Evening star., 1938-03-16
ROME AND ERE
ONCE WERE TWINS
It's a Matter of Ps and Qs,
DR.. Geary Explains,
Tracing Dialect.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

BY THOMAS X. HENkI.
Rome and Efe were twin sisters!
It's all a matter of minding your
Ps and Qs, as the problem is explained
by Rev. Dr. James H. Geary. professor
Of Celtic at Catholic University.
Otherwise it might be maintained
that Fire was Romes mother -in-law.
In the first place, as has long been
recognized by comparative linguistS,
Latin and Irish are very similar Ian
guages. They are so close together
that 1ulius Caesar and a modern
Gaelic-speaking Irishman. meeting on
the other side of the Styx might each
j.. get some idea of what the other was
talking about. Now Rome did not i'm
pose its language on Ireland. Irish
Is closer to the mother tongue of both
languages. Nor, DR.. Geary says. was
1t the other way around. Here's how
it works out
Back near the dawn of history,
somewhere in South-Central Europe
there was a great nucleus of people
speaking a dialect of the Indo-E Euro
pean mother tongue and this dialect
was the original Celtic. This nucleus
began to send out arms in various di-
rections. In the process, the dialect
split into two-one branch using the
sound "p'' where the other used the
sound %"
Invaders Spoke 3 Languages.
Both the Ps and the Qs invaded the
Italian peninsula. They may have
destroyed or absorbed the aboriginal
population, about which next to MOTH
ing is known. These invaders spoke
three closely related Celtic languages,
Oscian. Umbrian and-the language
of the people who set up the Roman
Empire-Latin
The OScians and the Umbrians were
PS, The Romans were Qs.
But simultaneously these linguistic
branches were reaching out in other
directions. The Ps moved northwest
erly across France, where some of
them probably remained as the Beleae
were encountered 1000 years later by
Caesar, and across the English Chan
mel as far as the Irish Sea. There they
stopped, for the time being.
The Qs moved more to the west
and southwest. They spread over
Central and Southern France and
Northern Spain. 1t was about this
time, it is likely. that they also spread
down the Italian peninsula to Rome.
From Spain and Southern France they
went northward by sea into Ireland.
They remained in France as the Gauls
This, so far as known, is the basis for
the common belief that the Irish were
originally Spanish.
Rome Absorbs Greek Culture.
So instead of Rome being an Irish
settlement, it appears that they were
essentially contemporaneous settle
ments of the same people Rome alb
sorbed some of the culture of its
neighbor, Greece 1t absorbed a good
deal of the Greek Language. The Irish
kept their original @ mother tongue
and had to build up their own culture.
Neither language can be considered
q dialect of the other.
Then the Romans conquered Briton
and the speakers of the "P" language,
who had come directly across France
and the channel, were driven back into
the Welsh mountains. That is why. as
DR.. Geary explains it, when an Irish
man uses O." Welshman uses "P,"
just as when a Roman used o. an
Oscian or Umbrian used p"
The Gauls conquered by Caesar pre-
sumably used the same language and
were essentially the same people as
the Irish. No trace of their original
speech remains. Actually, in 359 BIC,
they had conquered Rome and held it
briefly. Caesar was just paying them
back But that is about as close as it
is possible to come to an Irish con-
quest.
So the case seems to rest that Rome
and Erin were sisters, and Fire cannot
set itself up as Rome's mother-in-law.
Neither sister set herself up in life
without opposition. Latin ran into
. complex of languages in the Italian
peninsula, which have been puzzling
comparative linguists ever since.
One was the EtruScan. The most
important thing they did, from the
point of view of comparative lin
guistics, was to shoot craps. They had
come into Italy from Africa about
1000 AID, probably about the same
time as the Latins. They left only
gravestones with inscriptions which
nobody has been able to deciper, but
in language with no relationship
whatsoever to Latin. In late years a
whole written sheet of Etruscan has
been found wrapped around an
Egyptian mummy. But they were not
Egyptians-at least their language has
no relation whatsoever to Egyptian.
Lately some Etruscan dice have been
found, with the numbers on the faces
represented by inscriptions in that
tongue, rather than by dots. There is
some possibility that it will be pos
sible to check these dice faces against
gravestone inscriptions, which pre-
sumably state the ages of the de-
ceased, and thus recover two or three
Etruscan words which. in turn, may
open up the whole problem.
Then there were the Ligurians, be-
lieved to have been tribe driven
south from the shores of the Baltic,
bringing with them amber, with which
they carried on trade with the Greeks.
Their language is a complete enigma.
Somewhere in the neighborhood were
the Basques, whose language still is
spoken and written, but which has no
known relationship to any other
tongue.
Dolmens and Cromlechs.
The Celts were preceded in Ireland,
perhaps 1000 years or more, by the
mysterious builders of the dolmens
and the cromlechs. The dolmen con-
sists Of two fiat stones standing YER
tically with another fiat stone laid
horizontally across them. The crom-
lech is simply circle of upright
stones. They. may have been affairs
or they may have been graves. DR..
Geary has photograph Of one dolmen
which has been transformed into q