off topic language 2

[Lia Laura Puglesi]

3. “Breton is very close to Cornish and Welsh and very dissimilar from Irish”.

Ok, here I go back to my paragraph: i“It is a very curious thing that, despite the fact that Celts in Ireland and Bretagne, Galos (a big, if not the biggest, part of the French population) and Gallegos are ethnically the same people (Celts) and all of them kept many aspects of their common roots, they didn't keep a similar language. (With the exception of the people in Bretagne which dialect is similar to the Gaelic spoken in the in Ireland) I think that the biggest similarities are in music and musical instruments and of course, pieces of art. And jewels.

The emphasis here should be placed on the “Common Roots” between the languages described. Even when I have a couple books with slight differences in the constitution of the “genealogical tree” of the Indo-European languages,  both agree, basically that the Goidelic languages (Old iIrish, Current Irish Scots Gaelic), the Brythonic Languages (Welch Cornish –which is a death language as far as I know- and Breton), and Gaulish (also Death, Iam afraid) come all from Celtic.

With respect to the assertion  “With the exception of the people in Bretagne which dialect is similar to the Gaelic spoken in the in Ireland” I have to admit that I didn’t read that but I was told that by a couple of Celtic musicians I met during a trip to Bretagne, (In Saint Malo ). The young woman was from Bretagne and the man from Ireland and they sang songs in both languages (and also in English and French and maybe some more). I was surprised by the fact they not just sing in so many languages but they also spoke them (the woman also spoke German) and I approached them to talk. The guy told me: well it is not that difficult after a while, the dynamics of this languages is very similar, many terms are very similar too and when you know one, you can understand the ones that have a similar root and haven’t changed some much over time. I figured out it was something like the people from Luxembourg understanding German (even when Germans don’t seem to be able to understand t!
he way people from Luxembourg speak)  or something like that.

It would have been more corrected if I specified this point. Also a friend of mine, from Longford, says there are many variations of “Gaelic spoken in Ireland and sometimes he doesn’t understand what someone from a town a little farther from his says, despite the fact that both “dialects” (meaning, regional variations of a standard language, to make it short even when I know it is a very complex subject)  are very related. I figured out that something like that make happen with Breton and some of the other “Celtic” languages that don’t belong to the  Brythonic group.

4. "The Etruscan language ...  cannot be shown conclusively

to be related

to any other language, living or dead, except for a couple

of sparsely

attested extinct languages" (from a website).



Even when Internet is a GREAT tool and I have to admit that I spent hours and hours researching a wide range of topics, I have learnt not to trust it 100 %, (the same way we cannot trust anything 100%, because we are fallible, so, our knowledge, but for me Internet as a source is still a little messier than books) and I still rely more in books. Unfortunately, Until now I haven’t had access to all kind of books I would have like to check over the years, and by using internet I have been able to know about many things I can look up in books later on.

The same thing you have read   from a web site (I really would appreciate if you tell me which one, so I can check it) I have read in 2 or 3 of my books and many encyclopedic dictionaries.

But I also have a couple little books in Spanish (one that specifically talks about the Etruscan “Los Etruscos” -sorry I don’t remember the name of the Author-, and their later influence in the Italic culture, specially art, believe it or not), that explains how, altogether with the evolution of many characters from the Greek and Etruscan alphabet (or Greek through Etruscan again, all depending on the point of view), Latin seems to have inherited as well some terminology from the language that was spoken in the mesopotamic region of what today is Tuscany (former Etruria) Though the book says something like “even when it hasn’t yet been proved and much study is needed to this respect, Latin might has been as well influenced in its earliest stages (before the second big change that it underwent during the middle ages) by the Etrsucan language, as well as by several other regional languages (I remember it names some other languages but not certain about which, I just remember E!
truscan because the book is about them), that today are death.



But while researches might have not been able to track the connections of the Etruscan with any other language most of them seem to agree that the Latin alphabet was connected to the Etrsucan one. This is easier to find. Unfortunately I don’t have any of the books I have read about 7 or 8 years ago about the subject with me, but I do have a dictionary (Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 1996) in which page number 1087 you can read: “Latin Alphabet: the alphabetical script derived from the Greek Alphabet through Etruscan, used from about 6th Century BC for the writing of Latin and since adopted, which modifications and addition of letters (modifications I think I mentioned on my prior email)   such as W, by the languages of Western Europe, including English, as well as many other languages. Also called Roman alphabet”.



I remember having read, during my high school years (I know, usually high School education is not the most reliable source of information, but it is at least a way to pick up interesting subjects to deepen-in afterwards)  that we read that the Latin alphabet was shaped with a mixture of components coming from Etruscan, Greek, Fenicio (sorry, I don’t know how you say that in English )and some Semitic languages (Iranian ? Hebrew?) and maybe a couple more.I remember that clearly because that was one of the special topics I had to prepared for Literature (we used to make a group of 4 or people and research about a subject and then to present it to the whole class and take notes of the topics that other groups presented, I guess that’s also something that high school students do here) and I also remember how surprised I felt in from of the fact that Latin wasn’t just the product of the evolution of the Greek language, as the Roman mythology seemed to have been stolen from the Gre!
ek one without big modifications but just the names. (Which is also not completely true)



Here I have a little book in Spanish that says something like: The classic [Latin} alphabet had 23 characters, 20 OF WHICH WERE DIRECLTY DERIVED FROM THE ETRUSCAN ALPHABET and 3 were incorporated from other scripts.” Then it speaks for a long while about the different stages Latin underwent, being the first one the passage from Etruscan to Classic Latin , the second one, from the classic or antique Latin to the alphabet used during the Middle Ages.



As I said before, several characters changed over time, specially during the Middle Ages. For instance, one of the most complex evolutions was the one suffered by the “v” that became “w” and “u” . In many legal texts from the beginning of the XX century in Argentina the “u” has been horribly and confusedly replaced by the “v” … and the “v” has also been kept in a “v” function, when not replaced by a “b” which in many Spanish speaking countries is not phonetically distinguished from “V”

Also “I” became “J” and I have a couple silly examples of that: one is the “INRI” that at least religious Spanish speakers set above Jesus’ head in the Cross “Iesus Nazarenvs Rex Ivdaeorvm” Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum). "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews) (by the way, Indiana Jons in the first movie forgot about that little change in the Latin alphabet and that almost means his death)

The second Example: The very common name Ivan in Rusia and Juan in Spanish… are exactly the same name. “J” taking the place of “I” and “U” taking the place of “V”





 From here on I am going to explore in the next email. It is pretty late now and even when the “conversation” is really interesting I’ve got to go!



I am glad you got back to me, it gives me the opportunity to talk about a subject that used to make me feel passion and I haven’t heard about for many years.



I am very conscious that I have not the same level of knowledge as linguist you obviously might have, and I actually want to take advantage of it, so I learn and I clarify doubts I’ve got and for which I haven’t found much information.



So, I ‘ll see you again with the Language-dialect thing next time and all the thing about the Celts



Lia



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