Re: `oñga`arl'- The pre-Celtic Language

Raymond Brown wrote, responding to my humble self:

> Aren't the "Painted people" (that's all Picti means) now
> considered by most
> to be Britons and their language to have been essentially the same as the
> rest of pre-Roman Britan?
>
> >but the `oñga`arl' predate even the Picts. Not only that,
> >I don't see them surviving past the Celtic invasion at all.
>
> Was there ever a "Celtic" invasion of Britain?
Let us say, rather a "diffusion of Celtic speaking peoples across Britain".
I don't agree with the "invasion" idea myself, tall bond-haired, blue-eyed
celts (as it says in a book of mine, this has always puzzled me.) waving
iron swords and enslaving their forebears? I don't think it was like when
the Angles and Saxons came to Britain. "Invasion" is a convenient shorthand.
The `oñga`arl' golden age was around 2000 BCE, when Stonehenge was built,
and the Celts arrived in Britain in waves after 500 BCE, or so I was taught.

> Simon James, British Museum archaeologist specializing in Iron Age & Roman
> Britain, argues in his book "The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern
> Invention?" that there is no archaeological evidence of any such invasion
> and that "British Celts" were an invention of 18th century nationalism.
>
> It is IMHO noteworthy that no ancient writer ever refers to the
> inhabitants
> of Britain or Ireland as Celtic.  No writer throughtout the long period of
> the Middle Ages ever used that term to describe the pre-English
> inhabitants
> of Britain or Ireland.  The term "Celtic" is, it is true, not attested
> until the 18th century as a designation of any of the peoples of these
> islands.  Why had the term not been used before?
Surely we call them Celts because they spoke a Celtic language, from which
we get Welsh, Cornish and Breton? The name may well be a misnomer, but
that's no reason to stop using it; take the "Tocharians" for example, who
almost certainly did not call themselves Tocharians.

> OK - there is no doubt that one or more non-IE languages were spoken in
> Britain before the spread of any IE-based language came to these islands.
> So `oñga`arl' might be one of these.
>
> The oddly "Semitic" features that many have noticed in the Gaelic &
> Brittonic languages seem to have developed in this islands.  It has been
> suggested - indeed, more than once on this list - that these features are
> due to the effect of "pre-Celtic non-IE substrate"?
>
> Will `oñga`arl' be (part of) such a substrate?
Dunno. If I can find a wordlist of non-IE Celtic words unique to the
Brythonic languages, they might find their way into `oñga`arl'.  However,
`oñga`arl' seems to have taken a definate "semitish" twist, with V1 syntax
and broken plurals. However, I don't want to do 3-consonant roots, the
language's structure isnt really very compatible with that. And Semitic,
AFAIK was not nominative-absolutive. I'm not actually aware of any Eurasian
lang like that, I know Basque is ergative, but that's it. Anyone have any
idea of other nominative-absolutive languages in Eurasia?

Dan

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Go dtóga na púcaí do bheithígh!
                                      May the fairies take your livestock!
Dan Jones: www.geocities.com/yl_ruil/
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