No Proto-Celtic?

[Christopher Gwinn]

> True - though it does happen.  In fact the very French you mention is the
> result of one such occurrence.  A small minority of Romans managed to
> convert a much larger number of Gauls into speaking Latin.

There were a lot more Romans in Gaul than you might think (even if many of
them were ethnically Gaulish from Northern Italy, they were still thoroughly
Romanized).

We are also dealing with a literate culture versus a non-literate culture as
well as a culture with a more advanced governmental system versus a culture
whose own disunited a simpler governments were in flux. Once the Gauls were
conquered and forced into a new government which demanded knowledge of Latin
and also the ability to write in Latin for its governmental officials (many
of which were eventually gathered up from the local nobility), you see
bilingualism spreading quickly.

On top of this, the process of Romanization in Southern Gaul began long
before Caesar's conquest - the Roman lifestyle was quite attractive to the
Gauls and many of them had already developed a taste for it, which helped to
further Romanization in Gaul after the conquest. Many Southern Gauls prior
to the conquest likely already knew some Latin for purposes of trade with
the Romans.

The real death of Gaulish, however, was in Roman attitudes towards it - the
Romans considered the language to be inferior and ugly - something to be
embarrassed of. You couldn't be a proper Romano-Gaul and still speak
Gaulish. The nail in the coffin came with the spread of Christianity - the
failure to have a Bible commissioned in Gaulish meant that Latin was to
remain the language of religion (alongside of the government and trade).

I do not think that this situation is relevant, however, to the spread of
Celtic languages in a strictly non-literate Northern Europe in the Bronze or
Iron Ages.

- Chris Gwinn