Talk:Lepontic language

Connection to Ligurian
I wonder who the scholars are that link Lepontic with Ligurian. It's interesting, but I have not come across it before. --Nantonos 19:57, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See Talk:Ligurian language for some relevant discussion of a possible Lepontic-Ligurian connection. Pasquale 22:46, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

no pictures of orginal
It will be good to have pictures of originals, the copyrigh expired 2500 years ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.123.48 (talk) 01:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Intro rather convoluted
Is there a way to simplify the introduction and push some of the material further down into the body of the article? I also want to try to find a way to talk succinctly about the position adopted by McCone in eg (1996) Towards a Relative Chronology (et al??) that Lepontic is just a variety of early Gaulish. Any suggestions? CecilWard (talk) 17:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Not easy. But, with respect, it seems to me you just made it more convoluted. But let me give it a shot. Pasquale (talk) 20:49, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * >it seems to me you just made it more convoluted.. - :-) - fair point, in that case, go for it, all help gratefully received. I'd certainly like to try and improve the intro and treat that as a separate task from dealing with issues of clarity in the rest of the article. I think it's important to say from the outset that the status of Lepontic is disputed (not that I'm saying that I support the Lepontic=merely Gaulish PoV)CecilWard (talk) 15:51, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

edit war
Guys, you are making a mess of this. The uncertainty (or "dispute") is on whether Lepontic should be considered a dialect of Gaulish or a separate Celtic language within the Continental group, not whether it is Celtic. --dab (𒁳) 12:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree, wholeheartedly - Stifter makes it plain it is Celtic.Jembana (talk) 12:46, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for intervening, Dbachmann. I believe Jembana is hitting Undo without even bothering to read my version. I have clarified the intro, so as to leave no doubt that Lepontic is classified as Celtic. However, earlier opinions such as Whatmough's and Pisani's, on whose scholarship all the later work is founded by the way, must also be mentioned. And indeed Jembana's version does mention them, except that his version twists Whatmough's and Pisani's views to make them coincide with Kruta and Stifter. Frankly, I doubt Jembana is actually familiar with Whatmough's and Pisani's work. Plus, his version is poorly organized and includes misspellings. My objective was just to clean up his version, not to subvert it, as he seems to think. Can you please open-mindedly review both versions and tell me which one reads better? Pasquale (talk) 13:33, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * the point is that you are both hitting undo instead of working together towards an improved, clearer, better phrased and better referenced revision. Don't just stick to a fixed revision, try to understand the problem and then suggest a change that you think addresses it. A bona fide dispute between two competing revisions is almost never resolved by asking "which is better" but by compiling a third, improved revison that takes care of the problem. I really wish you could work this out between the two of you. --dab (𒁳) 16:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, Dbachmann, that's simply not true. My version was arrived at precisely by carefully editing Jembana's work, keeping all his much-appreciated "well-sourced peer-reviewed inline citations" exactly where he put them, reorganizing the paragraphs in what seems to be a more sensible order of presenting the information, and simply ensuring that the positions taken by older scholars (e.g. Whatmough and Pisani) would not be conflated with the more recent ones (e.g. Kruta and Stifter). It is important to clarify that the older, well-known position expressed by Whatmough and Pisani was that Lepontic should be considered "para-Celtic" rather than Celtic. While this may be simply a historical position now, it should not be conflated with the current view.
