How Celtic is the Portuguese Language?
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- čas přidán 16. 05. 2024
- Before Portugal ever formed or Portuguese grew as a language, and before the Visigoths, Arabs and Romans, the lands that are not Galicia and Portugual were inhabited by Celts. These people left a lasting impact upon the language of Portuguese and Galician today despite the brutality of the Roman Empire. What is this legacy, and how much of this Romance Language of Portuguese is actually from Celtic roots?
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00:00 Beginning
01:05 Romance Languages
06:11 Why Not Spanish
07:35 Sounds
09:23 People and Places
15:07 Family names
17:09 Just words
19:05 How Celtic?
Music. uppbeat.io
CZcams CC
Leiria by Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL - Castelo de Leiria - Portugal 🇵🇹, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Ail-oresgyn Iberia gan Simeon Netchev www.worldhistory.org/uploads/...
Iberia 200 bce By The Ogre - self-made from Image:Blank-peninsula Iberica.png, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Frankish Era Europe gan Simeon Netchev, www.worldhistory.org/uploads/...
Portuguese here, I always felt and complety agree that portuguese/galician, and Langue D'Oil/french are the more celtic of romance languages. Also the celtic identity in Portugal, specially the northern half and Madeira island (that was setled mostly by northern portuguese) is huge, in music, folklore, crafts, popular legends and mythology. Good video, Celtic regards from Madeira island.
Obrigado. Appreciated.
The video is great, however I must disagree with a few points you made. Portuguese folklore and crafts are actually deeply rooted in the Berber/North Africa culture, just go there and see it for yourself. Even the brides from Viana do Castelo are inspired in the Berber brides and the bagpipes were introduced by the Moors, they brought from Persia.
@@paulocastrogarrido3499 "The video is great, however I must disagree with a few points you made. Portuguese folklore and crafts are actually deeply rooted in the Berber/North Africa culture, just go there and see it for yourself. Even the brides from Viana do Castelo are inspired in the Berber brides and the bagpipes were introduced by the Moors, they brought from Persia."
None of that is actually correct or true. Conveniently you have not provided any sources.
@@jboss1073 it's not only correct, but also true, go to Morocco and see if for yourself as I did.
@@paulocastrogarrido3499 "it's not only correct, but also true, go to Morocco and see if for yourself as I did."
Even if I were to go and think 100% they are the same, it does not mean they originated from the same thing.
A famous example of that is Celtic and Italic looking so similar in the Iron Age that caused many academics to posit an Italo-Celtic language family, even though it has already been proven securely that an Italo-Celtic never existed, that Italic only existed and originated inside the Italic peninsula, and that Italic separated from Celto-Germano-Italic first.
So please understand, "things similar now" does not imply "they came from the same origin".
It's believed that Portuguese was once Latin spoken by the mouth of Celtic people, while Spanish was Latin spoken by Basques, which makes the phonetic difference between those two languages,
Most Spaniards were Celtic (the Celtiberians) and not Basques.
Most Spaniards were not only Celts (I'm not a fan of using the greek word _keltoii,_ which only means foreigner as an umbrella term) but they were Iberian and of Greek and Carthaginian origins too, Both the east and the south of Iberia were heavily colonized and were ALWAYS the first to fall to foreign powers. The north and center, were where Celtiberian peoples existed, but that's maybe not even half the Spanish country, and of course the Spaniards still have the Aquitani Basques no the northeast who were probably older than everyone else @@jboss1073.
Iberia comes from the name the Greeks gave to the river they settled next to, the Ebro. Everyone in Iberia descended from a bunch of people but the Spaniards overall had much more foreign colonies to contend with.
@@jboss1073Spanish originated from Castile proper. That area is near the current basque land and it’s likely it spoke Vasconic before being latinized. Castilian (aka Spanish) later spread to the rest of the peninsula.
Why do Asturianu and Galego as celtic regions do not show this charcteristics on vows?
@@gregzu " @jboss1073 Spanish originated from Castile proper. That area is near the current basque land and it’s likely it spoke Vasconic before being latinized. "
That is not only not likely but in fact did not happen. We know for a fact the ancestors of Spaniards, the Celtiberians, spoke Celtic, not Vasconic.
Northern Portugal even resembles Ireland, very green, hilly, rainy.
"Rain" is the key here as the Celts worshipped Taranis the god of lightning and storms.
@@jboss1073Ataegina,the Godess of the Nature...🎉😂
Yes and the stone walls demarking the fields and the villages roads, they are exactly like those we saw in Irish or Scotish movies.
I'm Brazilian living in France, I know Portugal quite well ( and I love it)and I thank you for this wonderful information!
It's interesting how most of the Portuguese words mentioned in the video didn't survive in Brazilian Portuguese.
I have heard about a Celtic way of answering to a question, by repeating the verb, instead of using words like "yes".
This is how we do in Portuguese, and it's also used in Irish.
"Você gosta de maçã? (do you like apple?) is answered "gosto" (I like)
"Ele tem um carro?" (does he have a car?) is answered "tem" (he has)
It's very rare to hear the word "sim" to answer affirmatively.
However, the negative answer does not follow this rule. It's simply "não" (no) like in any other language.
That is interesting, thank you.
I was gonna say i was learning alot of new words that I'd never heard too, but im from portugal, I think some of the examples are from very old words
most of the words presented are names of places or rivers - not common names - that is why that are not present in the Portuguese of B rasil - except if there are some towns or villages with the same names...
Didn't know about that, very interesting. Something about my language that i've learned just now!
This reminds me of a somehow resemblant situation with the word "tá" (abreviation of "está") which we often use as saying "it's OK", or "understood". We can say "está bem" ("it's OK") instead of "sim" ("yes"), but we often say "tá", which is the same as "yes" in ancient irish. I wonder if there is somking of krypto-keltism here!
BTW, it's funny how Brazil is so close to "Hy-Brasil". a mythical island somewhere beteen Ireland and America, described in irish mythology. How has it survived through Portuguese language and ending up giving name to a land the other side of the ocean?
I'm from a small city in the south of Portugal: Lagos (Lacóbriga). We the portuguese pronounce the word "mel" (honey), in the exact same way as the Welsh.
Portuguese here. Yes, you are right. Celtic tribes lived here in the north of Portugal before Roman invasion and modern Portuguese language still reflects that. Not all Celts died, of course. They blended with Romans. As you say, my city, Braga, had the Bracari tribe living in the surrounding mounts (currently known as Falperra and Citânia de Briteiros). That's why Roman founded the City in the valley, near a little river they called "Este" [east] which actually has its headwater 10 km east of the city in one of such surrounding hills. Romans baptized the city as Bracara Augusta because it was the land of Bracari and in honor to emperor Augustus. From Bracara Augusta it became simply Braga. You are right also regarding Briga: the old city of Conímbriga it's indeed a "hill fortress of the rocky citadel". You may check it in this youtube video: m.czcams.com/video/8brfnYOXBDc/video.html&pp=ygULY29uw61tYnJpZ2E%3D It's located in Condeixa-a-Velha and it's located 16 km away from modern Coimbra (in V century with barbarian invasions from germanic people Suebi, Conimbriga was destroyed and people dispersed to the nearby roman city of Aeminium, 16 km away originally Conimbriga - funny fact is the new city lost his name Aeminium and kept the old name Conimbriga, currently the students city Coimbra with a very famous university. The people who've invaded Conimbriga, the Suebi established their capital in Bracara Augusta 😁 . As you said, there are a lot of names in the north coming from celtic Briga ("Hill"): for instance the old roman city of Brigantium, currently Bragança, a head of district in interior north of Portugal. Keep on with the good work! Congratulations 👏👏👏
"Yes, you are right. Celtic tribes lived here in the north of Portugal before Roman invasion and modern Portuguese language still reflects that. "
Celtic tribes lived in the entirety of Portugal before the Roman invasion, not just the north.
It is only today that just the north of Portugal cares about their Celticity.
The south stopped caring but they never stopped actually being Celtic.
