Talk:Gaulish

Modern Gaulish (2)

For several days I have been tirelessly trying to add information about Modern Gaulish in the "Modern usage" section. At the moment, at least two people have already rejected this decision, which I personally do not understand. Each time I tried to improve my mini-article to the required level. Now, I am completely bewildered and do not understand why my mini-article is being deleted. Considering that this is essentially my first work on Wikipedia, I do not yet have much experience in creating and editing articles. Please help me and tell me what exactly is wrong in my mini-article about the Modern Gaulish language. Celtoi (talk) 00:31, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Please see the earlier discussion section on #Modern Gaulish above, as well as this discussion about an earlier attempt at creating a separate article about this. The short answer is, we can't have coverage of this revival attempt as long as there is no substantial coverage of it in reliable, independent, published sources. All the sources you cited for your additions were self-published material by the reconstruction's inventor; that doesn't count. When I last looked (a couple of years ago) there evidently was zero reliable outside coverage of this effort; so far I have no reason to believe that this situation has changed. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:00, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. I already knew about the previous attempt, but did not think about the fact that the sources should be independent. Now I understand. But anyway, I think it’s quite strange to deny the existence of something despite its [objective existence]. I will discuss this in the Modern Gaulish community and try to come back when we will have an independent literature. Thank you very much, you clarified my confusion. Celtoi (talk) 15:06, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Not reporting about something does not mean "denying" its existence. It's just that independent sources don't even bother to talk about it—why should we, then? –Austronesier (talk) 17:27, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello. I'm here to ask you a big question - how much articles do we need? Is 1 article enough? Or we need 2,3,4 or more? Celtoi (talk) 13:28, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean to say you're trying to push for creating more coverage out there in "your" community in order for it to cross the bar of Wikipedia's notability criteria? I'm afraid if that's what you're planning to do, you're going at it from an entirely wrong angle. At Wikipedia, we want our coverage to reflect outside, independent academic interest. We don't want that outside interest to be fabricated for the sake of Wikipedia. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:02, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that academic interest essentially begins with Wikipedia. We found one person who decided to write an article about Modern Gaulish. We did not persuade him to do this, this is his personal decision, considering that he is essentially not a member of our community. I hope this can be considered academic interest. Celtoi (talk) 10:14, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello. You didn't answer my question about the sources. Now we have 2 independent sources created without our intervention. Is that enough? Do we need more? Or not? If yes, we will seek for more articles, because one article we found in internet, we didn't know it existed. Celtoi (talk) 11:16, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm not going to help you here. The whole way you're talking about this matter, about "us" and what "we have" and what "we need" and what is "enough", suggests to me an entirely wrong-headed approach to the whole topic. You are here with a promotional agenda, you want to use the references as a pretext to push your group interests into the article, and that is simply not how any Wikipedian ought to go about things. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:18, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Okey, maybe I need to say this in other words.

Now, "we" have 2 independent articles. Okey, not "we", maybe "the world" has 2 independent articles about Modern Gaulish. Is that number normal? Do "the world" need more articles about Modern Gaulish to create an article about it on Wikipdeia? We don't need to promote our language, we just need to tell about us. That's how all the articles on Wikipdeia works. They are telling about somethig, and this mini-article in "Modern usage" section will tell about the Modern Gaulish language. I will try to write as neutral article as possible. Because I know that local interests are unacceptable. So please, answear my question, and as a real Wikipedia editor, please tell me what else we need for at least a mini-article in the “modern usage” section. Celtoi (talk) 09:52, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I am not going to give a personal opinion on the matter at stake, but I have been following the discussion. As a professional linguist, working on grammatical typology and issues of translation, I would like to simply add a note for Future Perfect, about Celtoi's use of "we". In this case, part of the misunderstanding is due to false friends between French and English. Although Celtoi hasn't said that, I can detect that he must have French as his first language (right?), and the reason I can say so is precisely due to his overuse of we in English. This is a well-known problem of French speakers who spontaneously calque their use of the French pronoun on and map it onto English we. I often hear or read French colleagues who, when speaking or writing in their (non-native) English, will say things like “We know well that Mandarin is a tonal language”, not realizing that in this case, colloquial English would use a passive or impersonal construction “It is well known that Mandarin is a tonal language”. [Sometimes I noticed these translation mistakes created misunderstandings in international conferences, e.g. sounding like the speaker was boasting about his own knowledge, when they only meant it as a general statement.] Likewise, French speakers who are not-so-fluent speakers of English would say/write “We have five distinct articles that describe Tibetan pronouns”, which English would rather say “There are five distinct articles that describe...” (or even better, “Five distinct articles describe Tibetan pronouns”). With such turns of phrases, for English hearers it always sounds like the speaker is including themself in the group (suggesting they were one of the authors of those five articles on Tibetan), but in reality this is a typical misunderstanding due to the ambiguity of French on; the we here is really a case of mistranslation.

