Jump to content

Talk:Ancient Belgian language

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Untitled]

[edit]

Whats this "indo-germanic" nonsense? There is Indo-European of which Germanic is a part, but I think there needs to be either a citation made to prove the legitimacy of this term, or have it re-written in a way which agrees with linguistic terminology.Napkin65 (talk) 22:49, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's a synonym of Indo-European. Examples. I think Indo-European is more commonly used nowadays, though. Iblardi (talk) 06:51, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

British Belgea?

[edit]

Could Belgian have been spoken in southern England, rather than Celtic? Could 'Dover' be a Belgic placename? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Angelogravity (talkcontribs) 14:11, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. Dover is generally considered plainly Celtic (even Brythonic, i. e. British Celtic), see Dover#History.
Schrijver, however, has proposed that the apparently distinctive dialect of the tile of Châteaubleau (characterised by diphthongisations otherwise unknown from Gaulish), while clearly Celtic and likely even Gaulish in the wider sense, represents a separate "Northern Gaulish" dialect, possibly that of the Belgae, and could also be represented in the ADIXOVI inscription of Bath (see British language#Sources), as (part of) the Belgae are said to have migrated to Britain in Caesar's time (see Belgae#Britain), eventually occupying exactly an area in which Bath now lies. They would (presumably) have spoken a Celtic dialect distinct from that of the Britons in that case. Schrijver does not think that the form of Celtic evident in the Bath inscription is British Celtic. However, Dover lies in the former domain of the Cantiaci, who seem to have simply been native British Celts.
I'm just saying there is a real possibility that the Belgae did indeed speak a distinctive dialect, and that this dialect was moreover also spoken in what is now southern England, but certainly not in the area of Dover, whose name seems to be genuine British Celtic, and the dialect of the Belgae was by all appearances indeed Celtic. Stephen Oppenheimer seems to be the only researcher to still believe they were Germanic-speaking, on the authority of statements by ancient historians, which, however, can well be misleading, as Belgae#Origins of the Belgae points out. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:11, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]