Latin fluency until around 400, whereas after c. 450, Gaulish begins to be mentioned in contexts where Latin has replaced "Gaulish" or "Celtic" (whatever the authors meant by those terms), though at first these only concerned the upper classes. For Galatia (Anatolia), there is no source explicitly indicating a 5th century language replacement:
Gaulish language | Roman period
Caesar's book The Gallic Wars begins: "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws." However, many modern scholars believe that the Belgae were a Celtic-speaking group. On the other hand, at least part of the Belgae may also have had significant genetic, cultural, and historical connections to peoples east of the Rhine, including Germanic peoples, judging from archaeological, placename, and textual evidence. It has also been argued based on placename studies that the older language of the area, though apparently Indo-European, was not Celtic (see Nordwestblock) and that Celtic, though influential amongst the elite, might never have been the main language of the part of the Belgic area north of the Ardennes.
Belgae | Language
Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language spoken by the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul (modern-day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the Rhine). In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe ("Noric"), parts of the Balkans, and Anatolia ("Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish.
Gaulish language | Introduction
Gauls were the Celtic people that lived in Gaul having many tribes but with some influential tribal confederations. "Galli" (Gauls), for the Romans, was a name synonym of “Celts” (as Julius Caesar states in "De Bello Gallico") which means that not all peoples and tribes called “Galli” were necessarily Gauls in a narrower regional sense. Gaulish Celts spoke Gaulish, a Continental Celtic language of the P Celtic type, a more innovative Celtic language - *kʷ > p. Romans initially organized Gaul in two provinces (later in three): Transalpine Gaul, meaning literally "Gaul on the other side of the Alps" or "Gaul across the Alps", is approximately modern Belgium, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Western Germany.
List of ancient Celtic peoples and tribes | <a href="Gauls">Gauls</a> (<a href="Gauls">Galli</a> or <a href="Celtae">Celtae</a>)
The Celtic Gaulish language is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable cultural Romanization. Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including "oui", the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by the gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish.
Old French | Gaulish
The Gaulish language of the inhabitants of Gaul disappeared progressively over the course of Roman rule as the Latin languages began to replace it: written (Classical) Latin and spoken (vulgar) Latin. Classical Latin, taught in schools, remained the language of religious services, of scientific works, of legislative acts and of certain literary works. Vulgar Latin, spoken by the Roman soldiers and merchants, and adopted by the natives, evolved slowly, taking the forms of different spoken Roman vernaculars according to the region of the country. Eventually the different forms of Vulgar Latin would evolve into three branches in the Gallo-Romance language sub-family, the langues d'oïl north of the Loire, the langues d'oc in the south, and the Franco-Provençal languages in part of the east.
French orthography | Roman
Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and had coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Celtic
The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Greek writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language. Over the course of the first millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC, and Roman Legions under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC.
History of France | Introduction
Together with Lepontic and the Celtiberian language spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, Gaulish helps form the geographic group of Continental Celtic languages. The precise linguistic relationships among them, as well as between them and the modern Insular Celtic languages, are uncertain and a matter of ongoing debate because of their sparse attestation. Gaulish is found in some 800 (often fragmentary) inscriptions including calendars, pottery accounts, funeral monuments, short dedications to gods, coin inscriptions, statements of ownership, and other texts, possibly curse tablets. Gaulish texts were first written in the Greek alphabet in southern France and in a variety of the Old Italic script in northern Italy.
Gaulish language | Introduction
In the 4th century, the Latin poet and scholar Ausonius, from Gallia Aquitania (present-day Bordeaux), characterizes his physician father as speaking Attic Greek with more eloquence than Latin. Basque, not an Indo-European language, survived in the region of the Pyrenees. The people of southwestern Gaul and northeastern Hispania (roughly present-day Aquitaine and Navarre) were regarded by Julius Caesar as ethnically distinct from the Celts, and the Aquitanian language they spoke was Vasconic like Basque, judging from place names. The Aquitani adopted Latin under Roman rule.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Western provinces
According to the "Recueil des Inscriptions Gauloises", nearly three quarters of Gaulish inscriptions (disregarding coins) are in the Greek alphabet. Later inscriptions dating to Roman Gaul are mostly in the Latin alphabet and have been found principally in central France.
Gaulish language | Early period
Gallo-Roman language persisted in the northeast into the Silva Carbonaria that formed an effective cultural barrier, with the Franks to the north and east, and in the northwest to the lower valley of the Loire, where Gallo-Roman culture interfaced with Frankish culture in a city like Tours and in the person of that Gallo-Roman bishop confronted with Merovingian royals, Gregory of Tours.
Gaul | Frankish Gaul
But it remains unclear which Belgic Gauls were considered "Germani" by ancestry and which, if any, might have spoken a Germanic language.