Hey, outro bracarense! Estamos a ficar conhecidos ahahaha 😁
@@jboss1073yes, celtic occupied much of the territory. But the Portuguese Extremadura seems Tartessian; and of Conians we don't know ... YET
Então "Bragança" também é de origem celta?
@@MrBeiragua Yes, Bragança < Proto-Celtic *Brigantia (which gave Latin Brigantia).
im brazilian, but recently i took interest in this celtic roots for some brazilian culture items (!!!), such as the Rabeca (which is a very rustic fiddle) and some other things we can find mostly in the folklore of the coasts. This way i came in contact with this really weird (for me, at the time) notion that Brasil was colonized in it's early period by people from Miranda region, and when you see their musical traditions, to this day, they play a kind of BAGPIPE. That really blew my mind.
Bagpipes in Brazil sounds wild. Would like to see that!
@@BenLlywelynHe never mentioned that there’s a bagpipe tradition in Brazil. Miranda is probably a city or region in Portugal.
@@BenLlywelynno bagpipes in Brazil, the person who made the original comment was mentioning Miranda. We do have lots of rabeca though (fiddle) here in Northeast Brazil, which is often used in our folk music.
@@BenLlywelyn yeah it would, but actually there's none hahah here we have a mixture of the celtic fiddle with the spanish steel guitar (5 doubled strings, called "viola" or "viola caipira"), and they sound moorish in the melodies. it's weird (and beautiful) enough!
And yes, Miranda is a region in Northeast Portugal, bordering Galícia.
"I am from Portugal and I never realized the extent of our Celtic heritage. I was informed that the Portuguese character is also influenced by Celtic culture and traditions, such as the "Pauliteiros de Miranda". Our personality is quite distinct from that of the Spanish as we are more connected to the Atlantic than to the Iberian Peninsula. This may be a controversial idea, but I believe it is true. We are different from the Spaniards in terms of personality, and this can be attributed to our connection to the Atlantic.
Where you translated _'Pobl a lleoedd',_ it could be _"Povo e localidades",_ too.
_Povos_ means _Peoples_ as in _Nations,_ but the singular refers to all of the populace.
This is beyond cool.
Could _'Geiriau'_ be translated to _"Gíria"_ (Slang)
"Where you translated 'Pobl a lleoedd', it could be "Povo e localidades", too.
Povos means Peoples as in Nations, but the singular refers to all of the populace.
This is beyond cool."
Portuguese "povo" is usually said to be from Latin "populus" although you are correct in being suspicious of this since usually Latin "pl" becomes Portuguese "ch" (Latin pluvia > Portuguese chuva, Latin planus > Portuguese chão), so one would expect "pocho" instead of "povo". However, Welsh "pobl" securely comes from Latin "populus".
"Could 'Geiriau' be translated to "Gíria" (Slang)"
The answer to this question is "most definitely YES" and not only that, it is also the most likely origin of Portuguese "gíria" (Proto-Celtic *garyos meant "word, speech" and gave Middle Welsh "geir" meaning "word" and current Welsh "gair" plural "geiriau").
However, instead of deriving "gíria" from Proto-Celtic *garyos so naturally as you have detected, most Portuguese Academics, being ashamed of their Celtic past, simply assign an "Unknown" etymology to "gíria" and say it could be related to "geringonça" (meaning "contraption, complicated machine") which has no chance whatsoever of being correct.
My. Ben Llywelyn, "gíria" (in Portuguese meaning "slang") is another word that is clearly Celtic (from Proto-Celtic *garyos meaning "word, speech" which gave Welsh "gair" meaning "word") but denied from being Celtic by Portuguese Academics. And this word is also NOT counted in the list of 1,500 Celtic word in Portuguese.
@@jboss1073 Wouldn't 'pobl' be a loan from Latin? I understand it is believed to be a loan from Etruscan ultimately.
@@richardcook5919 That is what I said.
@@jboss1073 You're quite right, I hadn't seen the full length of your post.
In French, the old word for beer is "cervoise" similar to "cerveja" in Portuguese influenced by the Celts.
"Bière" the modern French word for beer is obviously influenced from German
Great to learn the origin of the name of one of my favourite drinks, although i'm not half of the drinker i used to be. I didn't know the French had "cervoise"! just another thing our languages have in common!
in Portuguese, the old word for window is FENESTRA, similar to FENÊTRE in French.
Oh no! I was so sure cerveja in French was “cervejè”.
@@LuisKolodin FENESTRA means crack (FRESTA), the Latin word. JANELA (Window) is the new word, like JANUA, something like a small door.
@@fabiomedeiros5356 Defenestração: ato de arremessar através da janela.
Fantastic video, when I first saw the name Evora on a sign in while driving in Portugal regardless of the spelling I thought it sounds welsh. I later visited several dolmaen, standing stones and cromlechi in that exact area. The landscape even felt like home,difficult to explain in words.
Another one of these towns that sound welsh to me is Peniche. I’ve looked on the map and it is a small Peninsula (Pen) that sticks out into the ocean.
Thanks Ben.
Ydy'r penrhyn yn (p)en uchel iawn?
Thank you.
Dolmens and cromelechi are neolithic though
@@_pedrolm Dolmens and cromelechi also happen to be very popular in the UK and Ireland, just saying...
Yes, but being in the landscape, Celts incorporate standing stones and such into their own local tales to explain them.
About ''Évora''...
▪︎ The original name was 'Ebora', which later envolved to 'Évora'.
▪︎ The etymological origin of the name 'Ebora' is from the ancient Celtic word 'ebora/ebura', the genitive plural form of the word 'eburos' (yew), the name of a species of tree, so its name means "of the yew trees."
Muito bom saber algumas das origens da nossa língua. Muito obrigado!
Very interesting. I’m Breton currently living in Porto area. For French people, even though French has many common sounds with Portuguese, hearing Portuguese is very tricky because the pronunciation conventions are totally different.
Very unique pronunciations.
Portuguese was extremely influenced by French and Provençal
In orthography.
@@BenLlywelyn No, not only, far from it.
First, accentuation in French is always on the last syllable. That’s disorienting for the French, because they then have difficulty “cutting “ the different Portuguese words.
Then continental Portuguese almost completely mute unaccentuated vowels, which is completely BAFFLING to French speakers, because in French, all vowels have an equal length and strength, like in Italian or Spanish. As a matter of fact, I understand FAR BETTER Brazilians or Angolese than Continental Portuguese, although I’ve NEVER been there. It’s SOOO curious. And the reason is straightforward: they pronounce unaccentuated vowels, so they sound more “articulate”. I suppose it’s under influence of other languages, probably of Spanish in Brazil, since all its neighbouring countries speak Spanish. I also speak Spanish and find it much easier to understand. I’m conscious I sound kind of “Spanish” when I speak Portuguese and it’s very frustrating, each time I try, that continental Portuguese ALWAYS try to reply in English. Not the way to learn..
It’s like continental Portuguese do their best to NOT be understood by foreigners, as if the Portuguese language had to be kept as some kind of secret. I read extensively on the subject and I understand the muting of vowels is a recent fad. At the same time, I can’t but compare this phenomenon to arabic, where the vowels are not even written…
@@BenLlywelyn do I understand the muting of unaccentuated vowels also takes place in Welsh?!?
Sou brasileiro e amo a língua portuguesa, sonora e bela. Muito bom saber que essa sonoridade vem das vogais que herdamos dos celtas. Como é mostrado no filme brasileiro, Tempo de Paz, essa quantidade de vogais, dá a língua portuguesa, uma musicalidade e poética singular.
O Português teve mais Influência Árabe e Latina do que Céltica
@@Sun-God2 Latina com certeza, porém, contando não apenas a influência no vocabulário (que é bem grande por parte dos árabes), mas também a influência na sonoridade como foi citado no vídeo, creio que a influência celta é maior que a árabe. Além de que é a língua ancestral dos portugueses.
Pelo seu comentário, "Tempo de paz" deve ser um filme legal. Fico sabendo.
Português é minha terceira língua. Também penso que tem influência Celta, uma situação como a influência Celta na Galícia.
