Knowledge of Celtic and Germanic languages

[Tiberius Nero]

Hello EB team!

I have a linguistic question for the developers; one of the most noticeable features of EB (at least for linguistics buffs like myself :P) is the use of native languages in unit and building names. What I am interested in is some sources informing us about Celtic and Germanic languages in the EB timeframe. By this I mean both original texts/inscriptions and scholarly works on the matter examining morphology of those language families. My knowledge is currently limited to Greek, Latin, Classical Arabic (which is way after EB), and a bit of both Biblical Hebrew and Sanskrit, so I have no knowledge of ancient northern european languages. The only texts in (presumably) Celtic I have come across are a handful of curse tablets, written either in Latin or Greek characters, and from what I have seen scholars only speculate upon their translations. So I am basically interested to what extend those languages are known to us, and where I could find out more about them . I appreciate your time to answer my questions. Keep up the good work!

Cheers!

[PaladinX]

Hi Tiberius!

i will try to help you a little with the ancient german linguistic. in fact the problem to find very old ressources of the german languages is, that the first written "studies" are made in the 6th century. thats why you can´t hardly find latin or greek informations.

as second, as you know, the old german tribe structure brings in an other difficulty. from region to region they had (and have) quite big differences in interpretation of the language. as today a friese from the north of germany will not understand what a real bavrian means when he talks out "leg di nieder will di fruchten"... And that makes the difference to the greec or roman culture.

first time we can speak for a generell german language is when martin luther has published his first german bible in the reformation days! from this date on there was a continous development of a general german language.

so if you want to learn more about the ancient german language you have to go up for the cultur of the very old german tribes.

try out: ↑ Herbert L. Kufner, The grouping and separation of the Germanic languages; in: Frans van Coetsem and Herbert L. Kufner, Toward a Grammar of Proto-Germanic, Tübingen 1972, Max Niemeyer Verlag, ISBN 3-484-45001-X (mit formal falscher ISBN ausgeliefert und katalogisiert, Suche über KVK möglich); S. 94

cheers

[Varg1204]

Sorry PaladinX not quite true,

It is possible to reconstruct the language of the early germanic tribes: language-scientists were able to reconstruct the Germanic language until 100 B.C. (I study German Philology at University, not ancient but high-medieval, that's why I know)

The earliest existing text in Germanic is the Wulfila-Bible of the Goths around 400 A.D., which is a translation of a Greek-Bible into Gothic language as far as I know. (just search wikipedia to know more) (gothic is east-germanic, because after 100.B.C. the germanic language split into north-germanic,west-germanic, and east-germanic because the tribes, which moved away from each other and their language changed) If the wulfila-bible didn't exist east-germanic would have been lost for science and research!

The earliest language that can be called German is the 'old-high-German' which was spoken at the time of the frankish-empire/early Middle Age. There are hardly written texts in that language (most have been latin because it was the usual written/literary language) but amongst others there are some heroic poems, which had been found in monasteries. Out of this 'old-high-german' it was possible to reconstruct west-germanic, which is the ancestor of old-high german! Out of 'old-high-german' developed 'middle-high-german' the language of the Germans in high Middle Age (actually what I am studying ) There are a lot of texts from the high-Middle Age in middle-high-german (f.e The Song of the Nibelungs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied), which makes it a lot easier studying it, compared to old-high-german!
Old-high-german is the ancestor of German, Dutch, Luxemburgian, Saxon and English

Out of old-nordic (there are very few heroic poems too, but it helped to save that language to science) it was able to reconstruct north-germanic. Old Nordic is the ancestor of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic

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

[Tiberius Nero]

Thank you both for the responses!