Thus, when Celtoi wrote Now we have 2 independent sources created without our intervention. Is that enough? Do we need more? Or not? If yes, we will seek for more articles, because one article we found in internet, we didn't know it existed., his massive overuse of we hurts the eyes of an English speakers, and sounds like he is obsessively referring to some kind of group (of which he would be a member); this explains Future Perfect’s reaction. But I am convinced this is largely a problem of mistranslation (i.e. non-idiomatic use of the English language by Celtoi). In a way, this is what Celtoi is trying to express in his latest message: Now, "we" have 2 independent articles. Okey, not "we", maybe "the world" has 2 independent articles about Modern Gaulish. Is that number normal? Do "the world" need more articles about Modern Gaulish → This is his way of trying to express the impersonal use of French on, which is ambiguous between a true "we" pronoun, and an impersonal use: We have 2 independent sources simply meant There are 2 independent sources. And even more clearly: Do we need more? is here an inclusive we, meaning Are more sources needed (by wikipedia as a whole)?.

I hope this note helps clarify the misunderstanding between Future Perfect and Celtoi: the latter's wording should not be over-interpreted. It is not the case that Celtoi is constantly referring to a group who would like to push an agenda; most of his uses of "we" actually stand for impersonal or passive-voice constructions in English.

As for the matter itself, I do not have a strong opinion. If all the sources provided are written by the same authors, I can see how this could be an issue. If the sources have different authors (or were published in different venues), then why not mention Modern Gaulish. -- Best, Womtelo (talk) 10:44, 18 November 2023 (UTC).

Sorry, Womtelo, but I think your intervention regarding "we" and "on" is missing the point. Celtoi's "we" wasn't a generic "on" on any rational reading of his postings. When he was saying that "I will discuss this in the Modern Gaulish community and try to come back when we will have an independent literature", or "We don't need to promote our language, we just need to tell about us", or "one article we found in internet, we didn't know it existed", or "We did not persuade him to do this", he was very clearly and unambiguously referring to a specific group of people, of which he is a member, a group that represents the revivalist movement in question and would be the essential object of this coverage, and which at the same time, through him, exerts its efforts to have this coverage increased. There is no other way of reading what he wrote. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:24, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you that some of his "we" were about his group; but not all of them. So several instances of "what do we need" were really equivalent to English "What do you need / What is needed?"; I am sure of that. Unfortunately, Celtoi's confusing use of we has increased the confusion about his motivations. -- Womtelo (talk) 17:04, 18 November 2023 (UTC).

It's a little rude to talk about who's listening. Celtoi (talk) 10:06, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks to Womtelo for clearing up a potential misunderstanding surrounding the partial overlap of French on and English we. Have a look all at my user page: I advocate for Clusivity; this kind of misunderstanding can't happen in Enggano or Mwotlap ;)

But back the main question. @Celtoi: please keep in mind that this article is about Gaulish, the quite fragmentarily attested language of the ancient Gauls that ceased to be spoken one and a half millenia ago. Modern Gaulish is a revivalist project that owes its existence to this ancient language, but represents a different topic. This is important in order not to reverse the direction of perspective. So far, Fut.Perf. has talked about general requirements of sourcing before we even can mention something in Wikipedia (= reliable, independent, published sources). What also needs to be considered is the relevance of something for a specific topic. As a simple rule, when no single reliable source about topic A mentions topic B, it means that there is little to no reason to mention topic B in the article about topic A (except maybe in a "See also" section), even if topic A plays an important role for topic B.

