Know it all kids
Aug. 27th, 2009 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
treecatSo this girl in my room (age unknown - guessing between 24 and 35 so not THAT young, but it makes a better title), has been teaching English here and there and traveling around.
She started with the insistence that they do NOT speak spanish in basque country. Implication is that they don't even know Spanish. We'll see. My emails in Spanish have been answered in Spanish.
She also then vehemently insisted (which led to her mentioning the English teaching background) that Basque and Celtic are related. Basque is not Indo-European, Celtic is. Then she was quibbling about whether Celtic is a dead language. When I said there's a revival in Wales and parts of Ireland still speak Irish, she started making the point that languages evolve, so she doesn't mean the several modern languages, only the ancient original Celtic.
Still that's not related to Basque either.
She said her Irish friends talk about their having come from Spain and I did allow that the Book of Invasions mentions such. Quite likely the Irish are related to the Basques from a pre-Celtic time. The book of invasions involves 5 waves of invasions after all. (btw when I had a coworker from Dublin he insists they were taught the Book of Invasions as history in school)
So sure the people in the remaining Celtic countries - Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Man (there's another, what am I forgetting?) may be biologically related to the Basques (http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/lingland/faqbadcelt.html), but the Celtic language is definitely indo european, look at the numbers! (http://rjschellen.tripod.com/CelticNums.htm)
Next she'll be telling me the basque druids built stonehenge? She knows cuz like she's an English teacher!
She started with the insistence that they do NOT speak spanish in basque country. Implication is that they don't even know Spanish. We'll see. My emails in Spanish have been answered in Spanish.
She also then vehemently insisted (which led to her mentioning the English teaching background) that Basque and Celtic are related. Basque is not Indo-European, Celtic is. Then she was quibbling about whether Celtic is a dead language. When I said there's a revival in Wales and parts of Ireland still speak Irish, she started making the point that languages evolve, so she doesn't mean the several modern languages, only the ancient original Celtic.
Still that's not related to Basque either.
She said her Irish friends talk about their having come from Spain and I did allow that the Book of Invasions mentions such. Quite likely the Irish are related to the Basques from a pre-Celtic time. The book of invasions involves 5 waves of invasions after all. (btw when I had a coworker from Dublin he insists they were taught the Book of Invasions as history in school)
So sure the people in the remaining Celtic countries - Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Man (there's another, what am I forgetting?) may be biologically related to the Basques (http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/lingland/faqbadcelt.html), but the Celtic language is definitely indo european, look at the numbers! (http://rjschellen.tripod.com/CelticNums.htm)
Next she'll be telling me the basque druids built stonehenge? She knows cuz like she's an English teacher!
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 08:25 am (UTC)The Irish came from Galicia.
I think that they were from somewhere else before they were from Spain also.
There's some thought that some of the European Indo-european people came up out of the Black Sea basin when that got filled in ten thousand years ago or so, or were displaced by people who did. Then different waves went west at different times.
Before that, of course, they were from the (then temperate) Arctic.
It's still a bit confused.
The Basques, on the other hand, have always been there. And there is a distinct Basque look. I suppose the Indoaryan immigrants might have bred in with them.
.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 08:35 pm (UTC)Anyway, I read this great book which covers the spread/evolution of language and culture in Europe and you might be interested in it too -
"In Search of the Indo-Europeans", by J.P. Mallory
A fascinating read, I can highly recommend it. But I will warn you, you'll want to not put it down and the reading is intense. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 07:45 pm (UTC)And to get even more obscure - remember "Otzi" the ice man found some years ago in the hills of the Swiss/Italian border? When his DNA was tested he was a closer match to modern people living in Basque contry than anywhere else!
Lol!, I could go on for hours!