Talk:Belgae

message: This article is confusing me- was the tribe(s) Belgae Caucasian (either Gaul or German)? Because in the article it says they may've been a descendant of Trebata, who was Assyrian.
Trebata was the son of Ninus, an "Assyrian" king of about 2000BC. This very early period is the end of Sumerian history and we know that Assyria was a descendant state of Sumeria which was itself Indo European in origins and language. Hence Ninus and Trebata would have spoken a very early form of Indo European (later Assyrians spoke semitic) which might well explain the distinct languages of the Dutch/Frisians and English. A lot of colonisation by Sumerian/Phoenician/Hittite/Dorians occurred between 3000 to 500BC and much of it occurred on the coastlines of Western Europe, particularly Spain the British Isles, Brittany and the isles off holland and scandinavia. Many ancient tales of these peoples claim descent from Greek/Trojan/Assyrian kings. Essentially they were all part of the Sumerian dissemination of civilisation to Western Europe and Egypt.--158.43.39.218 (talk) 13:24, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "Trebata" is just a back formation from Treverorum created for a mediaeval monkish legend. It has nothing to do with any real person from Assyria or anywhere else. The Belgae weren't descended from Trebata any more than the Britons were descended from Brutus. To suggest otherwise would be Faces on Mars-style fringe science. Paul S (talk) 18:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

text: That "directly from the Eastern Med" DNA dates from much earlier than Assyrian or Sumerian civilisation. Further, it relates to dispersal of populations and does not support the Victorian schoolbook differentiation of the various "waves of invaders" as being "civilised" or "savage". Oppenheimer as a historian is himself a fringe theorist: he, unlike you, asserts the Belgae were all Germans despite all their names being Celtic. Paul S (talk) 20:40, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Caucasian or Assyrian?

message: I've requested a comment on this page which seemed to degenerate into an edit war over the Summer. In the meantime, I've removed speculation on Germanicism, and since the section refers to Caesar, also removed later attributions of Tacitus and others, in Caesar's List. Paul S (talk) 17:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment Request

message: The study by C. Hawkes and G.C. Dunning The Belgae of Gaul and Britain 1945, marks the beginning of modern historiography of the Belgae and the "problem of the Belgae", which is nowhere stated as a problem in the article, simply as (preferred) conclusions. A Birchall, "The Belgic Problem: Aylesford Revisited" The British Museum Quarterly, 1964, discusses the Belgic characteristics of their major site in Britannia. Jane F. Gardner, "The 'Gallic Menace' in Caesar's propaganda" Greece and Rome 30.2 (October 1983) offers a critical view of Caesar's subtext, still missing from the article, which reports the Commentaries as if they were unbiased ethnography.--Wetman (talk) 16:33, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggested additional material

message: An anon is trying persistently to insert Stephan Oppenheimer’s theory that a Germanic language was spoken in England long before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. But Oppenheimer is a physician and popular writer; so his book is not a Wikipedia:reliable source for the history of the Belgae. More generally see this series of Language Log posts: here,   here, and here for linguists’ assessment of Oppenheimer’s theory.
Most recently the anon mentioned that Oppenheimer got his theory from geneticist Peter Forster but still cited the unacceptable Oppenheimer book. As a serious geneticist, Forster’s writings on genetics in a peer-reviewed journal might be acceptable. But this theory is not based on genetic research (which couldn’t tell us in any case what language was used). Instead it is based on a statistical analysis of vocabulary, which is outside Forster’s area of competence. See this Language List review of another of Forster’s linguistic theories.
Whomever you attribute it to, this is a Wikipedia:fringe theory that has not been accepted by historians and linguists. —teb728 t c 00:19, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that both these anons (if this isn't sock puppetry) have been warned and banned on previous occasions for vandalising Germanic-related material. Paul S (talk) 11:05, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  The theory put forward by Oppenheimer is based on a good review of linguistic information and whilst it is not a commonly held idea it does have some merit. The rejection of a book because it is commercial seems somewhat prejudiced as ultimately all books are published to make money. His analysis of the genetics is excellent - do you discount that equally.  Whilst Oppenheimer is not, and admits he is not a linguist,  Theo Vennemann is and also suggests this idea I understand. Despite the somewhat desperate resistance to this idea, the question is not, "were there German speakers in Britain before the formation of England" but how many. Even the Foederati idea places Germanic speakers in Britain in Roman times. Furthermore it would be preposterous to suggest that some people did not visit Britain from Germanic regions as part of sea trade.  The problem at hand is in essence how large parts of Britain came to speak an essentially German language in such a short time. Invasion is an insufficient and largely unsupportable cause; neither this nor settlement would allow for the complete apparent transfer to a new language. The genetics rules out population replacement (which really was always a bit naive as an explanation) and the continuity in the archaeology suggests that violent persecution was unlikely. What is clear however, is that Eastern Britain had long standing links with the continent by sea and that cultural influence from there is a credible and demonstrable factor. If the cultural emphasis in post Roman Britain shifted to Germanic areas it is likely that this influence already existed in Roman and pre roman times. Even a sizeable element of Germanic influence and language would not have been commented on by the Romans as their interest was economic rather than social.  It is likely that the same kind of elite exchange as is accepted between British and Belgic tribes, would have been in place to some extent. Overall there is a lot of hard evidence missing on both sides but the theory is worthy of mention at least if the subject is to be given fair treatment. Attatatta (talk) 04:05, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

