Surviving Continental Celtic languages?

Have Rome not be a thing.

Seriously this, the Romans NEVER forgot Brennus humiliating them and even if it wasn't as dramatic as Carthage, we still saw almost all of Celt-dom culturally-linguistically destroyed with Hibernia/Caledonia surviving only due to the limits of Roman power projection.
 
The most likely would probably be the Noric language finding a way to cling to life in Austria/Slovenia somehow. Rhaetian too might work in the similar Alpine regions as Noric. Finally, a Celtic language like Cantabrian might survive in the mountains of Iberia like Basque did.

Maybe a POD with a more religiously diverse Europe (all sorts of Christianity with no orthodoxy dominating, paganism, Manicheans, etc.) would see some of these Celtic groups adopting a separate religion from their neighbours (or migrating Germanic peoples) and managing to survive in that manner, although by modern times their numbers would be much reduced and it would be down to a couple villages.
 
A more outlandish possibility is a Gothic invasion of Anatolia. Galatian was supposedly still kicking around until the 6th century, and if the Goths crossed the Marmara and founded a kingdom there it might break central authority enough for the language to survive.

The reason I like this one is because a bunch of other cool languages like Phrygian, ancient Cappadocian, and maybe Thracian were still spoken in the region and might also be preserved by this conquest.
 

Maoistic

Banned
The second Brennus decides to unify all Celtic kingdoms in and around Gaul. This new Celtic empire or at least state becomes powerful enough, through the control of trade routes and a decent amount of population, to withstand Roman and Germanic invasions. They last long enough that they adopt writing, codify their language and make it impossible for the Romans to annihilate their culture like it happened in reality if they conquer them. Heck, we might even see a Celtic Empire that supplants Rome if this happens.
 
Seriously this, the Romans NEVER forgot Brennus humiliating them and even if it wasn't as dramatic as Carthage, we still saw almost all of Celt-dom culturally-linguistically destroyed with Hibernia/Caledonia surviving only due to the limits of Roman power projection.
Celtic culture and languages survived in Gaul and Roman Britian to an extent (Britain moreso than Gaul). Not everyone in Roman Gaul spoke Latin.
 
Seriously this, the Romans NEVER forgot Brennus humiliating them and even if it wasn't as dramatic as Carthage, we still saw almost all of Celt-dom culturally-linguistically destroyed with Hibernia/Caledonia surviving only due to the limits of Roman power projection.

Celtic culture and languages survived in Gaul and Roman Britian to an extent (Britain moreso than Gaul). Not everyone in Roman Gaul spoke Latin.

I agree with SkyDessertFox.
There was no deliberate policy to exterminate the Celtic languages. The main reasons why Gaulish was replaced by Gallo Romance is the same reasons why Aramaic was replaced by Classical Arabic - prestige and similarity in grammar/syntax.
 

Artaxerxes

Banned
I agree with SkyDessertFox.
There was no deliberate policy to exterminate the Celtic languages. The main reasons why Gaulish was replaced by Gallo Romance is the same reasons why Aramaic was replaced by Classical Arabic - prestige and similarity in grammar/syntax.


Trade networks as well.
 
That's all true, but for me Celtdom was still ultimately replaced with Roman linguistics and culture, even if it took a while. Certainly Rome conquering almost all of the Celtic lands politically didn't hurt.
 
That's all true, but for me Celtdom was still ultimately replaced with Roman linguistics and culture, even if it took a while. Certainly Rome conquering almost all of the Celtic lands politically didn't hurt.
Welsh, Breton, Irish Gaelic, and Scots Gaelic speakers would disagree with you on the linguistics bit!
 

Artaxerxes

Banned
That's all true, but for me Celtdom was still ultimately replaced with Roman linguistics and culture, even if it took a while. Certainly Rome conquering almost all of the Celtic lands politically didn't hurt.

Germanic culture, Roman Law if we're being fair, it's also arguable how much of the culture is Germanic rather than Celtic anyway due to the diffuse nature of the Germanic culture and it's inherent similarity to Celtic culture and the Celtic influences on Rome itself but especially on Anglo Saxon art styles.
 
Well yes, but that was poor wording on my part since I also did note Hibernia/Caledonia in my original post on it. :p

Britannia also. It was not the Roman but the Anglo-Saxon conquest that killed Celtic in England. It survived in the west (Wales) that was not conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, and was brought to Gaul by the Bretons fleeing their rule.
 

Maoistic

Banned
I agree with SkyDessertFox.
There was no deliberate policy to exterminate the Celtic languages. The main reasons why Gaulish was replaced by Gallo Romance is the same reasons why Aramaic was replaced by Classical Arabic - prestige and similarity in grammar/syntax.
Aramaic is still alive in some of the lands conquered by the Arabs. Moreover, Aramaic is actually very similar to Arabic, in the same way Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are very similar to each other. On the other hand none of the Celtic languages are almost anything like the Romance ones in either grammar or syntax. The reason the Celts didn't survive is because the Romans drove them to extinction, simple as that.
 