Portuguese es un hermoso idioma gracias al latin
I agree, Portuguese came as a result of Vulgar Latin adopted by native Celtic people conquered by Romans, hence some celtic words got into Portuguese when it developed into a language of itself
The natural dramatic flair of the Welsh is strong with this one. Excellent content combined with gripping form.
Thank you.
Artur, was very well pronouced.
In north of Portugal, like Trás-os-Montes, the popular tradicional music is play with scotish instrument: 'gaita de foles'. Sounds very celtic.
Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous!!!!!!!!! Thank you for the fantastically well done video.
I love your channel ❤ its so calm & enriching... i learnt to love & enjoy this slow pace... it brings way more depht into any bit of information i get to learn from you ❤. Obrigado
Bem vindo.
I speak Portuguese, French, Spanish, English and I know Italian and German, and I love learn about languages. I follow your channel and I like the contribution you do regarding the Celtic languages.
Regarding this video subject, and based on what I know from the romance languages, I see many similarities between Portuguese and Catalan/Occitan that don't exist in Spanish.
I agree there are several phonetic aspects that sound Portuguese close to French, and your approach these to languages were far from main Latin domain, so they kept their substract influences rather than others. Good point.
I always thought that Portugal name derives from Porto Gallo, where Gallo represent the Celtic people as they called themselves (Galia, Gallo, Gaelic, Gaeilge, etc), its explanation coming from Latin seems pretty much maneuvers for me. No matter what I think or feel, scholars win always.
And comparing Galician-Portuguese specific word to their non equivalent ones among the other romance languages, specially Spanish (the closest one), it is clear there must be influences from the other original natives or earlier conquers (Lusitanos, Suevos, Visigodos, Mouros/Moçarabes). But honestly, it is hard to see their evidences without being masked by the dominant Roman Empire.
You gave us just few examples, we need much more than that. At least is something.
Cheers.
Thank you for watching the channel. And your experience with languages is valued.
"I always thought that Portugal name derives from Porto Gallo, where Gallo represent the Celtic people as they called themselves (Galia, Gallo, Gaelic, Gaeilge, etc), its explanation coming from Latin seems pretty much maneuvers for me. No matter what I think or feel, scholars win always."
The name "Gallo" and its cognates never existed in Iberia natively - only some Gallians entered and stationed in northeast Iberia and left some evidence of their name there, but no one thinks they were native.
The native name used in Iberia was "Celt" and its cognates Celti, Celtius, Celtiati, Celtici, Celtiatici, and so on.
Portugal used to be Portucale from Portus Cale so it was originally a "C" and more likely related to the same root for "Celt" rather than being related to a "Gal-" root.
When I was in Barcelona for the first time in 2008, I was completely blow away. I turned on the TV, out of coriosity and I thought this is a Portuguese channel and then I also turne on the radio because I was till confused. I mean I understood everything but something wasn't right and I thought this must be Portuguese, because in Portugal you have differtnt accents, depending on where you are.
Then I went to the market, I heard the same sounds and accents and I thought again, are there so many Portuguese in this area? But in general it seems that in Barcelona they speak 3 languages.
@@Fortapistone It is likely possible the earlier native people from Portugal and Catalunya regions were in direct contact in the past, before the Castellano was imposed at the end of 1400 and begin of 1500, after the Reconquista. This may explain a lot of similarities. As a native Portuguese speaker, for me Catalan sounds a mix of Spanish with much influence of French (actually Occitan feels more such influence), but retaining some recognizable aspects common in Portuguese rather than Spanish.
As a Portuguese native speaker, I always related Gallo with "galo" - which is 🐓 in Portuguese, and also a national symbol. Probably, most Portuguese speakers think the same xD
Greetings from ireland Ben. Excellent work. I can hear a celtic sound in northern Portuguese
Thank you.
Ben knows his stuff. An engaging and innovative presentation backed up by solid research.
keep it going man!
I usually don't comment on videos, but I had to, since I'm from Braga, Portugal :D Great video, I learned more about my language and the history of my town in 20 minutes than all my days in school LOL I love to learn history and languages, you just earned a subscriber!
Great football team you guys have. I like them.
@@BenLlywelyn Thank you! I never really cared all that much about football, but here in Braga it's a huge thing 😁 the school I went was actually dedicated to train players to be in Braga Football Club!
And Celtic traditions and festivals are still very much alive in some small towns here in the Minho region, despite Braga being founded by the Romans and its legacy being even stronger. We even have a festival called Braga Romana, recreating how life was when there were Romans and Celtic tribes living here 😄
Obrigado pelo vídeo!🇵🇹👌
You answered finnaly to the mistery of Portuguese! 🙏🏻👏👏👏
I'm portuguese I knew we had celtic toponyms but I didn't know we had more in common with celtic language, I just assumed it got completely latinized like lusitanian. Very informative
Wonder what's your opinion of lusitanian it's supposedly a proto-celtic language?
@@Atrudas Lusitanian can only be a normal Celtic language that simply kept the initial p-.
This was concluded by a sweeping study published last year by the Max Planck Institute which proved once and for all the impossibility of any Italic languages outside the Italic peninsula. So Lusitanian right now can only be Celtic by lack of options, meaning that by a simple process of elimination, Lusitanian can only be Celtic. Wodtko said "it is hard to find proper names in Lusitanian which are not Celtic".
Since you were not aware, Portuguese is the number one Romance languages with most Celtic words. Spanish is a close second and French is a distant third (if that).
@@jboss1073I would have though French was first or second in Celtic words. Do you have a source?
@@skellagyook The source is all over Wikipedia in its articles about the vocabulary of Portuguese, French and Spanish. There are also specific articles on Celtic words from French, Celtic words from Portuguese, and Celtic words from Spanish. I have also independently counted the Celtic words from Portuguese and French and I can confirm there are no more than 300 French words from Celtic total, having to count obsolete, archaic and dialectal words. I can also confirm that Portuguese has way more than 1,500 Celtic words since I alone was able to collect that many from nothing but modern dictionaries.
Everyone thinks France is more linguistically Celtic than Portugal but with France being in the middle of Europe they were much more likely to lose old vocabulary. On the other hand Portugal is far away from everyone else in Europe and so they more easily retain old vocabulary. If you think about it, it is not surprising Portuguese has more Celtic words than French.
@@jboss1073 What about Spanish?
Portuguese also had influences apart from Celtic also had Germanic influences just like French, it had contact with Visigothic and Suebi languages
Yes, Visigothic left some.
and Vandals
Mostly Suebians.
And Alans.
We are Visigothic,more than Celtic,since 586...
I'm Portuguese and I never knew about this. It's absolutely amazing. Now I understand a lot about our pronunciation. Why it is different from the other Romance languages.
Greetings. How do you do. Thank you very much for sharing these insights. Highly appreciated.
Congratulations for such an interesting work!
Thank you.
Northern Portugal (and Galicia) have Celtic influences in their culture, and are closer by sea to Britany, Cornwall, Wales and Ireland than they are to Rome, unlike Mediterranean Spain. You could be right.
Quão romanizado é o Norte de Portugal? Há algum trabalho e referências modernos que o trabalhem? Grato.
@@nathanaelpereira5207 comparado com o restante da península a diferença deve ser bem gritante
@@nathanaelpereira5207 As cidades mais importantes do país (antes de ser Portugal) eram maioritariamente no Norte, portanto, as antigas povoações celtas tornaram-se romanas (e depois suevas e visigoticas). Braga era das maiories cidades romanas da peninsula ibérica, por exemplo.
@@jeanjacqueslundi3502 pois então, necessito fontes como alguns alegam que é N. Portugal é celta. Parece haver outras tribos não celtas também . basear-se só nos gregos e romanos que fizeram uma descrição genérica ... a meu ver, isso só ficou no passado e se trata de um modismo celta contemporâneo, quando conceito de nacionalidade mudou totalmente. Até onde sei, houve total integração romana, embora no NO Ibérico tenham permanecido algumas estruturas sociais e resquícios de cultura, ambos celtas.