Germani cisrhenani | Gallic Wars
There is little written information concerning the peoples that inhabited the regions of Gaul, save what can be gleaned from coins. Therefore, the early history of the Gauls is predominantly a work in archaeology, and the relationships between their material culture, genetic relationships (the study of which has been aided, in recent years, through the field of archaeogenetics) and linguistic divisions rarely coincide. Before the rapid spread of the La Tène culture in the 5th to 4th centuries BC, the territory of eastern and southern France already participated in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture (c. 12th to 8th centuries BC) out of which the early iron-working Hallstatt culture (7th to 6th centuries BC) would develop.
Gaul | Pre-Roman Gaul
The Gaulish language likely survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization. Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including "oui", the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by the gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish.
French language | Vulgar Latin in Gallia
The expected genitive plural -"a-om" appears innovated as "-anom" (vs. Celtiberian -"aum").
Gaulish language | Noun cases
In the Western Empire, Latin gradually replaced the Celtic languages, which were related to it by a shared Indo-European origin. Commonalities in syntax and vocabulary facilitated the adoption of Latin. Mediterranean Gaul (southern France) had become trilingual (Greek, Latin, Gaulish) by the mid-1st century BC. The importance of Latin in gaining access to the ruling power structure caused the rapid extinction of inscriptions in scripts that had been used to represent local languages on the Iberian peninsula "(Hispania)" and in Gaul. Among other aspects of a distinctive Gallo-Roman culture was the creation of Gallo-Latin text. In Latin commemorative inscriptions, individuals with Celtic names rarely identify themselves as "Celtic" or "Gallic"; they are much more likely to name the people of their "civitas" (such as Aedui, Remi, Pictones) or their voting tribe "(tribus)" as Roman citizens.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Western provinces
Many inscriptions consist of only a few words (often names) in rote phrases, and many are fragmentary. They provide some evidence for morphology and better evidence for personal and mythological names. Occasionally, marked surface clausal configurations provide some evidence of a more formal, or poetic, register. It is clear from the subject matter of the records that the language was in use at all levels of society. Other sources also contribute to knowledge of Gaulish: Greek and Latin authors mention Gaulish words, personal and tribal names, and toponyms. A short Gaulish-Latin vocabulary (about 20 entries headed "De nominib[us] Gallicis") called "Endlicher's Glossary", is preserved in a 9th century manuscript (Öst.
Gaulish language | Summary of sources
The Romans knew the Celts then living in present-day France as Gauls. The territory of these peoples probably included the Low Countries, the Alps and present-day northern Italy. Julius Caesar in his "Gallic Wars" described the 1st-century BC descendants of those Gauls. Eastern Gaul became the centre of the western La Tène culture. In later Iron Age Gaul, the social organisation resembled that of the Romans, with large towns. From the 3rd century BC the Gauls adopted coinage. Texts with Greek characters from southern Gaul have survived from the 2nd century BC. Greek traders founded Massalia about 600 BC, with some objects (mostly drinking ceramics) being traded up the Rhone valley.
Celts | Gaul
Fleuriot, Falc'hun, and Gvozdanovic likewise maintained a late survival in Armorica and language contact of some form with the ascendant Breton language; however, it has been noted that there is little uncontroversial evidence supporting a relatively late survival specifically in Brittany whereas there is uncontroversial evidence that supports the relatively late survival of Gaulish in the Swiss Alps and in regions in Central Gaul. Drawing from these data, which include the mapping of substrate vocabulary as evidence, Kerkhof argues that we may "tentatively" posit a survival of Gaulish speaking communities in the "at least into the sixth century" in pockets of mountainous regions of the Central Massif, the Jura, and the Swiss Alps.
Gaulish language | Conditions of final demise
Most Gaulish sentences seem to consist of a subject–verb–object word order: Some, however, have patterns such as verb–subject–object (as in living Insular Celtic languages) or with the verb last. The latter can be seen as a survival from an earlier stage in the language, very much like the more archaic Celtiberian language. Sentences with the verb first can be interpreted, however, as indicating a special purpose, such as an imperative, emphasis, contrast, and so on. Also, the verb may contain or be next to an enclitic pronoun or with "and" or "but", etc. According to J. F. Eska, Gaulish was certainly not a verb-second language, as the following shows:
Gaulish language | Word order
Thus the Druids were an important part of Gallic society. The nearly complete and mysterious disappearance of the Celtic language from most of the territorial lands of ancient Gaul, with the exception of Brittany France, can be attributed to the fact that Celtic druids refused to allow the Celtic oral literature or traditional wisdom to be committed to the written letter.
