Very interesting!! Was it already possible to call the Celtic peoples “Celtic”?
Also about the “Old IE”, I remember having heard about a great variety of “pre-celtic”, “proto-celtic” and even “para-celtic” people mixed together in the Iberian Peninsula. I have to refresh…
Eurasiatik / 4-29-2015 / ·
We don’t know for sure what any of those peoples called themselves at the time. The map merely represents the linguistic area.
Asier / 4-29-2015 / ·
It’s interesting to see that the Germanic, Italic, Hellenic, Slavic and Armenian branches have remained in their areas for 3000 thousand years.
Eleder / 4-29-2015 / ·
Yes, what I meant was that when we say “Celtic” we are identifying a group of linguistic characteristics that separate the language from the Indoeuropean, and even the italo-celtic branch. And I don’t know whether in 1,000 a.C the language already had enough characteristics to be called “Celtic”: Anyway, it’s a minor issue. Thanks!
Eurasiatik / 4-29-2015 / ·
Proto-Indoeuropean was spoken some 2000-3000 years earlier, so one could say that proto-Celtic at the time was as different from PIE, as Irish is from proto-Celtic.
In any case, not even the Germanic branch depicted on the map had all the Germanic features we know today: for example, the aspiration of velars hadn’t started yet (one proof of this is the loanword ‘kannabis’ from Greek or Scythian, which became ‘hemp‘ in Germanic).
Very interesting!! Was it already possible to call the Celtic peoples “Celtic”?
Also about the “Old IE”, I remember having heard about a great variety of “pre-celtic”, “proto-celtic” and even “para-celtic” people mixed together in the Iberian Peninsula. I have to refresh…
We don’t know for sure what any of those peoples called themselves at the time. The map merely represents the linguistic area.
It’s interesting to see that the Germanic, Italic, Hellenic, Slavic and Armenian branches have remained in their areas for 3000 thousand years.
Yes, what I meant was that when we say “Celtic” we are identifying a group of linguistic characteristics that separate the language from the Indoeuropean, and even the italo-celtic branch. And I don’t know whether in 1,000 a.C the language already had enough characteristics to be called “Celtic”: Anyway, it’s a minor issue. Thanks!
Proto-Indoeuropean was spoken some 2000-3000 years earlier, so one could say that proto-Celtic at the time was as different from PIE, as Irish is from proto-Celtic.
In any case, not even the Germanic branch depicted on the map had all the Germanic features we know today: for example, the aspiration of velars hadn’t started yet (one proof of this is the loanword ‘kannabis’ from Greek or Scythian, which became ‘hemp‘ in Germanic).