Gaulish love poem

Translation of the love poem into Gaulish (Gallic, French celtic, old continental Celtic, excluding Celtiberian with it recognized dialect specificity). This poetry in the language of the first bards is in the reconstructed Gaulish language.

As a result, the research concerning this old continental Celtic, which for the researchers is a fragmentary language, advances only by very small steps, with the discoveries of new inscriptions and by their interpretation using the etymological analysis based on archaic forms of Celtic languages that have come down to us.

The toponymy and the substrate of Romance languages also provide valuable informations. That's all the "fragmentary" and very reduced possibilities which allow some progress to discover what the Gaulish language was.

« To reconstruct the Gaulish language (or ancient Celtic), the author took the vocabulary that linguists like Xavier Delamarre collected and analyzed, from thousands of names of places, people and divinities found on steles or in ancient texts. Ranko Matasovíc and others have reconstructed the vocabulary of Common Celtic from the earliest states of Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. The grammar is reconstructed for a small part from the attested forms, and for a much larger part from what can be deduced from common Celtic. It was necessary to simplify a lot by choosing the most systematic, clear and easy to remember solutions.
The reconstruction of « Gaulish » presented here is not a state of language that was spoken or heard in the real world, but a living sketch. Like a child, it starts modestly, stumbles, breaks the vases and scribbles on the beautiful covers to the despair of the scholars. But it is ambitious and gets ever closer to it model through collective work to constantly rectify it errors. » Gérard Poitrenaud

Note these French words whose origin is Gaulish: bercer, briser, changer, craindre, glaner, valet, vassal, talus, chemin , dune, quai, bruyère, chêne, if, sapin, alouette, bouc, lotte, mouton, bec, orteil, chemin, crème, tonneau! cf Claude Hagège. On the map you will see the Gaulish language point to the village of Gergovie, near the plateau of the same name, which is became famous with Vercingetorix.

If they called themselves Celts, it is the Romans who called them Gaulish, a word which will end up designating the Celts living in Gaul.

The Celts settle in Gaul in -500. The conquest of Gaul by the Romans, which ends in -52, will be the beginning of the Romanization. The Gauls, composed of peoples of oral tradition, adopt the Roman way of life. Latin becomes the language of the elite.

In 212, the edict of Caracalla making Gauls Roman citizens, sign the death sentence of their language, which will disappear completely in the 5th century, with the arrival of the Franks.

I pointed this translation towards the Gergovie plateau (Merdogne plain), where, in 52 BC, was the Gallic oppidum, and where the troops of Vercingetorix defeated the Roman legions of Julius Caesar.

The Gaulish, have just left a few traces of their language, since for religious reasons they did not write!

It seems today established that the Celtic languages spoken on the island of Brittany and on the continent are only variants of Gaulish. However, it must be understood that Breton differs as much from Gaulish as French does from Latin, so wanting to reconstruct Gaulish from Breton can only be an amusing hypothesis.

Vannese undoubtedly remains the language closest to continental Celtic and therefore to what we call Gaulish.

As most of the inscriptions noted in ogam (ogham) writing were found in Great Britain, engraved on stone or wood, I put this second attempt at translation (from the insular Celtic languages), with this writing.

What we find written in Ogham are generally only brief funerary inscriptions of a magical nature which must have been for the use of the Druids.

We can understand this alphabet which must date from the 3rd century, because, in Wales, it has been found doubled with Latin letters.

The consonants are represented by notches more or less numerous and on one side or both of the edge of a stone ... it is therefore the number and the location of these notches which designates them. For the vowels, the notches are much smaller and on the edge of the stone.