Ancient dead languages are of little interest to people. However, they play a very important role for scientists - they help to find relationships with modern languages. Finding relationships with modern languages can help in the study of the history of certain peoples.
History
Gaulish language belongs to the Celtic group, was widely spoken in Gaul (the territory of modern France, Belgium and Switzerland) in the pre-Roman period. Unfortunately, immediately after the conquest of the Gauls, the Romans began to pursue a policy of romanization, and Gaulish was quickly replaced by Latin in everyday communication. Finally became dead in the II-III centuries. Recently, groups of enthusiasts have appeared who want to revive the language, while some, on the basis of already known knowledge, make artificial Gaulish languages.
Language learning by scientists
The language itself is known to scientists from numerous finds. Inscriptions were found on various items of Gallic life. Therefore, at present, researchers have been able to recover only a small part of the vocabulary. For example, it was possible to restore the alphabet, most of the phonology, information aboutsome declensions, as well as most numerals. Separate phrases, as well as a number of proper names, were found in the works of authors who were contemporaries of the Gallic wars. A complete collection of the remnants of the Gaulish language is not yet available.
Proper names and individual Gaulish words found in Greek and Latin writers were already partly worked out in the Grammatica Celtica (Berlin, 1871). A number of Gaulish words have passed into modern French and Italian languages, as well as into their dialects. Recently, rather voluminous Gaulish texts have been found, in which there is a very diverse vocabulary, most of which was previously unknown. With each found monument of this ancient language, scientists receive new knowledge that helps in learning the rules of the language.
Gaulish influence on French
Many people believe that French is a descendant of Gaulish, but this is just a common misconception. Most words in French have Latin roots. The Gaulish origin has only about 180 words. Moreover, most of these words are not a literary norm, but constitute the vocabulary of various dialects. This most likely happened due to the fact that the Gaulish language was very quickly replaced by Latin. Moreover, due to Romanization, the Gallic elite abandoned many of their linguistic features.
The only thing left in the French language from the Gauls is the method of counting, the vigesimal system. An additional problem for researchers is that Latin and Gaulish are very similar to each other, and therefore it is very difficult to find out where the root is the original Gaulish and where is Latin. Such a historical fact is known that during the Gallic wars, Roman correspondence was actively intercepted and read by the Gauls, and in order to stop this, Julius Caesar began himself and ordered the rest to correspond exclusively in Greek, which the Gauls did not understand. This only confirms the guesses of scientists about the proximity of the Gaulish language and Latin.
Prospects
Despite its "dead status", the Gaulish language has the opportunity to become "alive" again. As already mentioned, enthusiasts make artificial languages based on known facts. There are at least two known reconstructions.
- From Eluveitie.
- Modern Gaulish, created by a group of enthusiasts from Australia. Their goal was to imagine how the language would have developed further if it had not disappeared. They performed the same operations that the rest of the Celtic languages in use today have undergone. As a result, phonetics changed, nominal endings disappeared, the language became very close to British.
However, if you want to learn this language in any version, in the one in which it existed, or in an artificial one, then you can immediately get upset, because at the moment there is not a sufficiently complete dictionary of words, not to mention a full-fledged Gaulish textbook. If abut there is a great desire to get acquainted with this beautiful language, yet there are books with vocabulary and some rules. These are the books:
- La Langue Gaulois.
- Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise.
- Gaulish Personal Names.
Moreover, seeing the progress in the study of the language by researchers, one can assume that in a few decades or centuries a person will be able to simply go to a bookstore and buy a dictionary of the Gallic language along with a textbook that will help to master the beautiful language of comic book heroes of Gallic origin Asterix and Obelix. At the end of the 20th century, the Cornish language was revived, which had been "dead" for 200 years. The Manx language was also revived, which has also been actively developing recently. Perhaps one day it will be possible to fully learn Gaulish.
