Talk:Celts

Template:Vital article

Streches

The word 'stretches' is misspelled in the first paragraph but I'm unable to edit it. Murdokdracul (talk) 07:57, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

   Thanks for making the effort to “drop a flag” (or a dime) on that figurative “play”. An intervening edit seems to have obliterated the word completely, tho a confirmation by a colleague with a more limber toolbox than mine could be worth the (non-)ink & (non-)paper it’d cost us.
-JerzyA (talk) 20:51, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Unclear map legend

Re:

Main language areas in Iberia, showing Celtic languages in beige, c. 300 BC

What looks beige to me reads "Iberian" instead. Let us relabel the map or copy the color as graphics in the text. Zezen (talk) 18:08, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Indo-European etymology for Kaltoi

The IE word 'kal' is given the article as meaning 'to hide', whereas I had always understood it to mean 'to protect' as in eu-calypt (Gk: truly protected). Thus, if so, the original root for the word 'Celt' may mean to guard; ie a powerful protector.

Celts as Indo-European speakers then being Indo-European "PEOPLE"

Kip1234,

(1) "the entire premise of Indo-European people at all is hypothetical". => wrong, this is not a premise but an hypothetical conclusion that emerged from the widely accepted demonstration that a Proto-Indo-European language existed in time. This means that there were speakers (≠ people) of this language since (a) purely constructed languages like Esperanto did not exist at that time, and (b) writing was also unknown so it could not have been a literary language like Classical Latin; on the other hand, you’re right to note that concluding that a “people” spoke this language remains hypothetical (although one could point out that the linguistic geographical extent must have remained restricted; otherwise, we would observe important dialectal variations);

(2) "that only ever lived in Europe and never came close to being part of any other continent.” => wrong, Celts have migrated towards Anatolia, which is not on the European continent;

(3) a clarification in terminology: “Indo-European people” (speakers of an Indo-European language) does not equal “Proto-Indo-European people” (speakers of the original (proto-) Indo-European language).

(4) "If languages pass between different peoples does that automatically mean that those peoples are part of the same category?" => yes, that's exactly the point. Culture can be transmitted to people that don't share the same genetic background. Celts are not a "race" but a cultural group. Alcaios (talk) 20:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Alcaios

Thanks for engaging on here. As you have just recognised (very astutely), I did not change any references to the category of Indo-European languages on the article of "celts" or "celtic people" because most modern scholars have grouped a sub-section of languages together in this way. Likewise, on the separate page of "celtic languages" I have also not modified mentions of the category of "indo-european" languages.

• The original "Proto-Indo-European language" evolved and differed as the people who spoke it migrated to different continents. These languages have evolved and spread in much the same way as the original people who spoke it (from ONE particular area). That is why there are many similarities between Urdu, Pashtun and Arabic for instance. Are the people who speak these languages classed as a mixture of Afro-Asiatic and Indo-Europeans because they happen to speak a particular language? What "people" are they according to your logic of "indo-european people"? If you want to get involved in that debate, here's a link to get started: Hindi–Urdu controversy.

• Indeed, there there is less than 1% genetic difference on average between the average Chinese, Japanese and Korean alone. The same research showed that in Europe alone there was a 10% genetic difference on average between the people of that continent. There are also large/identical genetic similarities between the Han and many Vietnamese and Thai people. Yet, the Han supposedly belong to the "Sino-Tibetan" language family, the Japanese to the "Japonic language" family, the Thai to the "Kra-Dai" and Vietnamese to the "Mon–Khmer" and the Koreans to the "Koreanic". Maybe you would assert that all of these people are Mainland South-East Asian people according to your logic? I'm not sure, I can only keep up with recent scholarly interpretations. This is despite the fact that Chinese and Japanese alone are incredibly similar (using broadly the same alphabet in a similar way to most of Central and Western Europe).

• Leaving aside the dubious linguistic categorisation of Indo-European compared to other language families, which includes an untold amount of alphabets and other fundamental linguistic differences, my basic point is that the Celtic people have no connection to India or Asia Major (and the vast majority of Asia Minor) because some scholars have argued that their languages are considered to be part of one linguistic family. The Celtic people originated in Europe, stayed in Europe (99% of them) and only survive in Europe today.

• 4) "Celts are not a race but a cultural group." This article is about Celtic PEOPLE. Even within the wider European "race" (which I didn't actually mention) modern-day Celtic people have different genetic characteristics on average (highest prevalence of red hair being the best example) that were and are associated with people paler than all other ethnicities. Why did no Celts go further south/beyond Galacia? A large part of that was because evolution meant that they probably wouldn't have survived particularly well in these areas because of their inherent racial or genetic visible features (paler skin etc.). On this point, what if someone speaks more than one language- what "people" do they belong to according to you? A cultural group is not the most important aspect of a "people" and can even change within a generation multiple times. If you want to create a new category of cultural group to reflect the fact that the Celts have had no contact whatsoever with "Indo" people then feel free. I will eagerly await these latest feat of scholarly, linguistic and genetic interpretations and conclusions.