Gaul | Religion
The Aquitanians (Latin: Aquitani) were a people living in what is now southern Nouvelle-Aquitaine and southwestern Midi-Pyrénées, France, called Gallia Aquitania by the Romans in the region between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic ocean, and the Garonne, present-day southwestern France. Classical authors such as Julius Caesar and Strabo clearly distinguish them from the other peoples of Gaul, and note their similarity to others in the Iberian Peninsula. During the process of Romanization, they gradually adopted the Latin Language (Vulgar Latin) and Roman civilization. Their old language, the Aquitanian language, was a precursor of the Basque language and the substrate for the Gascon language (one of the Romance languages) spoken in Gascony.
Aquitani | Introduction
It is estimated that during the Bronze Age, Proto-Celtic started fragmenting into distinct languages, including Celtiberian and Gaulish. As a result of the expansion of Celtic tribes during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, closely related varieties of Celtic came to be spoken in a vast arc extending from present-day Britain and France through the Alpine region and Pannonia in central Europe, and into parts of the Balkans and Anatolia. Their precise linguistic relationships are uncertain because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence. The Gaulish varieties of central and eastern Europe and of Anatolia (known as Noric and Galatian, respectively) are barely attested, but from what little is known of them it appears that they were still quite similar to those of Gaul and can be considered dialects of a single language.
Gaulish language | Classification
Due to Roman rule, Latin was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul, and as the language was learned by the common people it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which being attested on graffiti. This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as Arpitan. The evolution of Latin in Gaul was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language, which did not go extinct until the late 6th century, long after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire.
French language | Vulgar Latin in Gallia
The Gaulish language used to be widely spoken in France and beyond around the period of the Roman Empire. There have been attempts at revivals and reconstructions, despite very limited evidence for the exact original form of the language. Eluveitie is a folk metal band that writes songs in revived form of Gaulish.
Celtic Revival | France
With the decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, a federation of Germanic peoples entered the picture: the Franks, from which the word "French" derives. The Franks were Germanic pagans who began to settle in northern Gaul as "laeti" during the Roman era. They continued to filter across the Rhine River from present-day Netherlands and Germany between the 3rd and 7th centuries. Initially, they served in the Roman army and obtained important commands. Their language is still spoken as a kind of Dutch (French Flemish) in northern France (French Flanders). The Alamans, another Germanic people immigrated to Alsace, hence the Alemannic German now spoken there.
French people | Frankish Kingdom
Recent epigraphic studies suggest that they spoke a ‘Q-Celtic’ language akin to the neighbouring Gallaeci Lucenses and Braccarenses (see Gallaecia). Although the Celtic language was lost during the Low Middle Ages it still endures in many names of villages and geographical features, mostly associated to Celtic deities: the parish of Taranes and the villages of Tereñes, Táranu, Tarañu and Torañu related to the god Taranis, the parish of Lugones related to the god Lugus or the parish of Beleño related to the god Belenus, just to name a few. According to classic authors, their family structure was matrilineal, whereby the woman inherits the ownership of property.
Astures | Culture
The Gauls (Celts who lived in Gaul) were a culture rather than a race, nation or empire. They were skilled in metalworking and cattle-raising. The culture began to dominate France around 800 BCE, replacing the existing culture (but not the people). The Celtic landscape resembled a countryside, with open fields instead of woods; however, Celtic fields were smaller (often square). More fields were used for pasture than for crops because of the need for cattle, sheep and forage. The Gauls intensely managed the forest for wood and forest products; the Romans enhanced the system without dramatically altering it. Villages and hamlets were denser in the countryside during the Roman period; the population (equal to that at the time of Louis XIV) was about 20 million.
Roman villas in northwestern Gaul | Gauls (Celts)
Gaulish culture developed from the Celtic cultures over the first millennium BC. The Urnfield culture (c. 1300 BC – c. 750 BC) represents the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European-speaking people. The spread of iron working led to the Hallstatt culture in the 8th century BC; the Proto-Celtic language is often thought to have been spoken around this time. The Hallstatt culture evolved into La Tène culture in around the 5th century BC. The Greek and Etruscan civilizations and colonies began to influence the Gauls, especially in the Mediterranean area. Gauls under Brennus invaded Rome circa 390 BC.
Gauls | Origins and early history
The basis of our population has thus remained Gaulish. The Gauls are our ancestors." "Astérix", the popular series of French comic books following the exploits of a village of "indomitable Gauls", satirizes this view by combining scenes set in classical antiquity with modern ethnic clichés of the French and other nations. Similarly, in Swiss national historiography of the 19th century, the Gaulish Helvetii were chosen as representing the ancestral Swiss population (compare "Helvetia" as national allegory), as the Helvetii had settled in both the French and the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, and their Gaulish language set them apart from Latin- and German-speaking populations in equal measure.
