Talk:Celtiberian language

Are you sure about this statement?
I read this and find it hard to swallow, what I say is more from gut feeling than as a student of linguistics. that said I am lucky enough to speak 8 European languages, so while not having a "studied" understanding of linguistics, my understanding and sympathies with languages are more "touchy feely" intuition. The paragraph in the article which I am referring to is pasted in quotation marks below:

"Celtiberian language was Q-Celtic (like Goidelic), and not P-Celtic like Gaulish (Mallory 1989, p. 106). Since Brythonic is P-Celtic too, but as an Insular Celtic language more closely related to Goidelic than to Gaulish, it follows that the P/Q division is paraphyletic: The change from kw to p occurred in Brythonic and Gaulish at a time when they were already separate languages, rather than constituting a division that marked a separate branch in the "family tree" of the Celtic languages."

As a native speaker of a Goidelic language and fimiliar with Brythonic (I dont count that as one of the 8 languages), the Brythonic giving place names all over England and Wales, those "p" sounding names such as Penn for a headland for example, exist from a time before the change in Latin, which is contrary to what you suggest. Brythonic and Goidelic are significantly different as not to be remotely understandable to each other.... Believe me!

But, as I now live in Spain and get the chance to visit many of the IberoCeltic places, I am often struck by how much of a resemblance to my own native Irish it is.

Interestingly p Celtic having been in place all over the British Isles and only much later the Q (kw) Celtic language spreading to Ireland, the Isle of Man and parts of Scotland.

This fact seems to be contrary to what you are saying in the article.

But, good effort, I have enjoyed reading the article. Well Done!