 * After reading your comment, I clarified the intro to spell out that, in the modern view, the uncertainty is on whether Lepontic should be considered a dialect of Gaulish or a separate Celtic language within the Continental group, not whether it is Celtic, which was your point of concern. Pasquale (talk) 17:04, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Pasquale, I agree your new version is better written than mine - thanks to both of you. Jembana (talk) 21:31, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you, and thanks again for adding all those references to Kruta and Stifter, which are indeed very valuable. Their work certainly brings a more balanced perspective to this much-debated question. Pasquale (talk) 14:04, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

While the article now gets it right regarding what the debate is even about, I am not convinced it is justified in rooting for a "majority view". I am happy to grant with a shrug that some people think it is a "separate Continental Celtic" language while others classify it as Gaulish. But I am not convinced you can just label the former as "the majority view". My impression is that people are happy to classify Lepontic as just an early form of Gaulish. The point here is that "Gaulish" is pretty much a synonym of "Continental Celtic minus Celtiberian", and it is needlessly artificial to define each variety of Gaulish you happen to come across as "a separate language". Anyone will accept that there will have been wide variety within "Gaulish", but it is just a coincidence of attestation which kinds we are able to detect today. In other words, I do not think this is a dispute with linguistic content so much as about the definition of the label "Gaulish". --dab (𒁳) 10:00, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The point is that there is also Cisalpine Gaulish, which shares some features with Lepontic, but also with Transalpine Gaulish, see Stifter (2008) under chapter 4.3. Transalpine Gaulish, Cisalpine Gaulish and Lepontic are all clearly distinguishable by a couple of features. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:01, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

edit war 2
Edit-warring because "Lepontic is widely accepted as a Celtic language". Of course it's a Celtic language! Who said otherwise? But it's not a dialect of Gaulish, at least not according to the author being cited to support the claim that it is Gaulish, and purposefully reverting recent to outdated sources by the same author in unwarranted. Rather than encouraging this POV warrior, I'm tagging the problems he's created. — kwami (talk) 07:14, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Here are the diffs that were reverted as "POV-pushing": — kwami (talk) 07:41, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Continental Celtic should be in brackets in the info box, since it's not a clade
 * 2) The word "however" implies contradiction or disagreement. In this article it is used for support or an independent topic, for example with Ligurian or the Cisalpine inscriptions.
 * 3) The paragraph beginning "Lepontic is a Celtic language" does not belong in the lead. We shouldn't have anything we need to cite in the lead, but only a summary of the article text.
 * 4) "Classification" is completely screwed up. I can't tell if Eska (1998) said those things, but Eska (2010) does not. A minority opinion considers [Lepontic] as simply an early form of Cisalpine Gaulish (or Cisalpine Celtic) and thus a dialect of the Gaulish language – not according to Eska 2010, where Cisalpine Celtic includes Lepontic and split off the Celtic tree well before Gaulish split from the Insular languages.
 * 5) From "some have gone further" to the end of the paragraph should be deleted, as, at least in 2010, Eska does not hold the view being claimed of him.
 * 6) Cisalpine Gaul [is] the term currently used by some Celticists (e.g. Eska 1998) to apply to all Celtic dialects of ancient Italy. No, Cisalpine Gaul is a place, not a language, and none of the preceding terms is used with this meaning.  The following statement, that this usage is disputed by those who continue to view the Lepontii as one of several indigenous pre-Roman tribes of the Alps, doesn't have any logical connection to it, at least not as written.
 * I agree, Continental Celtic is not a valid family/branch/node/whatever, and I don't know a single scholar who disagrees. There is no "Proto-Continental-Celtic". I'd rather leave Continental Celtic out of the infobox entirely. It's no more useful in there than Graeco-Aryan or Paleosiberian. I agree with the rest as well. Eska (2010) obviously does not consider Cisalpine Celtic a dialect of Gaulish, and includes Lepontic in Cisalpine Celtic. However, I believe Eska 1998 considered Cisalpine Celtic Gaulish, hence naming it Cisalpine Gaulish, while including Lepontic in it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:58, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Insular Celtic has certain developments not found in Continental Celtic, thus is it perfectly valid to treat IC and CC as separate nodes. See: Ranko Matasovic, "Insular Celtic as a Language Area", in: H. L. C. Tristram (ed.), The Celtic Languages in Contact, Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2007, p. 93-112. Online.
 * That's a logically invalid argument. Your premise is correct, but your conclusion does not follow. The acceptance of Insular Celtic does not automatically entail the acceptance of Continental Celtic. There are no common innovations exclusive to and defining of Continental Celtic, and Celtic can easily have more than two branches, so there is no reason not to treat Insular Celtic, Gaulish, Celtiberian and Lepontic all as separate branches. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:46, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sigh. I am so tired of the B.S. spread on Wikipedia. Either address the points made in the article I cited, or keep quiet.Cagwinn (talk) 01:53, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Which points? Your logic is broken. I, along with many professional Celticists, accept the Insular Celtic node. None I know accepts the Continental Celtic node; it's no more than a convenient catch-all term. Matasović does not accept a CC node either. Even if he did, we cannot accept nodes accepted only by a single scholar. When there is no consensus about a relationship, we default to "no relationship", which in this case means several co-ordinate branches (a tree structure like that is also known as a "comb"). Like with Italo-Celtic and any number of proposed Indo-European higher-level branches (accepting Indo-Iranian or Balto-Slavic does not mean the rest must be a single branch either; Indo-Europeanists have long lived with a "comb" instead of a neat binary tree, and Uralists are beginning to get used to one, too). Barring evidence for Continental (not only Insular!) Celtic, Celtic is a comb. It's not rocket science.
