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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Celtic Languages
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Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 06:21:04 GMT
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In article <177AD13C8FS86.CJRUSS01@ukcc.uky.edu>,
David Russo  <CJRUSS01@ukcc.uky.edu> wrote:
>Which of the current Celtic languages is purest? By that I mean closest to and
>least mutated from earlier forms of Celtic (Gallic), like Italian is probably
>closest to Latin of all the Romanic languages. Any ideas?

	First of all, do you mean Celtic or Gallic (which I suppose you're
using as a synonymn for 'Gaulish' since the generally-accepted meaning of
Gallic--pertaining to France--doesn't fit well in this context)?

	Now how does one quantify purity?  Intervocalic consonants are 
generally lenited ("softened") in both major surviving branches of Celtic, 
but not in the same way.  Take Latin STRATA, for instance.  In Welsh, the 
't' is softened to 'd'; in Irish, to 'th' (now pronounced [h] or silent).  
Which is closer to the original?  Both handle inheirited clusters dif-
ferently.  In the case of initial 'str', Welsh adds an epenthetic schwa and 
Irish deletes the 't'.  Which is closer to the original STRATA--'ystrad' or 
'srath'?

	I used a Latin loaword for my example, but one encountres the
same problems with older vocabulary.  Take the (too) much-emphasised 
P/Q-isogloss.  [Proto-Indo-European *Kw becomes 'p' in some forms of 
Celtic (notably Welsh) and 'k' in others (notably Irish).]  Which is
closer to a labiovelar?  A labial or a velar?

	Your comparison to Italian doesn't help clarify these 
questions.  Modern Standard Italian is deliberately more conservative
than any of the popular dialects of the Italian peninsula.  A similar
archaisising tendency is evident in the written standards of Welsh
and Irish but, unlike Standard Italian, they have not caught on as
spoken forms.  So what form do we compare with earlier forms of Celtic,
the [semi-artificial] literary dialects or the actual vernaculars?

	(And, for the record, Italian is probably not the most conserva-
tive Romance dialect; that title usually goes to Sardinian, but I be-
lieve this is mostly due to phonological criteria.  Morphologically,
Rumanian, insofar as it retains oblique case, could be termed more con-
servative.  Portuguese may sound less like Latin than Italian, but it 
retains vocabulary that has been replaced by innovations in Italian.
As so on, and so on.  Every dialect is both conservative and innovative.
With the exception of very clear-cut cases like Icelandic, it's diffi-
cult to hand out prizes for "purity".)


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
