The Sound of the Gaulish language (Numbers & Sample Text)

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Gaulish
Region: Gaul
Ethnicity: Gauls
Era: 6th century BC to 6th century AD
Language family: Indo-European (Celtic)
Writing system: Old Italic, Greek, Latin

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.

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. After the Roman conquest of those regions, writing shifted to the use of the Latin alphabet.[6] 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 in Western Europe was supplanted by Vulgar Latin[8] and various Germanic languages from around the 5th century AD onwards. It is thought to have gone extinct sometime around the late 6th century.

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An interesting thing to note is that the Celtic languages closest non-Celtic relatives are the Romance languages. The Romance languages are part of the Italic branch of Indo-European (The only Italic language that survived was Latin which is what evolved into the Romance languages) Italic and Celtic together form the branch Italo-Celtic

tr-h

It's crazy to hear those numbers as a Welsh person, almost all of them are very close to the modern Welsh numbers!

ycylchgames

Interesting to see the Indo European language connection here, In My language Gujarati(Indian) the letter writer is called "Likhitang" and the word for writer in Gaulish here is Licitam prononunced Likhitam which sounds so similiar.

niravjani

I wish there were merchandise of the little figurines that you draw, they are so sweet.

synkkamaan

I've noticed that the numbers 1-10 tend to be great examples of that common PIE root of modern Indo-European languages

nikoking

I am a native of Portuguese and I have been studying the ancient languages spoken in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula and as they can be the connection between Latin and Celtic languages, I think it is amazing how phonetics has been preserved in Portuguese in some way more than in rest of the Romance languages

ilravenheart

Beautiful sounding and linguistically fascinating language that begs for revival!

VerdantStorm

It's remarkable how similar it is to latin and sometimes germanic.

FiikusMaximus

I speak Irish, but I can’t understand anything at all, just goes to show how diverse Celtic languages are

Belmonte

I don't speak any romance languages or latin but if i heard this i would have said this is a romance language.

jhnxtln

Flag for Gaulish language: A boar
Obelix liked it.

Istoeumapemba

As a Welsh speaker I can recognize some numbers and cognate of those numbers but nothing else!

stephrichards

As a french I can tell it's very interesting to learn about our ancestors language but damn, to realise that "daugther" actually comes from french, I mean, gaullish, this is surprising xDD

lumizu