Gauls | Modern reception
Celtic languages at the beginning of the Imperial period include Gaulish, spoken in Gaul ("Gallia," present-day France, Belgium, Switzerland and northwestern Italy); Celtiberian and Gallaecian, in parts of Hispania (Spain and Portugal); Brittonic in Britannia (Roman Britain), and Galatian, a branch of Celtic brought to Anatolia by the Gallic invasions of the 3rd century BC. The place name Galatia, a Roman province, derives from the Greek word for "Gauls" or "Celts", "Galatai". Loanwords from Gaulish are recorded in Latin as early as the time of Ennius (ca. 239–169 BC), due to the presence of Celtic settlements on the Italian peninsula.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Celtic
Archaeologists divide the area of Roman-era "Germania" into several Iron Age "material cultures". At the time of Caesar, all had been under the strong influence of the La Tène culture, an old culture in the south and west of "Germania", which is strongly associated with Celtic-speaking Gauls, including those in Gaul itself. These La Tène peoples, who included the "Germani cisrhenani", are generally considered unlikely to have spoken Germanic languages as defined today, though some may have spoken unknown related languages or Celtic dialects. To the north of these zones however, in southern Scandinavia and northern Germany, the archaeological cultures started to become more distinct from La Tène culture during the Iron Age.
Germanic peoples | Archaeological evidence
Gaulish had seven cases: the nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental and the locative case. Greater epigraphical evidence attests common cases (nominative and accusative) and common stems (-o- and -a- stems) than for cases less frequently used in inscriptions or rarer -i-, -n- and -r- stems. The following table summarises the reconstructed endings for the words "*toṷtā" "tribe, people", "*mapos" "boy, son", "*ṷātis" "seer", "*gutus" "voice", "*brātīr" "brother". In some cases, a historical evolution is attested; for example, the dative singular of a-stems is "-āi" in the oldest inscriptions, becoming first *"-ăi" and finally "-ī" as in Irish "a"-stem nouns with attenuated ("slender") consonants: nom.
Gaulish language | Noun cases
Yitzhak Hen stated that it seems certain that the Gallo-Roman population was far greater than the Frankish population in Merovingian Gaul, especially in regions south of the Seine, with most of the Frankish settlements being located along the Lower and Middle Rhine. The further south in Gaul one traveled, the weaker the Frankish influence became. Hen finds hardly any evidence for Frankish settlements south of the Loire. The absence of Frankish literature sources suggests that the Frankish language was forgotten rather rapidly after the early stage of the dynasty. Hen believes that for Neustria, Burgundy and Aquitania, colloquial Latin remained the spoken language in Gaul throughout the Merovingian period and remained so even well in to the Carolingian period.
Merovingian dynasty | Language
Before the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity, people lived in Iron Age Britain and Ireland, speaking languages from which the modern Gaelic languages (including Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx) and Brythonic languages (including Welsh, Breton and Cornish) descend. These people, along with others in Continental Europe who once spoke now extinct languages from the same Indo-European branch (such as the Gauls, Celtiberians and Galatians), have been retroactively referred to in a collective sense as the Celts, particularly in a wide spread manner since the turn of the 18th century. Variations of the term "Celt", such as "Keltoi" had been used in antiquity by the Greeks and the Romans to refer to some groups of these people, such as Herodotus' use of it in regards to the Gauls.
Pan-Celticism | Modern conception of the Celtic peoples
"luire" "to glimmer" vs. "reluire" "to shine"; related to Irish "ro"- and Welsh "rhy"- "very"), emphatic structures, prepositional periphrastic phrases to render verbal aspect, the semantic development of "oui" "yes", "aveugle" "blind", and so on. Some sound changes are attested. The sound changes → and → appears in a pottery inscription from la Graufesenque (1st century) where the word "paraxsidi" is written for "paropsides". Similarly, the development -"cs"- → → and -"ct"- → → , the second common to much of Western Romance languages, also appears in inscriptions, e.g. "Divicta" ~ "Divixta", "Rectugenus" ~ "Rextugenus" ~ "Reitugenus", and is present in Welsh, e.g.
History of French | Roman Gaul ("Gallia")
From their personal and tribal names we know that the "Germani cisrhenani" were heavily influenced by the Gaulish language. From other information, including the contemporary reports of Julius Caesar and Tacitus, we know that they were also heavily influenced by Germanic peoples on the east of the Rhine river. Whether the "Germani cisrhenani" in Belgium ever actually spoke a Germanic language is uncertain. In any case it was claimed by Tacitus that these "Germani" were the first people called "Germani", and that the term "Germani" as it came to be widely used was not the original meaning. He also said that the descendants of the original "Germani" in his time were the Tungri.