 * (I am beginning to suspect you do not understand – or accept – that nodes or branches, which are analogous to clades, are only established on the basis of common innovations, not the lack of innovations – also known as retentions. It's the only way I can make sense of your argument.)
 * Sigh. I am so tired of the bullshit you are spreading. Either address the points I made, or keep quiet. Put up or shut up, take your own medicine. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:05, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * And what bullshit would that be? Cite examples or STFU. By the way, smartass, you claim that you "don't know a single scholar who disagrees" with the notion that Continental Celtic is a separate branch from Insular Celtic, but if you had bothered to read the article that I cited and linked to, you would have the names of two such scholars.Cagwinn (talk) 05:21, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You are still dodging my points and misrepresenting them (I've never denied that Continental Celtic is separate from Insular Celtic, only that it forms a monophyletic branch). As for McCone and Schrijver, they do not believe in a Continental Celtic node as conventionally defined, as they exclude Celtiberian (which you would have noticed if you had read your own ref); their "Continental Celtic" would be better named "Gallo-Lepontic". According to their view, there are still at least three branches, not two, hence a comb: Insular Celtic, Gallo-Lepontic, Celtiberian. And at least Schrijver later moved away from "Gallo-Lepontic", resulting exactly in those four branches I gave: Insular Celtic, Gaulish, Celtiberian and Lepontic. Tell me at least one synapomorphy that can be used to define Continental Celtic or finally admit that you're wrong. In your words: "Cite examples or STFU, smartass". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:01, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You just do not understand what I am saying at all!! I am not claiming that there was a single Continental Celtic node! Since there is good evidence for a separate Insular Celtic node and all the other Celtic nodes are found on the Continent, we are justified in grouping together the latter under the label "Continental Celtic". See, for example, Kim McCone, Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change, Maynooth, 1996, p. 104: "Considerations such as the foregoing make a common intervening Insular Celtic stage in the development of Irish and British highly probably and the Gallo-British alternative a good deal less likely. On present evidence the precise position of Gaulish cannot be determined with confidence. It might share a special Continental Celtic node with Celtiberian, a separate pre-Insular node with Insular Celtic or perhaps constitute a distinct third branch."Cagwinn (talk) 19:01, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * But that's extremely confusing to our readers. It's fine to use CC as a term of convenience, as long as we make it clear that's all it is.  It's not okay to classify Lepontic as a CC language, because classification implies that the node is cladistic, and it's not.  We could divide IE languages into Indo and European, for convenience, but many readers would take that to mean that "European" is a branch of IE.  Completely inappropriate for a general encyclopedia.  McCone can use the term loosely in the knowledge that her audience is not going to misunderstand her.  We cannot.  — kwami (talk) 08:00, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh no, please tell me you are not starting in again! It was so nice to have a break from you for a couple months. By the way (much like your ignorance of Eric Hamp), you clearly have no idea who Kim McCone is, since you are unaware that McCone is a he, not a she. Please leave this discussion for specialists in Celtic languages, OK? Cagwinn (talk) 20:39, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * But I agree with kwami that Continental Celtic does not belong into the infobox, as it could be understood to mean CC is an established clade. Why are you so attached to that damn CC level? It's like adding "Reptilia", "Fish" or "Amphibia" into vertebrate infoboxes. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:14, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Lepontic is not Keltic
Lepontic is clearly a proto-Italic (archaic Umbrian) language; It shares more similarities to Sabellic languages than to Keltic languages; It stems from the Indo-European (Urnfield) Golasecca culture which is direct archaeological context to the proto-Villanova (Italic) Bronze-age cultures and its speakers were Insubres (IsOmbri) i.e. Umbrians; It is a proto-Italic language; Agilulf2007 (talk) 23:45, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * You don't know what you are talking about. Until you do, please do not make edits to this article. Cagwinn (talk) 01:05, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * LOL the "expert" has spoken; if you dont know that Lepontic shares more features with Italic languages (mostly sabellic) than you really (truly) have NO clue what your talking about; And NO clue about Lepontic; Just for starters did you know that Lepontic retained the IE *p a feature that is absent in all Keltic languages (i.e. a feature of the proto-Keltic