Mastodawn

celtgreeklatin Aug 3, 2025

Diagram comparing the Celtic, astronomical and meteorological calendars
Author: Ccferrie (CC BY-SA 4.0)

#celtic #calendar #gaulish #seasons #festivals #astronomy #wheeloftheyear #meteorology

celtgreeklatin May 5, 2025

The Coligny #calendar is a bronze plaque with an inscribed calendar, made in #Roman #Gaul in the 2nd century CE. It lays out a five-year cycle of a lunisolar calendar, each year with twelve lunar months. An intercalary month is inserted before each 2.5 years. The lunar phase is tracked with exceptional precision, adjusted when necessary by a variable month, and the calendar uses the 19-year Metonic cycle to keep track of the solar year. It is the most important evidence for the reconstruction of an ancient #Celtic calendar.
It was found in 1897 in #France, in Coligny, Ain (46°23′N 5°21′E, near Lyon). It was engraved on a bronze tablet, preserved in 73 fragments, that was originally 1.48 metres (4 ft 10 in) wide by 0.9 metres (2 ft 11 in) tall, equivalent to 5 x 3 Roman feet. It is written in #Latin inscriptional capitals and numerals, but terms are in the #Gaulish language.
Source: Wikipedia

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Bigger file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Calendrier_de_Coligny_-_BR.001_-_Mus%C3%A9e_Lugdunum.jpg

File:Calendrier de Coligny - BR.001 - Musée Lugdunum.jpg - Wikipedia

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Michael Meckler Feb 25, 2025

I suggested that the decline in Gaulish writing in the 1st c CE cannot necessarily be seen as a decline in language vibrancy, comparing the status of other nonliterate indigenous languages in the Roman empire.

But I left the question open on what the ‘psychological shift’ may have been for those literate Gaulish speakers who stopped seeing a purpose in writing the language during the early Roman principate.

Anyone here have any suggestions?

@antiquidons @histodons

#language #literacy #Gaulish #RomanEmpire #epigraphy #LatinLanguage #linguistics #CelticStudies

Michael Meckler Feb 25, 2025

Despite what I post on this platform, my life is not all Basset Hounds and gardening. (Well, the Basset Hound does often manage to make my life entirely about him.)

I still occasionally carry out some academic research, and I spoke yesterday to the Changelings linguistics group here at Ohio State on the subject of ‘Gaulish literacy’.

In looking at the decline in surviving writing in Gaulish during the 1st c CE, I worked from Roman historian Ramsay MacMullen’s famous 1982 essay on ‘The epigraphic habit in the Roman empire’, where Ramsay attempted to explain the decline in Latin epigraphy from the mid 3rd c CE as being connected to ‘some very broad psychological shift’.

(toot continues: 1/2)

@antiquidons
@histodons

#language #literacy #Gaulish #RomanEmpire #epigraphy #LatinLanguage #linguistics #CelticStudies

Glyn Moody Jan 25, 2025

Roman curse tablets - https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=68131 "they discovered that it contained an inscription in #Gaulish, an extinct Celtic language." #linguistics