text: As for sorn, this appears to be a sort of "mutation derailment" (to adapt the term Ablautentgleisung from Germanic philology) along the lines of Scottish Gaelic piuthar from Old Irish siur. Recall that the mutated form of s- in some words (those from Proto-Celtic *sɸ-) is f-. Apparently, †forn was thought of as a mutated form in Old Irish and reanalysed. Compare Old Irish srogell borrowed from Latin flagellum. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:50, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oppenheimer/Forster fringe theory 

message: source  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moqq (talk • contribs) 14:10, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improvement 

message: "Inscriptions in Celtic language on instrumentum ..." reads a footnote. The useful jargon term instrumentum has no place in an article directed toward the moderately well-prepared general reader. Can we get a translation?--Wetman (talk) 17:20, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we can. Just ask it. Latin Instrumentum, archeology word, means all the things and objects in everyday life, that allow people to live at home or work in a studio : tableware, furniture, workers tools...and NOT walls, buildings, constructions or stones. The linguists make the difference between the inscriptions on instrumentum (generally quite ill written) and on stones (generally better written).Nortmannus (talk) 20:57, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: "''instrumentum''"

message: I tagged the above wording for a citation. As a quick bit of context, I'll paste here from some other Wikipedia articles, both with reasonable sourcing:
*According to Luc van Durme, a Belgian linguist, toponymic evidence to a former Celtic presence in the Low Countries is near to utterly absent.Oude taaltoestanden in en om de Nederlanden. Een reconstructie met de inzichten van M. Gysseling als leidraad. In: Handelingen van de Koninklijke commissie voor Toponymie en Dialectologie. LXXV/2003 From Nordwestblock.
*studies of placenames such as those of Maurits Gysseling, have been argued to show evidence of the very early presence of early Germanic languages throughout the area north of the Ardennes. The sound changes described by "Grimm's Law" appear to have affected names with older forms, apparently already in the 2nd century BCE. It is argued furthermore that the older language of the area, though apparently Indoeuropean was not Celtic (see Nordwestblock) and therefore that Celtic, though influential amongst the elite, might never have been the language of the area where the Eburones lived. page 44. From Eburones.
I think this sentence needs to be expanded into a discussion of competing viewpoints, with proper sourcing.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:49, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I've come back and done a fairly extensive re-working of the whole section. Apart from the above issue, one of the biggest issues was the way in which the Belgic Germani (cisrhenani) were being simply treated as Germanic speakers in some sections, which is really something there is high confidence about. So I have tried to break up and explain all the different ideas people in the relevant fields have on the subject. In the end I've used a useful tripartition of the Belgae into 3 groups which Edith Wightman uses: Germani cisrhenani (NE); their other northern Belgae neighbours who might be related (NW); and then a core of northern French Belgic tribes who appear to have been firmly Celtic (S).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding Celtic or Germanic, it is often necessary to tread very carefully around this article as contemporary Belgian Flemish versus Wallonian issues can cause Nationalist historiography to become an issue - and now we have the crank theories of Oppenheimer beloved of certain English nationalists threatening to creep in as well... Paul S (talk) 19:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I've tried to avoid giving any impression of too much certainty about any of the various mainstream theories around. I think Oppenheimer's most unusual theories thankfully have no place here as it is not about Britain anyway. Let me know if you see anything needing better citations.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:26, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "all the old Belgian toponymy is clearly Celtic" 

message: I've reverted the sentence that tries to analyse "Belgae" as "bel", shining, plus "gae", spear, despite another editor putting a citation needed tag on it, because linguistically it simply can't work. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of linguistics, or a smattering of Latin, should be able to see that. "Belgae" is a Latin plural noun, and the "-ae" is simply the standard ending of nominative plural nouns in the first declension. If it's in the accusative (direct object) case it's "Belgas", and if it's genitive it's "Belgarum" - change the case and "gae" disappears, and can't be a component of the word. The "g" then obviously belongs to the stem, i.e. the first syllable. --Nicknack009 (talk) 12:26, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Not to mention the fact that the Continental Celtic word for "spear" was *gaiso- (Gallo-Latin gaesum, Gallo-Greek gaisos, "javelin", ethnic name Gaesati, personal names Gaisatorix, Gaesius, Uologesus (=*Uolo-gaisus)); internal -s- only disappeared in Insular Celtic (with few exceptions) and gae is a Medieval Irish form, after final syllables were lost. Cagwinn (talk) 13:56, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bel + gae 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article List of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula mentions Belgae with a question mark. 150.227.15.253 (talk) 17:18, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Some Roman authors wrote that certain peoples in the penninsula were Belgae, or descended from them. I'm not sure anyone today takes this too seriously. Paul S (talk) 16:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Either way we should have a source. I suggest if anyone is interested in this they ask on that article if there is one. Perhaps it should be removed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:46, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't actually find anything in Roman sources... I'm still looking but it seems as if this idea of Belgae in Spain is 18th or early 19th Century supposition. Paul S (talk) 10:38, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outside Gaul