Kip1234 (talk) 22:03, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

"there are many similarities between Urdu, Pashtun and Arabic for instance" => that does not make them part of the same language family, like English is not a Romance language because 2/3 of its vocabulary is from Latin/Old French. That's not how we define a language group (the systematic comparison of intra-linguistic facts that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing).

"some scholars have argued that their languages are considered to be part of one linguistic family". => are you serious? Can you provide an example of a contemporary linguist that does not state that?

"A large part of that was because evolution meant that they probably wouldn't have survived particularly well in these areas because of their inherent racial or genetic visible features (paler skin etc.)." => wow... wow... wow... are you aware that Ancient Celts were not even genetically homogeneous in Ancient times since their languages were adopted by indigenous peoples in the lands they settled or do you think that Celtic speakers exterminated and replaced all indigenous peoples in modern-day France Spain or the Balkans (and later Ireland)? You seem to equal modern Irish and Welsh with Celts.

And what does genetics have to do with that? We use genetics to understand ancient mating networks and migrations, not to make racial categorization. I use the word "race" because you clearly consider Celts as a race (e.g., "If languages pass between different peoples does that automatically mean that those peoples are part of the same category?"; "A cultural group is not the most important aspect of a "people" and can even change within a generation multiple times."). Am I reading Richard B. Spencer? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have a Romantic and racialist vision of Celts.

"If you want to create a new category of cultural group to reflect the fact that the Celts have had no contact whatsoever with "Indo" people then feel free. I will eagerly await these latest feat of scholarly, linguistic and genetic interpretations and conclusions." => I don't get what you mean, but I can provide many examples of linguistic cognates and mythological reflexes common to Ancient Celtics and Vedic India if this is what you mean. Alcaios (talk) 22:25, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

"There are also large/identical genetic similarities between the Han and many Vietnamese and Thai people. Yet, the Han supposedly belong to the "Sino-Tibetan" language family, the Japanese to the "Japonic language" family, the Thai to the "Kra-Dai" and Vietnamese to the "Mon–Khmer" and the Koreans to the 'Koreanic'." => so what? Sicilians are genetically closer to Palestinians than Swedish. The language is not the culture, but it gives a vision of the world. If you speak English, watch English shows and your parents chose to give you an English name, for instance, you're closer to the English culture than the Irish culture, regardless of your genetic relationship with Ancient Celtic speakers. PS: Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a Sprachbund. You seem to confuse different concepts of historical linguistics, which makes it difficult to understand what you seek to demonstrate. Alcaios (talk)

Alcaios

Ironically, your argument for an Indo-European "people" is far more like Richard B. Spencer's than you seem to be aware. There are extensive racist arguments that support the idea of "Indo-Europeans" being racially superior to other Asian races, hence why they were (apparently) able to conquer/settle land to such a wide extent. I would like to point out that it is you bringing up "race" and then citing a racist orator to try and prove your point, whereas I would prefer it if we could stick to "ethnicities" and leave these unrelated topics out of it.

However, you are definitely not "reading Richard B. Spencer", largely because you were the one who brought race into it. Ethnicities/Peoples are not just the languages that they may speak or even the cultures that they may have, nor the category of linguistic family that SOME scholars have asserted. Your comparative method of grouping languages should mean that Japanese, Han Chinese, Koreans, (probably Vietnamese as well) are all definitively part of the same "people" but because this has been vigorously opposed by scholars and politicians this has not been done so. That's why there's the classification of "East Asian languages" or wait, is it "Sinitic Languages"? Does this language (and ethnic categorisation according to you) include Tibetic languages/ethnicities or the Bai languages/ethnicity? Oh, but the "Sino-Tibetan" language categorisation must mean that they are all the same ethnicity/people, even though the comparative method shows that Tibetan and Han Chinese are less related than the vast majority of all other East Asian people's languages. Now there's some confusion over the similarity of Turkic languages and East Asian- are they all Altaic languages? My point is to show that linguistic families are subjective according to different linguists and appears to be changing pretty frequently according to whom you speak.

Leaving aside your complete lack of consistency on this matter, which I could go into further with Urdu/Pashtun/Arabic etc. of conflating ethnicities/peoples with language grouping and scholarship, I will try and make it more specific to the Proto-Indian-Aryan people/language. First of all, there are no written records for the existence of this language and there could be plenty of other factors that might have influenced similarities between modern-day "Indo" languages and "Aryan/European languages". Do you know that Greek and Sanscrit are commonly cited to prove the similarity of larger "European" and "Indian" languages, but that Alexander the Great conquered much of Asia Minor and Major before eventually stopping just shy of modern-day India. Do you think that this extremely short-term migration created a new "people" or might just have influenced some aspects of these languages? The fact that there are no written records seems to mean that linguistic scholars (not ethnographic or demographic scholars) who were the first to propose this (according to you) ethnic grouping have relied upon these modern-day similarities to extrapolate their theory and have it accepted as fact. How does the (seemingly separate) existence of a Proto-Turkic Language (and people) fit into this argument of Proto-Indo-European people?