Condrusi | Language
Gaul was divided into several different provinces. The Romans displaced populations to prevent local identities from becoming a threat to Roman control. Thus, many Celts were displaced in Aquitania or were enslaved and moved out of Gaul. There was a strong cultural evolution in Gaul under the Roman Empire, the most obvious one being the replacement of the Gaulish language by Vulgar Latin. It has been argued the similarities between the Gaulish and Latin languages favoured the transition. Gaul remained under Roman control for centuries and Celtic culture was then gradually replaced by Gallo-Roman culture. The Gauls became better integrated with the Empire with the passage of time.
History of France | Roman Gaul
English "Gaul" / "Gaulish" are unrelated to Latin "Gallia" / "Galli", despite their superficial similarity. The English words ultimately stem from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic root "*walhaz", "foreigner, Romanised person." During the early Germanic period, this exonym seems to have been applied broadly to the peasant population of the Roman Empire, most of whom lived in the areas being settled by the Germanic peoples; whether the peasants spoke Celtic or Latin did not matter. The Germanic root likely made its way into French via Latinisation of Frankish "Walholant" "Gaul," literally "Land of the Foreigners." Germanic "w" is regularly rendered as "gu" / "g" in French (cf.
Names of the Celts | "Gaul", "Gaulish", "Welsh"
They seem to have been an older group of Celts that lived in Cisalpine Gaul before the Gaulish Celtic migration. They spoke Lepontic (a Continental Celtic language) a Celtic language that seems to precede Cisalpine Gaulish.
List of ancient Celtic peoples and tribes | <a href="Celts">Lepontine Celts</a>
The Bretons were therefore able to integrate easily. In contrast to Armorica's western countryside, Nantes and Rennes were Roman cultural centres. Following the Migration Period, these two cities, as well as regions to the east of the Vilaine, including the town Vannes, fell under Frankish rule. Thus, during the Merovingian dynasty, the population of Armorica was diverse, consisting of Gaulish tribes with assimilated Bretons, as well as Romanized cities and Germanic tribes. War between the Frank and Breton kingdoms was constant between the 6th and 9th centuries, which made the border between the two difficult to define. Before the 10th century, Breton was spoken by at least one third of the population up to the cities of Pornic and Avranches.
Gallo language | Celtic, Latin and Germanic roots
Gaul is in the plural in the title, reflecting the three Gallic entities identified by the Romans ("Celtica", "Belgica", and "Aquitania"). The adjective "gaulois" (Gallic) is still sometimes used when a French person wants to stress some idiosyncrasies of the French people entrenched in history, such as "nos ancêtres les Gaulois" ("our ancestors the Gauls"), a phrase sometimes used in French when one wants to assert his own identity. During the Third Republic, the authorities often referred to "notre vieille nation gauloise" ("our old Gallic nation"), a case in which the adjective "gaulois" is used with a positive connotation. The word "gallicisme" is used sometimes in linguistic to express a specific form to the French language.
Name of France | Gaul
The place names are for example: "Corbio", "Viridunum" (Berdún), "Gordunum" (Gordún), "Navardunum" (Navardún), "Sekia/Segia", "Setia", "Gallicum", "Forum Gallorum". The river names are "Alba" (today's Arba river), "Gallicus" river (Gállego). This seems to indicate that they spoke an indo-European language, maybe a Celtic one.
Suessetani | Ethnic and linguistic affiliation
But trade became disrupted soon after 500 BC and re-oriented over the Alps to the Po valley in the Italian peninsula. The Romans arrived in the Rhone valley in the 2nd century BC and encountered a mostly Celtic-speaking Gaul. Rome wanted land communications with its Iberian provinces and fought a major battle with the Saluvii at Entremont in 124–123 BC. Gradually Roman control extended, and the Roman province of Gallia Transalpina developed along the Mediterranean coast. The Romans knew the remainder of Gaul as Gallia Comata – "Hairy Gaul".
Celts | Gaul
The Roman influence was most apparent in the areas of civic religion and administration. The Druidic religion was suppressed by Emperor Claudius I, and in later centuries Christianity was introduced. The prohibition of Druids and the syncretic nature of the Roman religion led to disappearance of the Celtic religion. It remains to this day poorly understood: current knowledge of the Celtic religion is based on archeology and via literary sources from several isolated areas such as Ireland and Wales. The Romans easily imposed their administrative, economic, artistic (especially in terms of monumental art and architecture) and literary culture. They wore the Roman tunic instead of their traditional clothing.
