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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Celtic traces in Portuguese sounds
Message-ID: <CxoFFC.2rA@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <37mi8s$4qt@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 18:59:35 GMT
Lines: 47

In article <37mi8s$4qt@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>,
Hung Jung Lu <hlu@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>
>Sorry, this might already been asked, but the other day
>I was chatting with a Brasilian friend about Portuguese
>as a language. I am fairly ignorant about the origin
>of Portuguese, but I remember having read in this group
>that it has some Celtic influence (I hope I am not erred?)
>If so, what are some of the traces of the Celtic languages
>in Portuguese? I know there are open and close sounds for
>[o] and [e] in Portuguese, as opposed to other Romance
>languages like Spanish or Italian. Is this a reminiscence
>of the Celtic feature? Is the [sh] sound as in the name
>Xuxa also of this origin?

Open and close [e] and [o] are general Romance, close [e] and
[o] being derived from Latin long [e:] and short [i] (long [o:]
and short [u]), open [E] and [O] from Latin short [e] and [o].  
Spanish (and Italian) have lost the distinction ([E]>[ie] and 
[O]>[uo]>[ue]).  The [S] sound is also general Romance (derived
from Latin [ks], [sk], etc.).

>
>Also, do the Spanish Gallego people have anything to do
>with the Welsh? I know that Gallegan(?) language is very
>close (mutually intelligible) to Portuguese. Does Portuguese
>then have a little bit to do with Welsh? (Sorry if I am making
>blunders...)
>

Galician-Portuguese is definitely a Romance language, and Welsh 
is not.
It's true that the pre-Roman population of Galicia was Celtic
(as the name Galicia indicates), and that the Celtic substratum
may account for some peculiarities of Galician-Portuguese.
Opinions differ on how much influence can be assigned to this.
French, Occitan and Northern Italian are other Romance languages
that grew out of a Celtic substratum, and they differ considerably
from each other, and from Galician-Portuguese.  Now if one would
make a list of items (vocabulary, phonology, morphology, syntax)
shared by these four languages, and not by other Romance languages,
that would be a starting-point...

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
