Celtiberian (also Hispano-Celtic) is an extinct Celtic language spoken by the Celtiberians in northern Spain before and during the Roman Empire. Very little remains of the Celtiberian language, which is attested in some pre-Roman placenames in the Iberian peninsula that survived long enough to be recorded in documents, in the formulas that were used in some personal names (giving hints of grammar), and in some inscriptions on bronze and lead plaques, written in the Celtiberian script that combines Phoenician and Greek characteristics. Enough has been preserved to show that the Celtiberian language was Q-Celtic (like Goidelic), and not P-Celtic like Gaulish (Mallory 1989, p. 106). Since Brythonic is P-Celtic too, but as an Insular Celtic language more closely related to Goidelic than to Gaulish, it follows that the P/Q division is paraphyletic: The change from k^w to p occurred in Brythonic and Gaulish at a time when they were already separate languages, rather than constituting a division that marked a separate branch in the "family tree" of the Celtic languages. A change from PIE k^w (q) to p also occurred in some Italic languages: compare Oscan pis, pid ("who, what?") with Latin quis, quid. Celtiberian and Gaulish are usually grouped together as the Continental Celtic languages, but this grouping too is paraphyletic: no evidence suggests the two shared any common innovation separately from Insular Celtic.

The longest extant Celtiberian inscriptions are those on three Botorrita plaques, bronze plaques from Botorrita near Saragossa, dating to the early 1st century BC, labelled Botorrita I, III and IV (Botorrita II is in the Latin language).

Celtiberian exhibits a fully inflected relative pronoun ios, not preserved in other Celtic dialects, and the particles kue "and", nekue "nor", ve "or". Like in Welsh, there is an s-subjunctive, gabiseti "he shall take" (Old Irish gabid), robiseti, auseti. Compare Umbrian ferest "he shall make".

Sources

• Jordán Cólera, C. (2005). Celtibérico. Zaragoza.
• Hoz, Javier de. (1996). The Botorrita first text. Its epigraphical background; in: Die größeren altkeltischen Sprachdenkmäler. Akten des Kolloquiums Innsbruck 29. April - 3. Mai 1993, ed. W. Meid and P. Anreiter, 124–145, Innsbruck.
• Mallory, J. P. (1989). In Search of the Indo-Europeans. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05052-X
• Meid, Wolfgang. (1994). Celtiberian Inscriptions, Archaeolingua, edd. S. Bökönyi and W. Meid, Series Minor, 5, 12–13. Budapest.

See also

• Iberian scripts

External links

• Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BC)

Ancient languages | Languages of Spain | Continental Celtic languages | Extinct Celtic languages

Keltiberische Sprache | Idioma celtíbero | Celtibère | Celtiberico | Keltiberisch | Línguas celtibéricas | Keltiberščina | 凱爾特伊比利亞語