Segundo um artigo que vi há muito tempo, disponível no JSTOR sobre a romanizaçãodo Noroeste ibérico (o busco de novo se quiser) houve romanização embora menos; houve integração, mormente nas cidades, mas com estruturas familiares celtas especialmente nas vilas e campo. Os nomes foram gradualmente se tornando romanos; A religião ora se alternava entre nativa, sincrética e romana, além do cultos orientais e tudo isso há uns 2000 - 1600 anos... Ibéria foi totalmente integrada, não existe isto de celta mais não.
As a person that lives next to the river Tâmega, I got pleasantly surprised by the explanation provided for its name as I always wondered why it was called like that. I can in fact ensure that it is quite murky hahahaha. I also feel the need to add that back when I heard about river Thames, when I was younger (around 10 y.o.), the first thought that crossed my mind was that the name was simply a translation of Tâmega from portuguese to English though the actual reason behind this is way better. Great video!
Fascinating to know that the river matches its name. Thank you.
Many thanks, this video just killed me.. Great job, congratulations!
Thank you for watching!
Fantastic video!
I think the content of this video was top quality, the delivery was very well done and the aesthetic of the video was your usual seemingly effortlessly pleasant and enjoyable presentation composition of what is in fact very likely meticulously planned visual and audio execution. You are very talented in presenting modern historical topics in an interesting way from beginning to end.
The topics you touched on are all very interesting but to contribute just to one, I agree 1,500 Celtic words in Portuguese is the minimum (I alone have collected that many in a list I started from scratch by consulting normal Portuguese dictionaries in a semi-automated way). There are many examples of words that are clearly Celtic in Portuguese yet the academics won't let go from insisting they are some amalgamation of several Latin words. They usually prefer, in other words, to count Portuguese words as Latin rather than Celtic precisely because of the historical low prestige of Celtic in Portugal and Galicia. One of the top examples of this category is the word "virar" meaning "to turn" which is exactly what you would expect from Proto-Celtic "weros" meaning "crooked" which gave Welsh "gˆwyr" meaning "crooked, bent" (to "to bend, to crook, to turn") and yet academics insist it is a weird mixture of Latin "gyrare" meaning "to rotate" and Latin "vibrare" meaning "to shake, to vibrate" since Latin has no word anywhere near "virar" meaning "to turn". The word "virar" is the most common and informal way to say "to turn" in Portuguese and because of this Latin mix of two words hypothesis, they do not count it in the list of Celtic words. The chances of such a common everyday word being replaced by a strange mix of two foreign words with foreign letters ("y") are very low.
Another easy example is the Portuguese word for "chicken" which is "frango" and academics derive from "Franks" with a weird story about the Portuguese importing their chicken from France. However, the word can be plainly derived from a cognate of English "spring" with loss of "p", hence "sreng" > "srengano" > "frengão" > "frango" just like "srogna" gave "fronha" ("sr" regularly evolves to "fr" in Portuguese) so these derivations are not even hard - it is simply that academics are not interested in finding Celtic words in Portuguese.
And of course, "frango" is not counted in the list of Celtic words in Portuguese. But it clearly is.
The number of European languages that have replaced their native words for "to turn" and "chicken" with foreign words from any invaders or colonizers is quite low. These are not very likely things to happen and they turn out to have easy solutions in Celtic. A chicken is indeed a springy animal.
One last example. Portuguese for "heart", "coração", can more cleanly and directly be derived from local Celtic *kradion/*kridion instead of the artificial hypotheses needed to explain it from Latin. For example, no derivation from Latin can actually explain the "ç" in "coração" from Old Castillian (coraçon). The Celtic derivation explains it cleanly. Once again this word is not in the list of Celtic words, and populations do not usually replace their word for "heart" with words from conquerors or colonizers.
Thy would not have written these words for most of their history.
@@jboss1073it's girar in Spanish so somewhere between girare in Italian and virar in Portuguese. That makes more sense than Celtic root. And relating frango to spring seems a little tenuous.
Great essay. Irish Brighid is pronounced "Breed" - most consonants followed by "h" are approximated. This approximation also affects Welsh and Breton in different ways. I think this sound shift connects Niamh, Nimuë and Vivien in the same way that Boudicca is equivalent to Victoria. Linguists may want to fight me on this. As you pointed out, Latin and Celtic languages have many cognates and it's only through tracing sound and grammar changes that we can guess whether innovations occurred through borrowing or internal sound changes. While it's obvious that words relating to technology and religion (like ffenestr) are borrowings, it's not so clear with agricultural terms (like march - possibly an earlier loan from Latin through pre-conquest trade (or possibly vice-versa)). Very much appreciating the gentler presentation, but enough of that, it's the quality of thought and information you're putting out that keeps me coming back.
Thank you for coming back.
O is pronounced at the end of words like a long u or a double o. Like tiramisu or Choo-choo train. Including in the word obrigado.
I think you have a real handle on this. But maybe languages such as Portuguese, Welsh, Breton, Cornish etc have a common link which precedes 'Celtic'. The Roman influence reference in that case would be erroneous. Just as the Arabic might be overstated.
@@philipcurnow7990 Yes indeed, Italic, Celtic and Germanic languages share a common ancestor. Words for animals are interesting as they can also come from sub-stratum influences. To expand on horses (from a PIE verb "to run" via Germanic) - Irish capall relates to Welsh ceffyl and Latin caballus. The Gauls used epos (= equus). Cornish and Breton prefer march, which also exists in Welsh, it's cognate with Proto-Germanic *marhaz and seems to be linked to market and merchant. The context in which words originated and the direction of borrowings is often far from clear.
@@timflatus You will enjoy reading the Celto-Germanic papers by John T. Koch all over academia edu website.
Love your commentary style.
Great video, Ben! You got a new subscriber.
Wonderful news. Thank you for being here.
Hence Portuguese has phonetic differences making it distinguishable from Spanish
There is a German dialect that also is very vowal-heavy: Swabian. Celts are part of region's history there as well and were the last to be here before Germanic tribes moved in.
For your information, part of the swabish tribe colonised and actually created the kingdom of Suevia in what was the gaelecian region (north Portugal + Galicia + Asturias) with capital in the city of Braga. Some words of n modern still come from suabish such as cotovia (a bird)
@@ecm83 Also something I thought of earlier. The pronunciation sometimes is strikingly similar...
@@burkhardstackelberg1203 … suevo kingdom based in the city of Braga in northern Portugal lasted for more than 2 centuries before being defeated by wisigot kingdom. This early kingdom certainly shaped the character of independence of Portuguese throughout history to this day. Funny thing, if you take the train from Stuttgart to Heilbronn then the landscape is very similar to northern Portugal. You believe to be in the green region of Minho.
It is a great coincidence that Swabians created the Suebi kingdom in northern Portugal and Galicia, because the ancestors of the Swabians -the most southwestern Corded-Ware group in the Copper Age - were the exact same group who migrated to western Iberia and gave the Portuguese ancestors their 31% Yamnaya. On the other hand, the Spaniards instead got their 30% Yamnaya from northern French Bell-Beakers (maybe the Norwestblock). This is the reason why the Portuguese are closer to the German Swiss in "Fst" and "SNP" distances than the German Swiss are to the southern Germany Germans - their Yamnaya chunk is exactly the same.
Great video savage editing.
Ben is a humble master of editing. Every video is a treat.
Hello, just found out your channel. I find your videos incredibly informative. I learned a lot.
Some of the Portuguese words wore a little mispronounced but you are very understandable and did a great job!
Great news. Glad you are here!
Interesting. I'd like to mention that in the northern parts of Portugal we use triphthongs. The phonological differences between Portuguese and other neolatinate languages has always struck me as odd.
I'm Brazilian and live in the US. In Brasil when I was growing up in Minas Gerais I didn't hear any Spanish, so it was a surprise to meet them in the US. They couldn't understand me, but I could understand them. It's obvious they don't have as many sounds as we do, but at the beginning I thought I was being snubbed. I can also understand Italian almost 90%, and to a lesser extent French. I heard somebody say Portuguese was an older language, which is not untrue. But I never associated Celtic with it. Thank you a lot. You are very funny in an adorable way.
Kind of you Rita. Brazil has amazing food.
Great video, diolch!
For me it was really interesting, as a Spanish speaker and someone learning italian, languages had always been interesting for me.