Roman Gaul | Language and culture
There are traces of human settlement by prehistoric peoples, especially in the Périgord, but the earliest attested inhabitants in the south-west were the Aquitani, who were not considered Celtic people, but more akin to the Iberians (see Gallia Aquitania). Although a number of different languages and dialects were in use in the area during ancient times, it is most likely that the prevailing language of Aquitaine during the late pre-historic to Roman period was an early form of the Basque language. This has been demonstrated by various Aquitanian names and words that were recorded by the Romans, and which are currently easily readable as Basque.
Aquitaine | Ancient history
The Veneti (Gaulish: "the kin, the friendly ones") were a Gallic tribe who lived in Armorica (Brittany Peninsula, France). A seafaring people, they strongly influenced southwestern Brittonic culture by their trade. After they were defeated by Junius Brutus Albinus in a naval battle in 56 BCE, their maritime commerce eventually declined under the Roman Empire, but a prosperous agricultural life is indicated by archaeological evidence.
Veneti (Gaul) | Introduction
Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic tribes, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, and parts of Northern Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, particularly the west bank of the Rhine. It covered an area of . According to Julius Caesar, Gaul was divided into three parts: Gallia Celtica, Belgica, and Aquitania. Archaeologically, the Gauls were bearers of the La Tène culture, which extended across all of Gaul, as well as east to Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia, and southwestern Germania during the 5th to 1st centuries BC. During the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, Gaul fell under Roman rule: Gallia Cisalpina was conquered in 203 BC and Gallia Narbonensis in 123 BC.
Gaul | Introduction
Recent work in computational simulation suggests that Gaulish played a role in gender shifts of words in Early French, whereby the gender would shift to match the gender of the corresponding Gaulish word with the same meaning.
Gauls | Language
Vercingetorix, the Gaulish chieftain who tried to unite the various Gallic tribes of the land against Roman encroachment but was ultimately vanquished by Julius Caesar, is often revered as a "first national hero". In the famously popular French comic "Asterix", the main characters are patriotic Gauls who fight against Roman invaders while in modern days the term "Gaulois" is used in French to distinguish the "native" French from French of immigrant origins. However, despite its occasional nativist usage, the Gaulish identity has also been embraced by French of non-native origins as well: notably, Napoleon III, whose family was ultimately of Corsican and Italian roots, identified France with Gaul and Vercingetorix, and declared that "New France, ancient France, Gaul are one and the same moral person."
French people | Nationality, citizenship, ethnicity
A major problem in determining whether the Cimbri were speaking a Celtic language or a Germanic language is that, at that time, the Greeks and Romans tended to refer to all groups to the north of their sphere of influence as Gauls, Celts, or Germani rather indiscriminately. Caesar seems to be one of the first authors to distinguish the two groups, and he had a political motive for doing so (it was an argument in favour of the Rhine border). Yet, one cannot always trust Caesar and Tacitus when they ascribe individuals and tribes to one or the other category, although Caesar made clear distinctions between the two cultures.
Cimbri | Language
Because communication in ancient society was predominantly oral, it can be difficult to determine the extent to which regional or local languages continued to be spoken or used for other purposes under Roman rule. Some evidence exists in inscriptions, or in references in Greek and Roman texts to other languages and the need for interpreters. For Punic, Coptic, and Aramaic or Syriac, a significant amount of epigraphy or literature survives. The Celtic languages were widespread throughout much of western Europe, and while the orality of Celtic education left scant written records, Celtic epigraphy is limited in quantity but not rare.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Introduction
Gaulish inscriptions are edited in the "Recueil des Inscriptions Gauloises" (R.I.G.), in four volumes: The longest known Gaulish text is the Larzac tablet, found in 1983 in l'Hospitalet-du-Larzac, France. It is inscribed in Roman cursive on both sides of two small sheets of lead. Probably a curse tablet ("defixio"), it clearly mentions relationships between female names, for example "aia duxtir adiegias [...] adiega matir aiias" (Aia, daughter of Adiega... Adiega, mother of Aia) and seems to contain incantations regarding one Severa Tertionicna and a group of women (often thought to be a rival group of witches), but the exact meaning of the text remains unclear.
Gaulish language | Inscriptions
Sargans was part of the county of Werdenberg from the 12th century. The territory of Grisons, the southern part of Raetia Curiensis (in the medieval period known as Upper Raetia, "Raetia superior", "Oberrätien") remained predominantly Latin-speaking throughout the early modern period (with the exception of the high pastures settled by the Walser). When Grisons became part of Switzerland in 1803, it had a population of roughly 73,000, of whom around 36,600 were Romansh speakers—many of them monolingual—living mostly within the Romansh-speaking valleys. The number of Romansh speakers has remained roughly constant since that time (while, in the same period, the population of Switzerland has nearly quintupled).