Well having studied lInguistics, I know that it is possible to an extent and very usefull to reconstruct older forms of languages, and there is hypothetical "proto-x" set (like proto-Greek) for nearly all sub-families of Indoeuropean which we know of. But seeing that, as it was to my knowledge and you confirmed it, the earliest certain evidence of Germanic is the Wulfila bible, which is 700 later after the events of EB, I wonder how legit it is to use that as a basis for "reconstructing" Germanic of the 3rd cent BC. Isn't that as if we had no knowledge of Greek prior to early Byzantine times, and merely assumed that Greek of the Classical age was the same? :)

Also any info on Celtic?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Maybe Anthony will reply here. He's our man on this issue now that Ranika is away. I wish Ran was still around to talk with you guys about it - you'd be amazed, as we all were, with his knowledge on the subject.

[Antagonist]

Very interesting, you really learn things hanging out on the EB forum.

Maybe Anthony will reply here. He's our man on this issue now that Ranika is away. I wish Ran was still around to talk with you guys about it - you'd be amazed, as we all were, with his knowledge on the subject.

Not wishing to pry excessively into people's Real Lives, but is there ever a possibility that Ranika will come back? Looking through the infamous bartix thread a while ago reminded me of him, remarkably knowledgable but also a great sense of humour and seemingly all-around cool guy. Not that Anthony isn't just as interesting, but I was just wondering.

Antagonist

[QwertyMIDX]

We all hope he will, he was a very popular member both with the public and with the team. There isn't anything definate about it though.

[Igångsättning]

Thank you both for the responses!

Well having studied lInguistics, I know that it is possible to an extent and very usefull to reconstruct older forms of languages, and there is hypothetical "proto-x" set (like proto-Greek) for nearly all sub-families of Indoeuropean which we know of. But seeing that, as it was to my knowledge and you confirmed it, the earliest certain evidence of Germanic is the Wulfila bible, which is 700 later after the events of EB, I wonder how legit it is to use that as a basis for "reconstructing" Germanic of the 3rd cent BC.

Basically all german peoples spoke one and the same language up to approximately year 0, when this language split into three languages: west, east and north germanic. Comparing the oldest texts of e.g. sanscrit, old greece, early latin etc. we can create a proto-indoeuropean language from which the germanic language developed. Since we also have facts from early north-germanic (quite a few runestones written with the old futhark) and east-germanic we can at least make good predictions on how the proto-germanic grammar and sound system looked like. Actually the nort-germanic language, from which the nordic languages developed and which is documented on runestones, is the oldest and should have been fairly close to proto-germanic.

[Anthony]

I mostly work off notes Ran gave me. But, of what we can reconstruct; it depends on the language really, in so much as how well we can work back to it. Gallic we can do a fair bit of, because the Gauls wrote many inscriptions on votive objects (Celts weren't illiterate so much as forbidden to write their language except for religious purposes, it'd seem), and we know some meanings definitely, and we have good speculation on others due to surviving Celtic languages. A real dedicated study solely toward reconstructing it entirely could probably be done, though many of the wider gaps would obviously be more speculative. The last language from that language family to survive may have been the Ivernic language in Ireland, which was a seperate language spoken by some of the Gaels in the western most portion Munster. The second longest lived language, if that was the case, would be the Galatian language, derived from Gallic and influenced mainly by Greek, which survives in numerous inscriptions as well.

Q-Celtic we can sort of reconstruct back into the BCs, from early ADs Primitive Gaelic, and surviving earlier inscriptions, but most of those are in ogham. While we can generally translate later ogham, earlier forms are a bit of a mystery (like those in Galaecia). Q-Celtic languages are probably the oldest, as the oldest forms we know of them are closer to the Indo-Euro root family, but modern Q-Celtic (the three Gaelic languages) have changed a lot from their root.

P-Celtic is confusing to do mainly because it was not inscribed near as much as Gallic, and early P-speakers probably mingled their language heavily with Gallic (which would be from a seperate 'continental' branch), as it was spoken in southern Britain, where as P-speakers were further into the island. Further complicating it is that modern P-languages (Welsh for example) are heavily influenced by Latin, and we don't have much in terms of extensive inscription that exists before the introduction of Latin (as opposed to Gallic, which has a vast amount of pre-Roman Gaul period inscriptions on countless objects, usually using Greek letters earlier).