And knowing more about Celtic languages and the influence they have in other languages is fascinating.
Was a very well done video, with a lot of thought into it.
As a German learning (Brazilian) Portuguese as the first Romance language, I was surprised by the number of words that were familiar to me, and that were not only the typical Latin roots.
Indo-European Languages share a lot, and the Suebi also left some.
Good luck
Sueve influencie from Northern Portugal
About 30 years ago I heared the Portugese talking to each other, couldn't understand a lot. But since I studied Irish Geilghe that time I felt some similarities when they spoke, like ta bèn>
Quite so about the Irish. Thank you very much.
Aewsome. I´m Brazilian and I´m living in north Portugal now. I learned a lot about my language with you, so thanks for sharing. I´ll pay more attention to these details.
Glad you enjoyed the video. Obrigado.
I love the passion, weird effects and, of course, the channel's topic... Subd!
BTW, I do speak (Brazilian) Portuguese and agree 100% with your thesis.
Thank you for subscribing.
Hello again Ben, I discovered an Irish-Welsh dictionary online recently and I immediately thought of you. I think its very important that today's Celtic languages can mingle with each other without always having English as a middle-man. Indeed, it's paramount that full-sized, public-facing dictionaries between Welsh and all major European languages are available.
Dictionaries are constructed perfectly for language learning.
This might sound weird, but as Portuguese I feel ignorant next to all the information in this video, that I'm sure took a whole lot of research and development; not to mention the very positive way the facts were presented.
I'm aware of a deep civilization connection between tribes spread all over the Atlantic coast of Europe. Even before the Celtics arrived from central Europe. Monumental places, like Stonehenge, were probably connected to the Almendres complex, close to Évora; an archaeological location probably 6000 to 7000 years old.
Language is a fascinating way to understand the development of technology and the ever lasting human spirit. Loved the video and did not know about this channel. Will subscribe and send support from beautiful Portugal ❤🇵🇹
Obrigado. Your subscription is valued. Portugal indeed has some very ancient world heritage sites.
Great! Could you please do a second part of this video? it would be great!
It would be nice, we just don't know very much.
i'm from North (arcos de valdevez/ the peneda-gerês area), and we have a Celtic festival in the summer time in the town next to us. Very interested in the history and changing culture in the northern border
Gorgeous part of the world.
Interesting point at the end about the way that Celtic words could have latinised and we'd have no clue because Italic and Celtic are more closely related than many IE language groups.
I posted above here 3 such examples of this happening - the words for heart, chicken and "to turn", namely "coração", "frango" and "virar" are all actually Celtic but counted by academics as Latin words because they do not like to recognize words in Portuguese as Celtic due to its low prestige.
" because Italic and Celtic are more closely related than many IE language groups."
This is not it.
It's actually "because Italic and Celtic look like each other in the Iron Age".
They are not actually more related. See Max Planck Institute research from the end of 2023 to understand how it was actually Celto-Germanic which existed and not Italo-Celtic which has been refuted already in 1966 by the author of the American Heritage Dictionary.
@@jboss1073 Italo-Celtic is very well established in the literature, you're just idling with your north European fantasies - go back to your Vikings.
@@pio4362 " Italo-Celtic is very well established in the literature, you're just idling with your north European fantasies - go back to your Vikings."
I actually debunk nordicists' dreams so I am the opposite of what you think. However there is simply no longer any argument in favor of Italo-Celtic that hasn't been refuted by Calvert Watkins.
On top of that, an entire team of multidisciplinary academics at the Max Planck Institute confirms Celto-Germanic was the last IE group, and that Italo-Celtic never existed.
Read the 1966 paper by Calvert Watkins instead of simply going off of yet a bunch of other academics who are also going off of other academics, everyone thinking everyone else checked the work, except no one did - so do yourself a favor and check the work.
Italo-Celtic is not "very well established", on the other hand it is "very well repeated" with those academics who repeat it being completely ignorant of the fact it has been refuted by none other than the author of the American Heritage Dictionary.
@@pio4362 " Italo-Celtic is very well established in the literature "
Please cite who defends it post Watkins 1966 refutation thereof.
This asmr is so good
I am Portuguese. I agree with your assessment of our language, and really enjoyed the way you presented the subject matter with drama and flair. Really enjoyable listening to you. I am hoping you have more videos on the Celtic origins and historical similarities between our nations. Obrigada. Beijinhos.
Obrigado.
In Breton, we also have a lot of nasal vowels, and I've always wondered whether this was due to the influence of French, or whether it was an independent development.
In any case, it seems to be a fairly old phenomenon.
The final "-añv" in Breton is pronounced like "-ão" in Portuguese.
It comes from an old "-am" and often corresponds to "-amh" in Irish.
"hañv": "summer", old Breton: "ham", from *samo
There is also "-eñv": "neñv": heaven, sky. Old Breton: "nem", from *nemos
and "-oñv". "doñv" : "tame", cognate with Latin "domō".
That French (where Gaulish was) Breton, Welsh, Irish Galician and Portuguese are all quite nasal when Spanish which grew up alongside Basque is not, makes me think it is a Celtic trait.
Shwmae! I am a native Portuguese speaker and I have a degree linguistics and I am currently doing my master's degree in linguitics as well, and I have to say: most of the things you have shown in this video either make no sense, are coincidences you can find elsewhere or are extremely superficial.
For instance, the mere number of sounds of a language does not qualify a spectrum of any kind (also, the number of phonemes you showed is quite high, Portuguese has 21 consonant phonemes (counting glides) and 13 vowel phonemes, but these numbers go higher when you count allophones, 23 consonants is the number of phones in many Brazilian varieties, for instance). Also, Portuguese preserves Latin vowels much better than many others, such as French with its diphthongs and round front vowels. So not only you are looking at numbers and ignoring the sounds themselves and their origin, but also pointing out a spectrum that doesn't exist. The Romance Languages, specially the "Western" ones (Portuguese, Catalan, Leonese, Spanish, French, Lombard, Venetian etc) had a Celtic substract, however, they all evolved from Vulgar Latin, which unfortunately destroyed the Celtic languages spoken here in the Iberian Peninsula, Gallia, Northern Italy etc, making them descendants from this Italic language only, but with some Celtic influence, of course.
Until the 19th century, Portuguese (and here I am talking only about European virieties, since this process didn't happen as much in Brazil) did not have this "Slavic-flavour" at all, since the strong vocalic reduction had not yet taken place. Before that, all virieties of Portuguese sounded more like the other Iberian languages, specially, of course, like Galician. Same thing with the "sh" sound which was an innovation that happened much later in the history of Portuguese (and in Europe as well, that is why many Brazilian virieties do not have this "sh" sound at the end of syllables). The many "S sounds at the end of syllables" you refer are extremely common across all languages it is just common sandhi.
When it comes to vocabulary, there is not much I can say, specially when it comes to toponymy. The Romans arrived and started calling places by names local people already called them. It happened in the Americas as well, many places in the USA, in Brazil, Mexico etc have native names, even though many of the original languages aren't spoken anymore. Some things in Portuguese have names of Celtic origin, but only a few, Portuguese also has many Arabic words and a few Germanic ones, which doesn't qualify Portuguese as Germanic nor Afro-Asiatic.
Now, about Lusitanian. Its documentation is very small, but it wasn't "a fusion". The data is not enough to classify it, it may be a Celtic language, an Italic language or even a language with its own branch, but we can be sure for now.
This could go on, but I think these are the main points :)
It is a hobby.
And it's a nice hobby! However, one must be cautious, many people are watching this and taking it as if it were the truth :P
Wonderful video
How interesting and challenging is the notion that we can, in present times, reconstruct a past that has left few hints of its existence. This is the true sound of the ages, the testimony that remains. Thank you.
Some of the characteristics listed here (like the final S in words producing an SH sound) are somewhat recent changes to the Portuguese language that happened in Portugal (and occasionally made their way into Brazilian Portuguese in Rio when the Royal Family moved for a while).
