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>and within two or three centuries the Gaulish languages and most cultural practices were extinct. Gaulish was alive and well during the 5th c. Latin really st
by Bayart 6y ago
>and within two or three centuries the Gaulish languages and most cultural practices were extinct.
Gaulish was alive and well during the 5th c. Latin really stuck with the Merovingians.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoInteresting, just read more on this. The Jean Manco book ("Blood of the Celts") I had read on this topic seemed to err on an earlier side for the end of spoken Gaulish, but it sounds like some people people believe it may even have lasted into the 9th and 10th centuries (!). Some people even say there's evidence of contact with Breton, which would be neat (I wonder if there'd be some mutual intelligibility between those two, that late!) * https://www.academia.edu/28555947/ON_THE_GAULISH_INFLUENCE_ON_BRETON https://www.academia.edu/28555947/ON_THE_GAULISH_INFLUENCE_O...
- Bayart 6y agoGaulish being around in the 9th or 10th centuries is a bit fanciful. As far as I know direct sightings end during the 5th century and circumstantial evidence ends during the 6th c., at the same time Christianity became truly ubiquitous even in remote areas and Latin was solidified as the only cultural language. It makes little sense for Gaulish to have survived much longer. There's certainly a case to be made for some dialects of Breton having a Gaulish substrate (after all Gallo-Romance languages all have it and that mutation occurred around the time Bretons migrated into Gaul).
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoYeah the paper I linked to above is pretty critical about the idea of late attestations of the language generally. Even seems to suggest nothing truly concrete beyond the 3rd century. So leaves it fairly ambivalent about whether there is truly Gaulish influence into Breton. I find this stuff fascinating :-)