So translated into an answer for the question posed here: only if sources about the ancient language Gaulish start to take note of the Modern Gaulish project, we can include a mention of it here. WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. If a revivalist project gets scholarly attention e.g. in journals about constructed languages, or is discussed as a socio-cultural phenomenon, we would rather include this information in articles about constructed languages, or in articles covering the agents of the socio-cultural phenomenon. It takes a long way before a revivalist project becomes an essential part in the literature about a language that once ceased to be passed on and spoken, as e.g. in the case of Cornish. –Austronesier (talk) 11:59, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer, that cleared things up a bit. In this case, it would be better to look at the full wiki article on Modern Gaulish. So, I will try to create an article that includes absolutely everything: grammar, phonetics, ways to form new words, etc.

Indeed, the revival project takes decades.

“We” already have two independent scientific articles, so I can start creating a full-fledged article, although I understand that 2 articles will not be enough.

In any case, I realized that there is currently no place for Modern Gaulish in article about the Gaulish language. Celtoi (talk) 14:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Gallo-Greek

I am continually in need of a link for Gallo-Greek (as it's usually expressed; but seems more like Greco-Gaulish to me) when posting content about inscriptions in southern Gaul. It isn't so helpful to link to the only section with a Greek heading, which is just an alphabet table. Would it be feasible to (A) move some of the text on the historical Greek background scattered in at least three places to serve as introduction to the section on Greek script for Gaulish, or (B) more simply, retitle the blandly labelled section "Early period" to "Gallo-Greek writing"? Because that's almost entirely what that section is about. I would hesitate to do that without consensus here. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:57, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

How was /j/ written in Gallo-Greek?

— kwami (talk) 01:30, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Probably just iota? see ΕΙꙌΡΟΥ eiōru [ejoːru] in the inscription reproduced. -- Womtelo (talk) 10:07, 21 January 2026 (UTC).

Thanks. I didn't want to assume. — kwami (talk) 10:09, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Source needed for Vulgar Latin claim

The main text quotes two sources stating that in the fifth century AD, Gaulish nobles are adopting eloquent Latin in the style of Cicero. There is no mention of Vulgar Latin anywhere in the main text. If an editor wishes to state that there was a change to Vulgar Latin, then please provide a source. ~2026-24272-86 (talk) 21:20, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Those quotations have nothing to do with what language Gaulish was replaced by. They are quite orthogonal to that issue. They are barely even relevant to the question until when Gaulish was spoken, as the article may make it appear. These quotations are merely making the point that some individuals managed to achieve mastery of classical Latin, as a sign of high learning, despite having lived in an overall barbaric provincial environment. It is a matter of interpretation whether the barbaricness of that environment was characterized by people literally still speaking Gaulish, or simply a provincial form of Latin that people from the metropolis might identify as "Celtic"-influenced. Either way, they have absolutely nothing to do with the question of what the general population began speaking after ceasing to speak Gaulish. That this new language was Latin is of course beyond question (what else could it have been?); that it must have been "Vulgar" Latin rather than learned Classical Latin is so blindingly obvious we shouldn't expect sources to explicitly spell it out – "Vulgar" Latin being, by definition, that form of the language that the large majority of the population spoke at that time. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:01, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. This seems obvious to me too: a language shift to "Latin" can only mean a shift to "Vulgar Latin" (i.e. spoken varieties of Latin). -- Womtelo (talk) 09:20, 2 May 2026 (UTC).