While it is a good connection, the fact it's almost completely absent in Brazilian Portuguese despite being a common sound in Tupi and other indigenous lamguages, hints that it wasn't in European Portuguese until a couple centuries ago. I can't find literature on this particular sound, though. I just wanted to point out that it might not be as much celtic influence as it is just a later Portuguese development, much like the shift from mora/syllable timing in BP to the more stress-timed modern EP.
(I'm using Brazilian Portuguese as an example because, even though it has its own set of sound shifts and whatnot, those mostly came from indigenous people or slaves adapting the Portuguese sounds to what they could pronounce and bringing their own sounds into it, and it's the one variety of major Portuguese dialects that got to be both colonized very early on and stay quite isolated from Portugal's influence, linguistically, except for a major episode of government influence and the Royal Family beinging some of the later changes with them, as well as the gutural French-like R sound, which was considered fancy at the time, with them when they fled from Portugal to Rio).
Makes sense, only coastal brazilian has this sound, sometimes interior in the Northeast (home of the Gê and not of the Tupi).
It can still conceivably be due to Celtic influence, although indirectly.
Prior to the mid-18th century, Portuguese Ss in coda (syllable-final) position were realized as a subform apico-alveolar [s̺], also called grave.
It has a weak hushing sound redolent of retroflex fricatives (the Sh sounds you speak of while still not being quite it). Its sound can be best described as something halfway between [s] and [ʃ].
It's still used to this day in northern Iberian languages like Asturleonese, Basque, Castilian Spanish (excluding parts of Andalusia), Catalan, Galician, and dialects of Northern European Portuguese, and in other regions where Celtic presence was presumably more strongly felt.
A similar retracted sibilant form is also used in Dutch, Icelandic, some southern dialects of Swedish, Finnish, and Greek.
If you wish to learn exactly how it would have sounded, watching the documentary below, where Portuguese writer Miguel Torga speaks of his experiences having been brought in Northern Portugal and how they influenced his writing, might give you an invaluable insight. Torga was from Trás-os-Montes, where the original pronunciation of S has been preserved and resists the phonetic changes operated thus far in the capital. Here's the link:
czcams.com/video/T7BQyqezOXw/video.html
In the mid-18th century, this subform apico-alveolar [s̺] took a step further and became a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ], a Sh sound, in certain dialects of central Portugal around the Lisbon area, while by degrees it had began to retract to a simple voiceless alveolar sibilant in Brazil (a pure S sound). The change in Brazil was consolidated by an influx of migrants who spoke languages wherein pronouncing S in coda position as [ʃ] would have been seen as quaint or nonstandard, like Italian.
"Some of the characteristics listed here (like the final S in words producing an SH sound) are somewhat recent changes to the Portuguese language that happened in Portugal (and occasionally made their way into Brazilian Portuguese in Rio when the Royal Family moved for a while). "
This is correct.
"While it is a good connection, the fact it's almost completely absent in Brazilian Portuguese despite being a common sound in Tupi and other indigenous lamguages, hints that it wasn't in European Portuguese until a couple centuries ago. I can't find literature on this particular sound, though. "
I doubt any hypothesized Tupi influence. Lower-prestige dialects do not tend to influence higher-prestige dialects.
Also consider that the average American in the United States interacts much more with Native Americans who still speak their own languages than Brazilians do, and yet, you do not see any Native American phonetic influence in English.
" I just wanted to point out that it might not be as much celtic influence as it is just a later Portuguese development, much like the shift from mora/syllable timing in BP to the more stress-timed modern EP."
It may still be a Celtic influence. Celtic is not just the language - the language is named after the people. The Celts have a natural tendency to go towards palatalization among other phonetic features. Languages are "rewound" many times to a state they were before orthographically speaking in order to "recover" the original sounds of words that have been slurred and written down in a slurred way for too long. Spanish not long ago was written much more slurred than it is now with its perfect spelling which is very modern and not a product of its history either.
My point is, it is not about "inheriting the /sh/ sound directly from the ancient Celts" so long as observing that even when the Portuguese are all pronouncing final "s" without palatalization, that they will still have a natural predisposition towards palatalizing it. You don't see that happening with most western Germanic speakers for instance, but you do see it in Germany. Each people has their natural tendencies towards phonetics.
There's no special scientific reason to think the Portuguese changed their pronunciation substantially in the last couple of centuries. In fact, the old traditional Galician dialects still spoken today suggest otherwise!
The 'SH' sound, with various nuances, is very common im Portugal and northern zones of Spain.
The same applies to the prosody, which could well have already a good deal of this stress-timed characteristic long ago...
Even the tales surrounding the pronunciation of the 'french' 'R', are not supported by scientific evidence - by the turn of the 20th Century the alveolar trilled 'R' was still overwhelmingly dominant in Portugal.
@@henriquebraga5266 I suspect that it remains simply a theory for now, it's very difficult to know for sure how the 'S' in final coda was realized in Portugal in the mid-18th century. There may well have been different variations already occurring by that time (like today). In many present instances, such 'S' is not a pure [ʃ] even for central Portugal or Lisboners, that is, not far from your interesting example of Miguel Torga...
I recommend you look for the "gaiteiros" ("bagpipers) from northern Portugal. They sound very Celtic to me...
Fascinating!
Cool, I enjoyed this. I have been learning Portuguese in Portugal for four years.
A beautiful language to learn.
@@BenLlywelyn Indeed, it is exciting and challenging, and you couldn't converse with nicer people.
Galiza, the spanish region in the north of Portugal, in which a language, galician, is spoken that is a co-dialect with portuguese, considers itself a Celtic Nation. Well, the elements that they have of celtic culture are the same that we have in the north of Portugal, so of course Portugal has a certain celtic flavour also, mainly in the north, above Mondego river.
Celts existed all over Portugal, from north to its very south.
Sure the Portuguese people under the Mondego may not care but they were equally Celtic.
But the impression i have North of Portugal is more romanized than Galicia, the roman capital of _Gallaecia_ was Braga and has North african heritage in popular Christianity too as says Moisés Espírito Santo. Open to say if im wrong
@@nathanaelpereira5207 North of Portugal or Gallaecia are more ir less the same. Same iron age remains, same societal structure.
Recently a paper from Cambridge University was published about genome. In it, they defended the possibility that the Celts from Great-Britain were not original from Central Europe, but rather from the North and Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. Central european Celts migrated first to western continental europe, and only later, by crossing the gulf of Biscay did they went from North/northwest Iberia and Bretagne to Great-Britain.
That the Celtic languages were taken to Britain by Celts from Iberia is something that even George Buchanan (1582, coined the term "Celtic languages" but made it mean "Gaelic languages" because he thought they came from the Celtici of Iberia whereas he thought the Brittonic languages came from France/Gaul) agreed on. Llhuyd and Pezron following him thought the same.
Votre approche du sujet est très sophistiquée, tout comme le charme de le présenter !
Manifique. Meric pour le regarde.
Obrigado!
Excellent! And I speak as a Professor of Linguistics.
Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Where is the refutation against Voyles and Barrack's hypothesis that there were zero laryngeals? Why do Professors of Linguistics think they are above dealing with the problems of their own models? How can we decrease the size of the ego of academic linguists so that they can focus on scientific research that is falsifiable as per Popper and not irrefutable as the current laryngeal model is?
Thank you so much for this video! I feel like there are few studies about the celtic presence in Portugal, and few people care about it. I have a lot of love for the celtic culture, and i´ve always wanted to find evidence that i might have celtic ancestors, even though today we are romance people, my attetion is always in the celtic traditions, mythology and history. I even did a dna test to find any evidence, to connect to them. Not suprising i got a 85% portuguese, 5% english and 4% north african the rest is a low mixture of a lot of different places in europe. And i keep scratching my head, since the evidence of the celts in portugal is very thin in my opinion, not as clear as other places. Again, thank you for helping the research!
You are welcome. Part of the problem is that so many of the Celts chose suicide rather than defeat, so we have very little evidence from the Roman period onwards about these Celtic speaking people. But we also know that not all of them did die and Roman sources clearly show a Celtic Language was being spoken in Galicia and northern Portugal.