Romansh people | History
The religious practices of inhabitants became a combination of Roman and Celtic practice, with Celtic deities such as Cobannus and Epona subjected to interpretatio romana. The imperial cult and Eastern mystery religions also gained a following. Eventually, after it became the official religion of the Empire and paganism became suppressed, Christianity won out in the twilight days of the Western Roman Empire (while the Christianized Eastern Roman Empire lasted another thousand years, until the invasion of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453); a small but notable Jewish presence also became established. The Gaulish language is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture.
Gaul | Roman Gaul
The Franks were a Germanic tribe that overran Roman Gaul at the end of the Roman Empire.
French people | History
The alphabet of Lugano used in Cisalpine Gaul for Lepontic: The alphabet of Lugano does not distinguish voicing in stops: P represents /b/ or /p/, T is for /d/ or /t/, K for /g/ or /k/. Z is probably for /t/. U /u/ and V /w/ are distinguished in only one early inscription. Θ is probably for /t/ and X for /g/ (Lejeune 1971, Solinas 1985). The Eastern Greek alphabet used in southern Gallia Narbonensis:
Gaulish language | Orthography
In southern Gaul, Aquitaine had been Romanised and people spoke a Romance language. Similarly, Hispania had been populated by peoples who spoke various languages, including Celtic, but these had now been mostly replaced by Romance languages. Between Aquitaine and Hispania were the Euskaldunak, Latinised to Vascones, or Basques, whose country, Vasconia, extended, according to the distributions of place names attributable to the Basques, mainly in the western Pyrenees but also as far south as the upper Ebro River in Spain and as far north as the Garonne River in France. The French name Gascony derives from Vasconia. The Romans were never able to subjugate the whole of Vasconia.
Charlemagne | Formation of a new Aquitaine
The diphthongs all transformed over the historical period. "Ai" and "oi" changed into long "ī" and "eu" merged with "ou", both becoming long "ō". "Ei" became long "ē". In general, long diphthongs became short diphthongs and then long vowels. Long vowels shortened before nasals in coda. Other transformations include unstressed "i" became "e", "ln" became "ll", a stop + "s" became "ss", and a nasal + velar became /ŋ/ + velar. The voiceless plosives seem to have been lenis, unlike in Latin, which distinguished voiced occlusives with a lenis realization from voiceless occlusives with a fortis realization, which caused confusions like "Glanum" for "Clanum", "vergobretos" for "vercobreto", "Britannia" for "Pritannia".
Gaulish language | Phonology
"lámh" "hand, arm" (cf. Gaul. "lāmā") and dat. "láimh" (< *"lāmi"; cf. Gaul. "lāmāi" > *"lāmăi" > "lāmī"). Further, the plural instrumental had begun to encroach on the dative plural (dative "atrebo" and "matrebo" vs. instrumental "gobedbi" and "suiorebe"), and in the modern Insular languages, the instrumental form is known to have completely replaced the dative. For o-stems, Gaulish also innovated the pronominal ending for the nominative plural -"oi" and genitive singular -"ī" in place of expected -"ōs" and -"os" still present in Celtiberian (-"oś", -"o"). In a-stems, the inherited genitive singular -"as" is attested but was subsequently replaced by "-ias" as in Insular Celtic.
Gaulish language | Noun cases
Modern historical linguists and archaeologists have also come to doubt that these western "Germani" spoke a Germanic language as defined today, or shared the same material culture, at least at the time of their first contact with Caesar and the Romans. Caesar himself refers to them also as Gauls. The older concept of the "Germani" being local to the Rhine, and especially the west bank of the lower Rhine, remained common among Graeco-Roman writers for a longer time than the more theoretical and general concept of Caesar. Cassius Dio writing in Greek in the 3rd century, consistently called the right-bank "Germani" of Caesar, the Celts (Κελτοί) and their country "Keltikḗ" (Κελτική).
Germanic peoples | Origin of the "Germanic" terminology
The ethnonym "Germani" as used by Tacitus does not necessarily coincide with the modern linguistic definition of Germanic peoples as any people speaking a Germanic language, and the details of the classification "Germani" have been debated in scholarship, e.g. the possibility that the Batavians may therefore have been Celtic-speaking. Tacitus nevertheless shows no lack of precision in stating that the Nervii are not actually Germanic as they claim to be (chapter 28). He also notes in chapter 43 that a certain tribe called the Cotini actually speaks a Gallic tongue, and likewise the Osi speak a Pannonian dialect.
Germania (book) | Purpose and sources
The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there. A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke langue d'oïl while the population in the south spoke langue d'oc. Langue d'oïl grew into what is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects.
