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It has been suggested by certain etymologists that Irish along with the other Celtic
languages shares similarities with Berber and the Semitic languages. Irish is my
mother tongue and I also speak Hebrew and can vouch that there are similarities.
However, I would like to know what you know on this topic as your input would be
most welcome, and would help me in my own research.
Thanks!
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Celtic is considered an Indo-European language, that is of a different family from
the Semitic one.
There can be some superficial similarities across distinct families. Greek <alpha>
and Arabic <aliph>.
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Hi Greg! With all due respect, I'm already aware of those "superficial" similarities.
I was thinking a wee bit deeper than that. For instance, in Irish the verb comes
at the beginning of the sentence, as is the case in the Semitic tongues.
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Una! Indeed you are right! Irish does have linguistic connections with the Semitic
languages! I wanted to tell you also that Irish also has similarities with Ancient
Egyptian. There is also debate over the ogham inscriptions and their connection with
hyroglyphs in Ancient Egypt.
I have read your Irish mythologies, the Tuatha De Danaan etc., and the connection
with the hill of Tara and the Ard Ri of your country!
Myths reveal truth!
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What are you guys talking about anyways; the Celtic languages are specifically Indo-European,
and really have nothing to do with the Semitic languages at all...
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In 1772, General Charles Vallancey, a leading Irish scholar of the day, published
his famous work, Essay On The Antiquity Of The Irish Language, Being A Collation
Of The Irish With The Punic (Hebrew) Language.-In his opening remarks he states,
'On a collation of the Irish with the Celtic, Punic, Phoenician and Hebrew languages,
the strongest affinity, (nay a perfect Identity in very many Words) will appear,
it may therefore be deemed a Punic-Celtic compound.' Vallancey continues, 'from the
Hebrew proceeded the Phoenician, from the Phoenician, Carthaginian, or Punic was
derived the Aeolian, Dorian and Etruscan and from these was formed the Latin ...
Of the Roman Saxon capital letters, the Irish use but three, all the others bear
a very great resemblance to the primitive Hebrew and Phoenician.' (p. 2-3) Modern
language scholars have confirmed that there is a definite connection between the
Celtic and Hebrew, as we have shown in our tract, Hebrew And English.
http://www.originofnations.org/books,%20papers/Hebrew-Celtic%20Connection.htm
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Irish belongs to a larger Indo-European superfamily and some linguists believe that
Finno-Ugric, Indo-European, Kartvelian (Georgian, Laz, Swan) and Hamito-Semitic all
descend from an older Nostratic" or "Eurasian" language spoken about 10,000 years
ago but this would be the only link between Irish and Semitic.
Since Celtic is one of the oldest layers of Indo-European along with Tocharian, Armenian
and Hittite it is indeed possible that it is a tad bit closer to Hamito-Semitic than
the Germanic and Slavic branches of Indo-European but this still means almost nothing
to most linguists.
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Brennus : your post makes me think about 'Tocharian' A and 'Tocharian B' (a stuff
I read ages ago). Does this tell you something ?
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Greg,
Re: Tocharian. Spoken north of Nepal and Afghanistan, it is one of the oldest Indo-European
languages, apparently older than Sanskrit. It appears to have survived until the
8th or 9th century A.D. and had a small Buddhist literature.
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Where would you say this word came from: Siva?
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Because it's an Irish word. In hebrew there's also a word for the period of mourning
called Siva too! Marion said her siva when her grandfather died.
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"Celtic is considered an Indo-European language, that is of a different family from
the Semitic one.
There can be some superficial similarities across distinct families. Greek <alpha>
and Arabic <aliph>."
I'm not so sure it's merely superficial, Greg. I read an article a while back that
made a fairly good case that Welsh had a good deal of Hebrew influence. A comparison
of many phrases of the two languages show far too many similarities to simply be
a matter of coincidence, in my opinion. It's still a very debatable topic, though,
so I won't come to any conclusions.
Here's an article related to this topic.
http://www.uhcg.org/Lost-10-Tribes/tracing-dan3.html
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"It has been suggested by certain etymologists that Irish along with the other Celtic
languages shares similarities with Berber and the Semitic languages"
I believe it could be true, because the Celts originally come from the Middle East.
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