The narrative in Portugal is everything comes from Latin, most Portuguese scholars completely ignore other influences like the Celtic, our obvious Arabic legacy also faces a huge censorship. These things are all taboo in Portugal.
"And i keep scratching my head, since the evidence of the celts in portugal is very thin in my opinion, not as clear as other places. "
How did you conclude that?
It is in fact the opposite of truth - people who called themselves Celt as per archaeological evidence only existed in Portugal and nowhere else in the whole European continent.
@@paulocastrogarrido3499 "The narrative in Portugal is everything comes from Latin, most Portuguese scholars completely ignore other influences like the Celtic"
Correct.
"our obvious Arabic legacy also faces a huge censorship."
Incorrect. Academics are champing at the bit for the opportunity to say that Portuguese has many non-European words and is therefore "diverse" and we should therefore "welcome foreigners". Maybe you missed that tendency.
I just saw a movie spoken in Irish and I was very surprised how some words were pronounced exactly how we do it here in North Portugal. Great video.
Brazilian Portuguese is (and it sounds like) 16th to 18th century European Portuguese. European Portuguese has gone astray while Brazilian Portuguese has changed very little since then. Besides, it is easier for a Portuguese speaker to understand Spanish or Italian rather than the opposite. Some sounds of modern European Portuguese (the "sh" when pronouncing the final "s") does not occur in most Brazilian accents (except for most of the the coast, with closer contact with European Portuguese immigrants and merchants). "Braga" (Portuguese town) used to be "Bracara Augusta"; "Évora" was known as El-Borah or Al-Borah, but it must have been an Arabic pronounciation of a pre-existing Évora (existing since Roman times) with its Celtic name.
Congratulations on such a nice job! I really enjoyed it!
The Roman name was Ebora
I see a bunch of these comments around youtube before but yet without any proof of such. I'm not denying that eu pt and br pt sounded more alike at some point mind you but to say that Brazilian variety is basically the same as european version from centuries ago sounds to me to be a bit of a stretch. You've got the indigenous tribes, african slaves and all the other foreigners who came from around the world to Brazil who all spoke their own languages adopting Portuguese how is all of this not supposed to have a huge impact on the language and change it throughout time?
Besides it's typically agreed upon that the most conservative way of speaking Portuguese is the one spoken in the north of Portugal, the northen accent
Many of the words you mentioned as Portuguese are also in use in Spain, so it blew my mind!
In spanish minino means a kitten instead of a child. Probably latinized to resemble latin minus.
Also, I had no idea that cerveza in spanish came from Celtic and not Latin. In romanian we call it bere, and in Italian I believe they say birra, which are cognates with English beer, so only the iberian romance languages use cerveza (or cerveja).
FASCINATING
Muchos gracias.
"so only the iberian romance languages use cerveza (or cerveja)."
Indeed, in French it's bière.
So this is a good example of how Portuguese has a larger and more common Celtic vocabulary for normal everyday things than French does.
@@jboss1073 why is that though?
@@norielgames4765 Because in actual fact Celts occupied the majority of the Iberian peninsula, all of it except its Levant and its Basque area.
On the other hand Celts occupied the minority of France/Gaul, namely only the two cities of Narbo and Massilia in the south of France, Gallia Narbonensis.
Everywhere else in France they were not Celts but Galatians according to Strabo and Siculus who corrected Julius Caesar's description and division of territories.
Now they still did speak Celtic language all over Gaul, but the majority of Galatians in Gaul spoke it with their usual Frankish/Germanic accent and hence when they switched to Germanic language with the Franks they naturally preferred words that sounded more natural for them - and through this preference they replaced several of their native Celtic vocabulary with equivalent Germanic vocabulary that was more natural for them to pronounce.
This is why French today only has 250 Celtic words at the very most and having to count all obsolete and archaic words as well as all local French dialectal words, whereas Portuguese has at least 1,500 Celtic words only counting modern words that all academics agree are Celtic which are actually not all of them by a long shot.
I think in French they have the word cervoise, which is a somewhat archaic type of light-coloured wheat beer. In Hungarian beer is sőr, which is pronounced shurr and probably comes from the same roots . The Italian word birra is probably of Germanic origin. I think in Spanish slang you can also say birra. The French say biere.
I'm crying lol
I've been studying Celtic history since I was a teenager , but I'm a Brazilian, Portuguese descendant. I love studying the evolution of my language
Tears of joy.
Very Nice
Lots of love
From São Paulo
Obrigado, Tristan.
Hi. Thanks for the video. Amazing to know a lit bit more os my language origins. We have notion of the celtics here and very few name but not to the extended you presented in the video. One thing that everyone can notice if they know the celtic culture is the mix, even in roman times, of the roman an celtic music and way of living specialy in the northern of the country. And stangely as it my sound everytime Iear some king of celtic music ot just resonates with me and I simply can't explain why, it just does. It's like it is "enbeded in my DNA" 😅
I am glad Portugal is there as an independent state to remind us that Iberia is not 1 culture. It is beautiful.
Im from the south of Portugal, here we have a type of accent, and up north you have a different one. I have family in both regions, near Évora and Braga, but smaller towns, so the accent is stronger, im used to listening to both
Today on TV i heard people from Iceland speak their language, and it sounded like the accent from the north of Portugal
Of course it was not the same, what i mean is when you are at a distance where you can hear something, but not understand what is being said, it sounds similar.
Like the same that happens when you hear russian at a distance, and it somehow sounds like it might be portuguese. I also dated an ucranian girl who spoke russian with her parents, and when she was far away from me speaking to them, it sounded like background portuguese talk
Fascinating note about your Ukrainian woman there. Interesting.
I met a German who said the Portuguese nasal A, in words like 'mão', came from Swabian German, as they occupied the Northwest of the Iberian peninsula after the fall of the Roman Empire. Seems plausible, and I wonder if the S with sound of Z before vowels (in the middle of words only) and the S pronounced in Portuguese accent also came from German, as they are completely different from other romance languages.
"I met a German who said the Portuguese nasal A, in words like 'mão', came from Swabian German, as they occupied the Northwest of the Iberian peninsula after the fall of the Roman Empire."
That could to be the case.
The Suebians brought more nasalization on top of what the native Celts had.
The Germanic way to pronounce words is both responsible for the French sounds from the north of France and likely for some of the way Portuguese is pronounced.
Excellent video! A lot of interesting thoughts and inputs along with up to date facts. Well done!
There are so many pseudo-scholars in this comment section. I have no idea how a person can write their limited "research" or feelings as facts.
Thank you. As for the pseudo scholars - I invite anyone to make a video on the same subject and see how much work it takes!
Great video, the Ibero Celts have always fascinated me, even took a trip to Galicia years ago. One thing I’ve always wondered is whether the Northern Portuguese habit of pronouncing words containing “V” with “B” e.g. “Vaca” as “Baca” (Cow), whether this is a remnant of its Celtic past, or something entirely non-related.
Spanish has it too in some dialects.
"One thing I’ve always wondered is whether the Northern Portuguese habit of pronouncing words containing “V” with “B” e.g. “Vaca” as “Baca” (Cow), whether this is a remnant of its Celtic past, or something entirely non-related."
You are correct, that is a remnant of its Celtic past, consult this rule of the Gallaecian language whereby it transformed the -w- sound into a -β- sound:
*-lw- and *-rw- become -lβ-, -rβ- (as in Irish):[15] MARTI TARBUCELI < *tarwo-okel- 'To Mars of the Hill of the Bull', but Celtiberian TARVODURESCA.
Seeing some of the examples, I instantly thought of examples in Slovenian, my mother tongue. Before our Slavic ancestors, the Celtic Norici used to lived here. Slovenian uses some Celtic words like kladivo for hammer (from Celtic kladiwos). Many place names in Slovenia, historic and modern, most likely come from Celtic. Karantanija (Carantania), Kranjska (Carniola), Kranj (Carnium), Krka, Celje (Kelea). They remind me of Scottish and Irish place names that include Cairn, Kirk-, Kil-, Car-/caer ... There is also a valley named Tamar in the Julian Alps. Supposedly the Noric language was close to the Celtic spoken in Gaul, so P Celtic like Welsh. I wonder if you could find more similarities with Welsh? Interestingly Slovenian and Gaelic both keep the dual grammatical number (in addition to singular and plural), which other Slavic languages have lost.