Leaving aside the purely linguistic categorisation and comparison that you seem to have adopted (which has inconsistencies anyway) and seems to forget that people and languages can move temporarily (that probably does not constitute the creation of new ethnicities/peoples each time), where does this end? If the first people came from Africa, are all subsequent ethnicities/peoples that came into being in different parts of the world considered African? You seem to also forget that there is no proven place as to where the Proto-Indo-European language actually supposedly first originated from: the Kurgan Hypothesis (the one you seem to have gone with) argues the steppes of the Black Sea, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov argue Anatolia, the Indigenous Aryans model seems to argue for the Indus Valley and then there seem to be other slightly different variations that would argue for other places in Eurasia to name but a few.

Frankly, I see that you've been active on other pages like Slavs and Germanic Peoples and in Indo-Aryan peoples and I may soon start questioning this in a similar manner to other ethnicities: Han Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkic Peoples, Muhajir that appear to have been grouped together/classified on a radically different basis. I will eagerly await the arbitrarily-selective arguments that will allow certain ethnicities to be classified in certain ways whilst demanding that others are grouped together in a different manner.

Kip1234 (talk) 14:11, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Folks, WP:TLDR (Is this becoming Talk:Germanic languages, part 2?). And sick to see editors implicitly comparing e.o. to Richard Spencer. That's a toxic insult.

Just looking at the edit summaries, I agree with Kip1234 here. If "Indo-European peoples" means "ethnic groups speaking Indo-European languages", as Alcaios suggests, then let's say exactly this, e.g. in following manner:

"The Celts are a collection of European peoples identified by their use of languages of the Celtic branch of the Indo-European languages."

"Indo-European peoples" is a weasel expression. Using it, we create a shady ambiguity as if we wanted to suggest that these contemporary ethnic groups have more in common than just their linguistic affiliation, i.e. if we didn't know they spoke languages of the same language family, we could still define a bundle of shared cultural features that unites them to the exclusion of other ethnic groups. And this is of course nonsense, not just for "Indo-European peoples", but even also for "Romance peoples" (which I gladly supported to be deleted in an AfD), "Modern Germanic peoples" and so on ad nauseam (anyone for Talk:Ugric peoples? I mean except for the racialist sockmaster Sprayitchyo?). I could open another round for "The Celts were...", but I won't.

19th century ideologists tried to divide Europe (and the rest of the world) by setting up linguistically-based ethnic demarcation lines, according to which e.g. Bavarians are supposed to be more closely "related" to Icelanders than to Bohemians. The most asinine example is Turanism, based on an obsolete linguistic proposal.

I strongly suggest not to use "Indo-European" for anything else than the languange family and things pertaining to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-Europeans. FWIW, Indo-European peoples redirects to Proto-Indo-Europeans, and that’s a good thing, because Indo-European peoples aren’t a thing. –Austronesier (talk) 16:00, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Austronesier

Hi, Austronesier I appreciate a slightly more objective perspective that realises I am not doing this on the basis of some ethnic nationalist identity. I do not oppose the grouping of certain languages in this way but as most people know people and languages aren't the same.

I am very confused as to the abritary grouping of ethnic groups based on a relatively recent linguistic argument that has been applied to some (Celts, Slavs, Germanic Peoples and possibly "Indo-Aryans") but ignores others such as Turkic Peoples (which should actually be "Turkic-SPEAKING peoples", Muhajir people and more. I am also very conscious of this being very inconsistently applied to a whole host of ethnic groups and linguistic groups in East Asia and South-East Asia and have personal experience of significant opposition on these pages that imply or state that they are much more closely genetically related languages, people and cultures.

I have not changed any reference to a Proto-Indo-European language (even though no written records of it actually exist) because I am not a linguistic scholar and that is a separate topic to ethnic groups. I would also suggest that categorising Slavs and Germanic Peoples as "Indo-European peoples" should be changed for the same reasons as above. Otherwise, all East Asian and South-East Asian ethnic groups would have to be changed, as would a significant percentage of groups in the Middle East and South Asia and probably quite a few in Africa as well. This is going to create an almighty battle but I would suggest the easier option is for Alcaios to differentiate between languages and ethnic groups. Likewise, where does this end? Technically the first people came from Africa, so does that mean that all ethnic groups should be described as African?

It initially started off as a geographic correction, as the Celtic ethnic group has never been anywhere close to "Indo" regions, but I then corrected this to include reference to a small part of the Middle East. Ethnic groups are not just determined by the languages that they speak. I speak Chinese and rudimentary Japanese, so does that mean that me or my descendants will be Anglo-Celtic-Sino-Tibetan-Japonic? It's inconsistently applied and makes no logical sense to conflate ethnic groups and linguistic similarities in this way.

It gets even shadier when it's revealed that the main evidence that this is based on is the fact that Sanscrit is similar to some European languages (most notably Greek, which is not Celtic). This completely ignores historical invasions and migrations that may have influenced these similarities (Alexander the Great from the West or even the Roman Empire).

Please let me know if you think that Germanic Peoples and Slavs should also be changed.

Regards,

Kip1234 (talk) 16:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)