Aramaic is still alive in some of the lands conquered by the Arabs. Moreover, Aramaic is actually very similar to Arabic, in the same way Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are very similar to each other. On the other hand none of the Celtic languages are almost anything like the Romance ones in either grammar or syntax. The reason the Celts didn't survive is because the Romans drove them to extinction, simple as that.
Actually Gaullish was rather similar to Latin and there was no Celtic genocide. That's a false notion of what romanisation entailed.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Actually Gaullish was rather similar to Latin and there was no Celtic genocide. That's a false notion of what romanisation entailed.
No, Gaulish is similar to Irish, Welsh and Gaelic, which are almost nothing like Latin (being Indo-European doesn't make languages that similar, it's just like how Egyptian belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family but resembles Hebrew and Arabic very little). And "false notion"? This is the same empire that engaged in massacres and rapine all over the Mediterranean. Julius Caesar's actions in Gaul definitely count as genocide, especially since I've seen some death tolls that go over 1 million deaths. Of course the Romans didn't kill every single continental Celt, but they did eliminate their identity, language and religion through genocide and repression, just like they did with the Phoenicians, Illyrians and Thracians and attempted to do with the Jews. The disappearance of the Celts is less like the Greco-Roman conversion to Christianity and more like the European colonial massacres of Native Americans or Pacific Aboriginals. I would even argue it was the template.
 
No, Gaulish is similar to Irish, Welsh and Gaelic, which are almost nothing like Latin (being Indo-European doesn't make languages that similar, it's just like how Egyptian belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family but resembles Hebrew and Arabic very little). And "false notion"? This is the same empire that engaged in massacres and rapine all over the Mediterranean. Julius Caesar's actions in Gaul definitely count as genocide, especially since I've seen some death tolls that go over 1 million deaths. Of course the Romans didn't kill every single continental Celt, but they did eliminate their identity through genocide and repression, just like they did with the Phoenicians, Illyrians and Thracians and attempted to do with the Jews. The disappearance of the Celts is less like the Greco-Roman conversion to Christianity and more like the European colonial massacres of Native Americans or Pacific Aboriginals. I would even argue it was the template.
Of course Modern Welsh is quite unlike the Gaullish of Roman times. It's even changed quite a bit from its contemporary ancestor language. Languages change.
I'm talking about the Gaulish of Roman times which was roughly as similar as (for example) Old Saxon was to Old English. There's a reason linguists created an Italo-Celtic language family.

As regards the "extinction" of the Celts it is not as clear cut genocide as you are suggesting. Yes there was the odd ethnic cleansing but it was all about Roman domination rather than wiping out nonRomans.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Of course Modern Welsh is quite unlike the Gaullish of Roman times. It's even changed quite a bit from its contemporary ancestor language. Languages change.
I'm talking about the Gaulish of Roman times which was roughly as similar as (for example) Old Saxon was to Old English. There's a reason linguists created an Italo-Celtic language family.

As regards the "extinction" of the Celts it is not as clear cut genocide as you are suggesting. Yes there was the odd ethnic cleansing but it was all about Roman domination rather than wiping out nonRomans.

Yes, languages change but they still retain a certain structure. Spanish is far more similar to Latin than Irish or Welsh is. The Italo-Celtic languages quickly branched off from each other so that Gaulish wasn't really similar to Latin. At best, it was as similar as modern German is similar to modern English, and absolutely nothing like the similarity between Old Saxon and Old English which were virtually the same language.

And you call the killing of over 1 million Gauls by Caesar "odd ethnic cleansing"? For God's sake, Caesar killed 1 in 5 Gauls (seeing how the population of Gaul at that time was about 1/10th of the current population of France). You can't call that mere "ethnic cleansing" and adding the adjective "odd" on top of that instead of genocide. The fact that the Romans kept perpetrating occasional massacres and exploited the area through slavery, not to mention their anti-Druid policies and cultural impositions, buries your notion of a relatively peaceful end to the continental Celtic culture even more.
 
Gaulish as a languate survived until the 5th century AD. After four centuries of Roman rule. Which meant that it was not extinct during the first three centuries of Roman rule. St Jerome mentioned in the late 4th century that it was still spoken, that the language of the Belgic Treveri was similar to the language spoken in Galatia rather than to Latin. So all you have to do is to prevent the final extinction during the fifth century, during 400s A.D.

Since the OP only mentions survival, all you have to do is to keep one single locality to continually speak Gaulish rather than transitioning to Vulgar Latin in the fifth century.

That should be very doable.
 
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