Sorbian has dual numbers too.
@@BenLlywelyn indeed, Sorbian does as well. Interesting that this rather archaic feature was kept on the periphery of the Slavic dialect continuum, while the bigger core languages moved away from it.
"Celje (Kelea)."
That is the same word (cognate) used in the -gal of Portugal which came from "cale" (Portus Cale).
It is very likely to be the same root as the "Cel-" from "Celt".
We have the word "clava" in portuguese, means mass or club, probably have the same Celtic origin
@@campones... "clava" is from Italic and from a different root *kel "to drive, impel, beat".
My family comes from the Minho region of Portugal. The last Celtic stronghold in the Hibernian Peninsula (Citânia de Briteiros) is just 20 minutes from the village of my grandparents. Portuguese, as a layperson, is a mix of Latin, Celt , Ladino and Arabic.
"The last Celtic stronghold in the Hibernian Peninsula"
You mean Iberia Peninsula.
Hibernia is Ireland.
"Portuguese, as a layperson, is a mix of Latin, Celt , Ladino and Arabic."
Stop repeating what the far-left wants to hear.
Ladino and Arabic make up a very small portion of words and almost NO WORDS used by Portuguese speakers daily.
Enoguh with that.
Portuguese is Latin and Celtic mixed together.
Beautiful area.
YES! Thank you for saying what came to my mind immediately after reading this nonsensical piece of misinformation. @@jboss1073
I am a native Portuguese Speaker from Brazil I found fascinating how many similarities I noticed between Portuguese here in the other side of the Atlantic and the Celtic in northern Iberia.
Interesting.
This feels right. The way we drag the R in the north of Portugal sounds very Welsh to me.
Two interesting words that come to my mind : magusto which means "roasted chesnuts", and in the north there is this dark bred called "broa" (pronunced "browa")
The etymology of "broa" likely comes from Germanic.
I find The Euskera to be very similar in terms of phonetics to Portuguese.
There is a sort of a political current here that denies some Portuguese their Celtic heritage due to an old Christian Agenda,but Lusitanian was revived.
_'Leukitanea Moe treba Inte!'_
_'Lusitania is my Home!'_
200 years of war with Rome before we were conquered, unbelievable would be if there were no traces left, despite the elites who came to rule the land.
Great analysis.
"There is a sort of a political current here that denies some Portuguese their Celtic heritage due to an old Christian Agenda,but Lusitanian was revived."
The joke is on the deniers - Lusitanian was a Celtic language and the Lusitanians were a Celtic people who called themselves "Celti" in their own tombstones, votive altars and personal ceramic items.
@@jboss1073but they were romanized. The celtic is kept in the deep layer
@@ateginadeusaportuguesadano458 The grammar, but not necessarily every day rituals, music, and lore. Heritage is much more than language, and even the extent to which they actually influenced the Portuguese, or even the Romans for that matter, is debatable, even if some people here believe the debate is closed.
@@ateginadeusaportuguesadano458 You're called _Ataegina,_ online. I'd say the Romans weren't 100% successful in erasing the identity of the people that lived here 2000 years ago. ;)
Several instances of the Virgin Mary are a proxy for Ataegina, adopted by the newly converted when conversions were forced on the pagans. Especially those you find on the top of mounds (Ermidas) near a village that used to be a phallic stone dedicated to fertility and the moon. You're certain to find a statue of the Virgin in those places, either on top of said stone or as a replacement.
The church of Nª Senhora do Monte in Lisbon still has that Celtic votive relic inside of the chapel located on the tallest of their hills. According to the local lore, the stone is imbued with miraculous properties that confer fertility to women who sit on it. (Does that occur often in Christianity?)
If you know where to look, their habits are still traceable to modern Portuguese populations.
@@lordcommandernox9197 yes i wonder who culturally influenced more: celtic or roman in Portugal.
Very unique idea!
So many welsh sounds and words are so similar or identical to romanian, it is so strange.
Nice.
Wow, what a smooth voice
Esmwyth - smooth
When I studied Portuguese, French was the most helpful language, even more than Spanish.
I’m French and I speak Spanish and, OK, it helps me READ Portuguese, but DEFINITELY NOT HEAR it correctly, at least not EUROPEAN Portuguese.
You should come to Galiza and have a look to toponyms. You would be shocked.
Mutuo obrigado! Portuguese was an easy next language decision for me after Spanish and mother English
For all those trying to connect the phonology of celtic and portuguese, the starting point is to put aside modern continental portuguese and rather consider galician-portuguese from middle ages, much more “primitive” phonetically. As an example, listen to:the Cantigas de Santa Maria, from XIII century, like this one: czcams.com/video/HuPLZdfteEY/video.htmlsi=XmqGrLjIS0VTiace
Galicia was "re-Celticised" during the Dark Ages. Romano-Britons fleeing the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain fled to Europe. Some became the ancestors of the Bretons in France and others fled to the Galician region of Spain. The area they lived in Spain was referred to as "Britonia". During the 6th Century they had a bishop called "Maeloc // Malloc" which sounds Brythonic. These people LATER sadly lost their language and identity. Refer to the article called "Britonia" in Wikipedia. It opens up whole new subject. Why did these people flee to Galicia? Was there still a Celtic culture and language still alive in Galicia at the time?
A fascinating video to make sometime.
"Galicia was "re-Celticised" during the Dark Ages. Romano-Britons fleeing the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain fled to Europe. "
Not at all. Those Romano-Britons were so few people, they did not make any impact in the local culture which was already only Celtic and therefore plenty Celtic enough that it did not need any further "re-Celticisation" from a Britain who never called themselves "Celts".
"Why did these people flee to Galicia? Was there still a Celtic culture and language still alive in Galicia at the time?"
Obviously, yes. What else could there be natively in western Iberia after the Romans left?
That's a lie,Galiza wasn't "re-celtised" at all,it happened in brittany,but in Galiza the population remained Latin speaking ,the last Celts were in Asturias .
Eye opening, a mind teaser; beyond interesting. I am s lusitanian, born in Holy Land(aka Portugal). The Portuguese elocution, and many words "depart" significantly from the other "sister/cousin' languages (once upon a time I was fluent in French and Italian....
As a brazillian i just want to say how grateful i am that you told me something about my own language that i would never know, you are amazing, linguists are amazing, i'm just a polyglot, but you, you are a king.
Thank you for your support. Appreciated.
12:49 The river Douro comes from the fact it had gold probably. As the name of gold in portuguese is ouro, and the way you say it's from gold is: é de ouro, and in the northern parts of portugal they usually combine the "de" with the word after, ending with D'ouro or, simplified Douro( Rio de ouro -> Rio Douro )
"The river Douro comes from the fact it had gold probably. "
That is not very probable. It is clearly from Proto-Celtic *dubros "water".
Rivers that give gold are not usually named after "gold" because what happens is first a river is found and named, and only much later is it found that the river has gold.
So historically it is very improbable that "Douro" means "river of gold".
@jboss1073 So I just did a little research, the inhabitants defended that rocks that were rolling through the river, that resembled gold were indeed gold, so they named it the river of gold.
@@offguy9939 Dour in Britonnic means liquid like saliva. Dourenn is water. The Douro CLEARLY takes its name from that celtic root and has NOTHING to do with gold…
@@sacredceltic literally look it up
@@offguy9939 "So I just did a little research, the inhabitants defended that rocks that were rolling through the river, that resembled gold were indeed gold, so they named it the river of gold"
That story sounds completely made-up.
There is no documentation of it having happened.
If there were "inhabitants" near a "river" then they would have ALREADY named the river EFORE they would have seen "rocks that were rolling through the river".
Just THINK THIS THROUGH with your OWN HEAD.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to name a river after ANYTHING that requires careful observation since rivers are FIRST named right when they are FOUND and not after living some time near them.
De fato o português do Brasil é mais parecido com o português originalmente falado nos séculos XVI e XVII em Portugal também possui muito do Galego atual.