BASQUE AND CELTIC LANGUAGES IN CONTACT

GREETING IN WELSH

My name is John Koch. I’m a research Professor in the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. I’m currently leading a research project examining the ancient Celtic languages in the Atlantic region of Europe including their connections with non-Indo-European languages such as Basque. My name is John Koch. I work at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. And I’m running a research project on the ancient Celtic languages in the Atlantic regions of Europe and their origins possibly there, and also on how they are connected with the non-Indo-European languages and pre-historic cultures of the same region, the Atlantic regions of Western Europe. And this makes what we’re doing with research on the Celtic languages indirectly, though I think significantly, relevant to Basque and the other non-Indo-European languages of the Atlantic region. (Given that today there is only alive the Basque language, of All non-Indo-European languages, and pre-Indo-European that have disappeared). Our research so far has turned up connections and what we see as discontinuities in the Celtic linguistic record and the archaeological record around the Biscay Pyrenees corridor. So we’re seeing a pattern in which the ancient Celtic languages seem to form one set of networks around the European peninsula and the Atlantic region. But there is definitely a break in that wide region of Aquitaine and the North-Eastern Iberian peninsula; it cuts through where the ancient Iberian language met up with the ancient Basque language around the Pyrenean corridor where the European Peninsula becomes very narrow between the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay. So ultimately I think this is going to throw light on the whole cultural later pre-history of Western Europe, including both Celtic and Basque and the other non-Indo-European languages of Western Europe. (2’ 30”).