Gallaecian or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic is the name given to a pre-Roman Celtic language, spoken by the ancient Gallaeci in northwestern Iberia. The linguistic situation of pre-Roman north-west Iberia is complex, as it includes inscriptions that contain clearly Celtic linguistic features and others that do not and are probably related to Lusitanian. The region became the Roman province of Gallaecia, which is now divided between the Spanish regions of Galicia, the western parts of Asturias, León and Zamora, and the Norte Region of Portugal.
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👉 Gallaecian language in the context of Gallaeci
The Gallaeci (also Callaeci or Callaici; Ancient Greek: Καλλαϊκοί) were a Celtic tribal complex who inhabited the north-western corner of Iberia, a region roughly corresponding to what is now the Norte Region in northern Portugal, and the Spanish regions of Galicia, western Asturias and western León before and during the Roman period. They spoke a Q-Celtic language related to Northeastern Hispano-Celtic, called Gallaecian or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic. The region was annexed by the Romans in the time of Caesar Augustus during the Cantabrian Wars, a war which initiated the assimilation of the Gallaeci into Latin culture.
The endonym of modern-day Galicians, galegos, derives directly from the name of this people.
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Gallaecian language in the context of Portuguese language
Portuguese (endonym: português or língua portuguesa) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family originating from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is spoken chiefly in Brazil, Portugal, and several countries in Africa, as well as by immigrants in North America, Europe, and South America. With approximately 267 million speakers, it is listed as the fifth-most spoken native language.
Portuguese-speaking people or nations are known as Lusophone (lusófono). As a result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese speakers is also found around the world. Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal, and has retained some Celtic phonology.
Gallaecian language in the context of Hispano-Celtic languages
Hispano-Celtic is a term for all forms of Celtic spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the Romans (c. 218 BC, during the Second Punic War). In particular, it includes:
- A northeastern inland language attested at a relatively late date in the extensive corpus of Celtiberian. This variety, which Jordán Cólera proposed to name Northeastern Hispano-Celtic, has long been synonymous with the term Hispano-Celtic and is universally accepted as Celtic.
- A language in the northwest corner of the peninsula, with a northern and western boundary marked by the Atlantic Ocean, a southern boundary along the river Douro, and an eastern boundary marked by Oviedo, which Jordán Cólera has proposed to call Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, where there is a corpus of Latin inscriptions containing isolated words and sentences that are clearly Celtic.