 * There is still disagreement about whether P-Celtic is paraphyletic or not, but most linguists who have an opinion on the question think it is. I'm not sure what you're trying to say about Latin; no sound change in Latin has any bearing on the issue of P and Q Celtic. Can you be more specific about what in Spain you find reminiscent of Irish? Have you read Celtiberian texts, are you talking about place names, or what? To your last point, there is no evidence that Q Celtic arrived in Ireland later than P Celtic arrived in Britain. Since the languages weren't written down until they had already been established in Ireland and Britain respectively, nothing can be concluded about how long they were there. But it is of course true that Goidelic arrived in Scotland and Man much later. --Angr (t·c) 00:04, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Tangential to the issue under discussion, but interesting to note, is that there were also P and Q Italic languages, Latin and Faliscan being Q-Italic, Oscan and Umbrian being P-Italic. Latin lupus, "wolf", instead of the expected *luquus or *luquos, is a borrowing from P-Italic. This and certain other shared features between the two branches once led linguists to believe in an earlier "Celtic-Italic" proto-language, with the p/q split happening before the two branches became separate. This was later abandoned in favour of a view of mutual influence through geographic proximity. Gamkrelidze on the other hand believes in something like a Celtic-Italic-Tokharian proto-language, although he divides Celtic into Continental/Insular rather than p/q. But I doubt that he has expertise in the Celtic area, and he is probably relying on other authorities.
 * I have more to add, but other matters beckon. If I don't have a repeat of my log-on problems, I will add comments on the following:
 * p > q under influence of following q in Celtic and Italic.
 * q > p in some ancient Greek dialects, which is definitely independent of Celtic and Italic.
 * Is it possible that there was an overlap, with Brythonic participating in innovations that were happening on both sides of it, so that a Continental/Insular division and a p/q division are both valid? (English and Friesian have shared innovations with Old Norse that do not result from borrowing, and are not found in other West Germanic languages.)
 * Is it possible that Celtiberian split off before the rest of Celtic divided into Goidelic, Brythonic and Gaulish? (This is a question based on ignorance!) Shared inherited features are not indicators of close affinity in the way shared innovations are. Koro Neil (talk) 01:16, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The fact that the *kw > p sound change occurred in Gaulish and British but not in Goidelic or Hispano-Celtic is open to a number of interpretations: (a) it happened after Goidelic and Celtiberian had split off from the rest of Celtic (Schmidt, Koch); (b) it happened independently in Gaulish and British; (c) the family tree model is inappropriate in cases of dialect continua: the sound change spread, and only got as far as southwest Gaul (in the south) and Britain (in the north) at a time when the Celtic langauges formed a continuum of dialects across much of western Europe. On general methodological grounds, option (b) is uneconomical (it proposes two independent but identical sound changes), and would therefore normally only be chosen if other options could be shown to be wrong. The article in its current form assumes the correctness of the Insular Celtic hypothesis (POV). If this assumption is made, then (b) has to be correct. But on other assumptions (i.e. Gallo-Brythonic Hypothesis), (a) and (c), which are preferrable on general methodological grounds, would be possible interpretations. The article should make it clear that the Celtiberian evidence leads different linguists to different conclusions. Whether the P/Q division is paraphyletic depends entirely on one's view of the internal branching of the Celtic family tree (which may be an non-issue anyway). It is not self-evidently paraphyletic. Daffy2 16:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This article isn't the right place for arguing the various theories of how to divide up the Celtic family anyway. WP:NPOV says that all notable opinions should be mentioned, but that most attention should be paid to the predominant opinion. In this case, the predominant opinion among Celticists is that Proto-Insular-Celtic existed, Proto-Gallo-Brythonic did not, and kw -> p happened either independently in both branches (it being a very easy and obvious sound change that also happened independently in Oscan-Umbrian, Greek, Sardinian, and Romanian) or by some sort of vaguely defined "language contact" effect à la the wave model. The fact is that kw -> p is pretty much the only thing that Gaulish and Brythonic have in common, while Brythonic and Goidelic have lots in common that is unlikely to have been developed independently (VSO word order, conjugated prepositions, lenition of [m] to a nasalized [v], etc.). —The preceding signed comment was added by Angr (talk • contribs). 17:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Revisited, July 2014
The article also states "Brythonic is more closely related to Goidelic than to Gaulish". If that is so, why did countless Roman-era commentators claim that the language of Britannia (ancestral to Welsh and Breton) and that of Gaul were practically the same and mutually intelligible, while even the oldest Irish is visibly quite different from either? I really do live in hope that there are whole texts in Gaulish and other continental P-Celtic tongues still hiding somewhere, which when discovered and compared with early Welsh and Irish will bury the "Insular Celtic" theory for good. To me (I have a linguistics degree) that theory is like claiming English and Icelandic form "Insular Germanic" together due to their both retaining the proto-Germanic th-sounds, ignoring all the evidence linking them to Frisian and Danish, respectively.Walshie79 (talk) 20:04, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You can hardly take the word of Latin-speaking commentators for it; they weren't linguists and really didn't care in the least what those barbarians in Gaul and Britain spoke, let alone the even more barbarian barbarians in Hibernia outside the Empire. The oldest Irish, from the Ogham inscriptions, is not really all that different from the oldest Gaulish and British inscriptions, though we have so little of any of them (and so little with any grammar worth mentioning) it's difficult to be sure. But the evidence really does point to Goidelic and Brythonic descending from a common ancestor that Gaulish and Celtiberian do not descend from, because of the large number of common innovations they have, such as VSO word order and the highly idiosyncratic sound change of /m/ to /ṽ/ after a vowel, which is unlikely to have happened more than once (unlike the Brythonic and Gaulish sound change of /kʷ/ to /p/, which is very common and could easily have happened twice independently). There's lots more evidence in the literature, but it's discussed at the Insular Celtic languages article, not here (where it wouldn't belong). If you have a linguistics degree, you should know that the decision whether two languages are to be grouped together is based on common innovations (which Goidelic and Brythonic have) and not on common retentions (as English and Icelandic have). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:58, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Two different languages... at least!!
These Celtiberian articles are actually full of confusion about the Celtic languages that once were spoken by old Pre-Roman Hispanic people. Celtiberian language is actually a group of related dialects mainly spoken in central Spain and upper Ebro's valley. Hispano-Celtic or Iberian-Proto-Celtic is another group of extinct Celtic languages spoken all along the Iberian Atlantic shores by Lusitanian, Germanian and Artabric tribes. They must not be merged one group with another. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.147.142.6 (talk • contribs) 10:08, 22 May 2006  (UTC)
 * Hmm... that's not the impression I get from reading Joseph Eska. He uses the term "Hispano-Celtic" but freely admits it refers to the same language that other people call "Celtiberian". Angr (t • c) 10:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually the term Hispano-Celtic has been (and still is) used for long as a synonym of Celtiberian. See for example Forston (2010): Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, p. 313. Thus "NE Hispano-Celtic" is an ad hoc term not found anyhwere in the literature and should be avoided here. Talskubilos (talk) 12:21, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Celtic Innovative Features?
The examples given in the article show that Celtiberian was IE but not I think that it was Celtic. To do that you would have to demonstrate shared *derived* characters (e.g. loss of PIE /p/, /e:/ > /i:/ etc.). Otherwise it might be for example a stray Italic language, or IE branch all of its own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.85.180.97 (talk) 15:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It is definitely Celtic - thanks for pointing out the lack of detail in this article - there is the loss of PIE /p/ etc. so it is not Italic - I will put up some examples for you.Jembana (talk) 22:45, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Celtiberian as protoCastilian
Someone ought to add a section about the theories of language transfer in Iberia during the Roman occupation. The linguistic map of Spain today remains more or less unchanged from the pre-Latin period; speakers of the Ibero tongues, when speaking Latin, became Catalan; Celtiberian became Castillian; Tardossian became Andalusian dialects of Castillian, and so on. There is some excellent studies on this topic that would add to this article.Blander2 (talk) 01:18, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Catalan, Castilian, and Andalusian are all descended from Latin. Celtiberian and Tardossian died out completely without any descendant languages. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:25, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

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Celtiberian Onomastics
I'm leaving here a link on Celtiberian onomastics: Santano Moreno Julián. Celtibérico boustom, iberorromance busto “pastizal, vacada” y bosta “boniga”. In: Nouvelle revue d'onomastique, n°56, 2014. pp. 227-262. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/onoma.2014.1809] [www.persee.fr/doc/onoma_0755-7752_2014_num_56_1_1809] 01:53, 1 April 2020 (UTC)179.218.212.120 (talk)

Removing { {cleanup lang} } template
There may be some case for using a lang template on an extinct language with very little available text, but I’m having a hard time thinking of one and none of the rationales apply, so I’m removing the cleanup tag.

It would be more productive to add the templates if you think it’s important, rather than adding a cleaup tag. ⚜ Moilleadóir ✍ 04:10, 31 December 2022 (UTC)