I'm going to revert the wording of that sentence to what it was before. Regardless of whether the obvious triviality of "Gaulish in Western Europe was supplanted by Vulgar Latin" deserves better sourcing, it was certainly better than the version we have now, "Sources in the fifth century AD mention a shift to Latin". Because that new version is plainly wrong, and a lot more WP:OR than anything the anon user found fault with in the old one. The sources from the fifth century simply do no such thing. None of the primary sources we list in the "Roman period" section does anything remotely like describing a language shift, certainly not the Sidonius Apollinaris and Cassiodorus ones the anon was getting so hung up about. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:35, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

You both are conducting unsourced original research on Wikipedia and furthermore missing my three points: that the lead should summarise the main text, that the main text mentions only classical Latin not Vulgar latin, and that on Wikipedia claims must be sourced and referenced. Since neither of you are providing a correct reference, and instead are trying to fill that obvious gap with your private musings, I rest my case. On another matter, please assist me with editing the article on Asperger syndrome. ~2026-24272-86 (talk) 18:50, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Since you have both failed to find a source for your musings, I have now done it for you: according to Google AI there is a reliable article by Pierre-Yves Lambert on the transition from Late Gaulish to Vulgar Latin. "Gaulois tardif et latin vulgaire" (Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 1997). Please stop edit warring, and get to work, read it and implement it. Merci. ~2026-24272-86 (talk) 19:26, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

The Lambert article is solid scholarship, but it deals with a narrower, more specialized topic, the mixed traces of Gaulish and Vulgar Latin in inscriptions from the time when both languages were spoken together in a situation of bilingualism. From a brief skimming, it doesn't say much about when and how that situation came about, and when and how it ended, i.e. when and how the one language actually displaced the other. What we have here, overall, is a classic "The Moon isn't made of green cheese" situation. Some statements are just so obvious and trivially true that reliable sources typically won't bother asserting them, so they are difficult to source in the rare situation where somebody on Wikipedia obsessively questions them. There is of course no scarcity of scholarship that describes how Gaulish was spoken into the first half of the 1st millennium, and then vanished. There is, likewise, no scarcity of scholarship that describes how Latin was spoken in Gaul from around the same time. There is no scarcity of scholarship pointing out that the Latin that was spoken during that period, and which ultimately developed into French and other Romance varieties, was Vulgar Latin. We already are referencing some of it in the passage in question. There are sources, like Lambert, that describe how there was bilingualism between these two. Few sources explicitly pull these four facts together into an explicit statement asserting the obvious, that the one language ultimately replaced the other, or that the speech community shifted from one to the other. If that gets mentioned, from time to time, it's somewhat haphazard and in passing, in works that usually deal with either much wider or much narrower topics and are therefore not ideal pointers for a Wikipedia reference either. Although maybe, who knows, they could satisfy your whim after all. How about Mufwene, Salikoko (1998). "How research on creole genesis can contribute to historical linguistics". In Monika S. Schmid, Jennifer R. Austin, Dieter Stein (ed.). Historical Linguistics 1997. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 315–338.{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)? Quoting from pp.325f: "Nobody questions the fact that the Romance languages developed from Vulgar Latin, to which continental Celtic populations in the Roman Empire shifted gradually […] The relevant social history makes contact a plausible catalyst of the changes that affected the nonstandard Latin vernaculars to which the Celtic populations gradually shifted at the expense of their own indigenous languages." Is that enough? – BTW, "2026-24272-86", are you the same person who already obsessed about "Vulgar Latin" on this article back in 2014? You broke WP:3RR now, so no more revert-warring for you for now. And do stop reinserting that ridiculously false claim about "sources in the fifth century AD mention a shift to Latin". Whatever point you might have had with your objections against the previous wording, that version you wrote is most definitely worse, a lot more unsourced, and a lot more WP:OR. It's just plain wrong. Those sources don't describe a language shift. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:19, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for engaging. I shall ignore your barbs, and focus on your constructive items. The Salikoko reference is not great but better than anything else we have had so far. If you cite it, then please add in the reference the direct quote, so the reader is alerted that Salikoko is an intellectually lazy source. Meanwhile, I have read the Vulgar Latin Wikipedia article, and it quotes current scholars who consider Vulgar Latin a poorly defined, controversial and outdated concept from the 19th century. We would need to cite them also, to balance the Gaulish article. Having said that, I am not satisfied with the critics of Vulgar Latin, as they offer no alternative explanation why Romance languages appear to be more similar to each other than to Latin. Or at least, their alternative reasoning is not stated in the Vulgar Latin Wikipedia article. Have you got insight into these critics? If so, we should also incorporate that information.~2026-24272-86 (talk) 09:22, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