stage) thus making Lepontic not even proto-Keltic or how about case final -m which in Keltic languages is fixed as -n; Just a few examples; Cagwinn the Expert; (LOL) Agilulf2007 (talk) 02:02, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Once again, you don't know what you are talking about. Lepontic does not preserve the IE -p- as such; some scholars argue that it became a labial-fricative spelled -v- (as in uvamokozis from PIE *up-amo-), but even that it a matter of debate now. The phoneme written -p- in Latin transliterations of Lepontic inscriptions stands for Celtic -b- (from PIE -b-, -bh-, or -gW-) or -p- (from PIE -kW-).Cagwinn (talk) 18:17, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * LOL the "expert" again; do you know what palam is? Of course you dont but thats as expected; Dont bother you have NO clue and vividly demonstrated that; Neither of the linguistic topic you wish to talk about nor about the Archaeological context Lepontic is structured in; There are many more linguistic features that are exclusively shared with Italic (mostly Sabellic) but non existing in Keltic (not going to waste my time listing all of them) Your the "expert" so keep on truckin and always remember if you Cant truck it .... Agilulf2007 (talk) 18:33, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Unless you can demonstrate that this is a majority view, or even just a significant minority view in current scholarship, this discussion is useless. I personally don't have any first-hand knowledge of Lepontic either (or those Italic languages for that matter), but I sure did look through what seemed to be a representative selection of current publications on Lepontic recently, and none of the authors there expressed any doubt about it being Celtic. Please make yourself familiar with the "no original research" and "verifiability" policies. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:59, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * No problem Mr. Fut.Perf.; The entire article is a complete joke (misrepresentation/farce) of the subject anyways; Will not waste my time with it any further; Maybe i will add a little bit here and there (sources will of course be cited / make sure you double-check that); But i do think its odd that people created and lets call it "contribute" to an Article they have obviously no clue about i.e. the subject/topic in general and in specific; Anyhow Lepontic, Keltic and Italic are all Indo-European languages and Italic and Keltic are close to each other and share the most similarities within the entire Indo-European family; Distinguishing Lepontic from one or the other depends thus on the exclusive features to one or the other and Italic is clearly the "winner" and undoubtedly manifested by Archaeology (and the Umbrian Insubres); And thats that; Agilulf2007 (talk) 15:59, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Dear WP:RANDY (see also WP:CHEESE), geography, archaeology and vague sound-alikes (BTW, the Insubres are considered a Celtic tribe, certainly not an Umbrian one, although the relevance of the Insubres here is unclear to me anyway) are useless in attempting to decide this question, and Keltic is an outdated spelling. There is no way that uvamokozis could be Italic (where a continuation of Proto-Italic *supemo-hostis is to be expected, compare Latin summus and hostis), let alone Umbrian (where the i would have been lost). Also, how could pala/palam disprove the Celticity of Lepontic? It has no known etymology. Either it is a substratum loan, or if it is inherited, it could also be a word starting in b (the Etruscan-based script does not distinguish /b/ from /p/, as Etruscan only has /p/), or if Lepontic converted *kʷ into p like Umbrian (as you seem to argue), a word that originally started in *kʷ. To quote yourself: "LOL" What an "expert" you are. Try harder, troll. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:54, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh Mr. Blaschke do not get too emotional just because i called your boyfriend an "expert" LOL; As for the topic Pala/Palam has a known etymology and it is IE *palso- (Latin:sepelio Umbrian:pelsa-) meaning Tombstone/Rock and equivalent to the Gaelic All (notice no *p); do not get to full of rage just because you and your dear boyfriend look like cows in the rain and have NO clue; proper experts LOL; PS: you claim to be from Bavaria but your last-name is Polish; As for uvamokozis LOL thank you for the punchline; PPS: If the relevance of the Insubres here is truly unclear for you than i seriously suggest you inform yourself about the topic; Because after such a statement only pathetic and sad come to mind; Agilulf2007 (talk) 20:17, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

To add to article
To add to this article: at least some information about what the surviving Lepontic inscriptions talk about. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 05:30, 1 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree, but it's hard to know which to include here. Most inscriptions seem to be one word (or less). I'm new to this particular Celtic language, but I'll try to see what has been said about some of the longer ones, or the most easily identifiable. Here's a list of some inscriptions https://lexlep.univie.ac.at/wiki/Inscriptions Johundhar (talk) 19:46, 12 June 2023 (UTC)