French language | Old French
Surviving Celtic influences also infiltrated back into the Roman Imperial culture in the 3rd century. For example, the Gaulish tunic—which gave Emperor Caracalla his surname—had not been replaced by Roman fashion. Similarly, certain Gaulish artisan techniques, such as the barrel (more durable than the Roman amphora) and chain mail were adopted by the Romans.
Roman Gaul | Language and culture
The hypothesis that the languages spoken in Gaul and Great Britain (Gaulish and the Brittonic languages) descended from a common ancestor, separate from the Celtic languages of Ireland, Spain, and Italy, is based on a number of linguistic innovations, principally the evolution of Proto-Celtic *kʷ into (thus the name "P-Celtic"). These innovations are not shared with the Goidelic languages. The shared innovations not in Goidelic are: The chief alternative view is the Insular Celtic hypothesis, which asserts that Goidelic and Brythonic underwent a period of common development and have shared innovations, while the above changes are either independent innovations that occurred separately in Brythonic and Gaulish or are due to language contact between the two groups.
Gallo-Brittonic languages | Linguistics
They spoke Goidelic (an Insular Celtic language of the Q Celtic type. According to Ptolemy's "Geography" (2nd century AD) (in brackets the names are in Greek as on the map):
List of ancient Celtic peoples and tribes | <a href="Gaels">Goidels</a> / <a href="Gaels">Gaels</a> / <a href="Gaels">Hibernians</a>
Because of the strong Celtic influences on their language and culture, they were known in antiquity as Celto-Ligurians (in Greek , Keltolígues). Modern linguists, like Xavier Delamarre, argues that Ligurian was a Celtic language, similar to, but not the same as Gaulish. The Ligurian-Celtic question is also discussed by Barruol (1999). Ancient Ligurian is either listed as Celtic (epigraphic) or Para-Celtic (onomastic). The Veneti were an Indo-European people who inhabited north-eastern Italy, in an area corresponding to the modern-day region of the Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino. By the 4th century BC the Veneti had been so Celticized that Polybius wrote that the Veneti of the 2nd century BC were identical to the Gauls except for language.
Cisalpine Gaul | Early history
For example, Maurits Gysseling suggested that prior to Celtic and Germanic influences the Belgae may have comprised a distinct Indo-European branch, termed Belgian. However, most of the Belgic tribal and personal names recorded are identifiably Gaulish, including those of the "Germani cisrhenani", and this is indeed also true of the tribes immediately over the Rhine at this time, such as the Tencteri and Usipetes. Surviving inscriptions also indicate that Gaulish was spoken in at least part of Belgic territory. The Romans were not precise in their ethnography of northern barbarians: by "Germanic", Caesar may simply have meant "originating east of the Rhine" (the homeland of the "Germani cisrhenani") with no distinction of language intended.
Belgae | Language
The Tunica (or Tonica, or less common form Yuron) language is a language isolate. The last known native speaker of Tunica, Sesostrie Youchigant, died in 1948. Linguist Mary Haas worked with Youchigant in the 1930s to describe what he remembered of the language, and the description was published in "A Grammar of the Tunica Language" in 1941, followed by "Tunica Texts" in 1950 and "Tunica Dictionary" in 1953. The Tunica tribe lived close to the Ofo and Avoyeles tribes, but communication between the three was only possible through the use of the Mobilian Jargon or French. Most modern Tunica speak English, with a few older members speaking French as a first language.
Tunica people | Tunica language
Several major writers of Latin came from the Iberian peninsula in the Imperial period, including Seneca, Lucan, Quintilian, Martial, and Prudentius. However despite acquisition of Latin, Gaulish is held by some to have held on quite a long time, lasting at least until the middle of the 6th century CE, despite considerable Romanization in the local material culture. Most of the 136 Greek inscriptions from Mediterranean Gaul (the Narbonensis), including those from originally Greek colonies, are post-Augustan. Their content indicates that Greek was used increasingly for specialized purposes: "education, medicine, acting, agnostic activities, art, magic, religion, including Christianity". Inscriptions from Marseilles (ancient Massilia), founded as a Greek Phocaean colony around 600 BC, show the continued use of Greek, especially in education and medicine, into the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Imperial era.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Western provinces
Linguist Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel falls in the latter group, and suggests the meaning "the tall ones". In the 1st century BC, Julius Caesar reported that the people known to the Romans as Gauls () called themselves Celts, which suggests that even if the name "Keltoi" was bestowed by the Greeks, it had been adopted to some extent as a collective name by the tribes of Gaul. The geographer Strabo, writing about Gaul towards the end of the first century BC, refers to the "race which is now called both Gallic and Galatic," though he also uses the term Celtica as a synonym for Gaul, which is separated from Iberia by the Pyrenees.
Celts | Names and terminology