No, indeed, the Mufwene article (the name's Mufwene, by the way; Salikoko is his first name) isn't an ideal source. Not because it's "intellectually lazy" (that's not for you to judge; the guy is a top scholar in the field), but because, just like I said, he makes that statement only as a passing remark within a context where his focus is on something else. And no, we don't need any hedging or extra citations marking the term "Vulgar Latin" as problematic here. Because it just isn't. The controversies you cite from the Vulgar Latin article are all about (a) whether that name is appropriate, and (b) how distinct and separated from Classical Latin Vulgar Latin was. Those are legitimate questions – but neither of them has any bearing on the context of this article here. As even the critics cited there acknowledge, the term "Vulgar Latin" is still widely used in scholarship, and nothing in those debates casts any doubt on the proposition that the language denoted (for better or worse) by that term was in fact the language that was the target of the late Roman language shifts. There simply isn't any alternative for that proposition for us to consider. You, most certainly, haven't brought forward such an alternative. If you think Gaulish was not replaced by Vulgar Latin, would you care to finally state what else might have happened instead? And how about, once you've stated that, you actually bring forward some sourcing to demonstrate such an alternative scenario is actually contemplated by scholarship? You see, right now, just like 12 years ago, you are still in the position of that guy in the "amateur and astronomer" story – the only difference being that you haven't even told us what your green cheese is. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:45, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

This Talk page is not a forum for discussion about Gaulish. If you wish to add a section on published scholarship on the transition from Gaulish to the successor language(s), then please do so, with appropriate references. Then, you can add a summarising sentence in the lead. So far, you have not found an adequate reference, and neither have I, nor has Google AI. It looks increasingly to me that this research has not yet been done. If so, then the language transition (whether to Latin or to Vulgar Latin or to proto-Romance or whatever) cannot be mentioned in Wikipedia. So we simply shorten the sentence in the lead.~2026-24272-86 (talk) 13:43, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

So, that's your green cheese? It wasn't to Vulgar Latin but to Latin or to proto-Romance? Dude, those are just alternative terms for the same thing in this context; they are not substantial alternatives. No, we won't change the statement we have now; it's still perfectly appropriate. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:59, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

No, you are again deflecting from the problem. Either you are unable to understand Wikipedia rules, or you are so proud of your unsourced sentence that you cannot bear to let it go. ~2026-24272-86 (talk) 15:42, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Reverts

About these reverts by User:GenoV84: I am at a loss to understand how WP:DUE should be relevant to the contested addition of a painting, especially if it's accompanied with "it's just a picture (you can change it, you know?)". WP:DUE is about the appropriateness of covering factual claims and opinions. What could the presence of an image have possibly to do with that, when it isn't even purported to represent any such factual claims but is evidently meant to be purely decorative, and when the inserter seems to treat it as quite random and replaceable with any other?

As it happens, that painting is esthetically horrible, transports nothing but romanticizing 19th-century clichés about those ancient peoples, and has zero relevance to the topic of this article, which is those people's language. For this article it's of no importance what an obscure 19th-century painter imagined those people to have looked like or what kinds of grim faces they were able to make. We could just as well plaster the article with some random Asterix panels, for all the esthetic value and information value they have.

As for the other edits, please see WP:OVERLINK. There were massive numbers of links that were redundant, duplicated, or plain unnecessary. Also, the purported "Clarification" added in was factually incorrect. The supplanting of Gaulish by Latin didn't happen only "after the fall of the Roman Empire" – that's when its very last final stages were completed, but most of the language shift happened well before that.

I'll revert those edits again some time soon. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:15, 10 July 2026 (UTC)