FRESH DATA CHANGE THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPT

The theory of the Celtic languages has been in place for a long time. The view is that this particular sub-group of the Indo-European languages originated in west-central Europe around the Alps towards the beginning of the Iron Age, so about 800-700 BC, and then spread westward toward Britain, Ireland, Brittany and the Iberian Peninsula. This view has become unsustainable in recent years. This is primarily because of the evidence coming from the Iberian Peninsula for early Celtic languages there, and the fact that there is no archaeological background in the Iron Age that could explain why they are there. Therefore, we need to look back deeper into Pre-history. From the point of view of the studies of the Basque language this would reflect a longer period of interaction between the Indo-European that turned into Celtic, and the Basque language in the part of the world where it still exists, a wider region over south-western Europe. One of the ways in which the linguistic thinking has changed in recent years about where the Celtic languages came from and their possible interaction with non-Indo-European languages, including Basque in particular, and the Iberian languages of Catalonia in pre-Roman times, is the distinctive feature of the Celtic languages compared with the other Indo-European languages: they lose /p/, the original sound /p/. This seems to have been a feature of the prehistoric, the earliest version of the Basque language as well as of the Iberian language. It would point to this region, the Basque Country and the area of the ancient Iberian language, as the contact zone where Indo-European became distinctively Celtic in south-western Europe in contact with the ancient form of the Basque language and the non-Indo-European Iberian language. (2’ 35”)