Галатский язык: вымерший кельтский язык Малой Азии

Extinct Celtic language from Asia Minor
the extinct Celtic language spoken in Anatolia

Galatian is an extinct Celtic language once spoken by the Galatians in Galatia, in central Anatolia (Asian part of modern Turkey), from the 3rd century BC up to at least the 4th century AD. Some sources suggest that it was still spoken in the 6th century. Galatian was contemporary with, and closely related to, Gaulish.

The Galatian language, based on onomastic evidence (as no texts written in Galatian have yet been discovered), seems to have closely resembled Gaulish of western and central Europe. The language was introduced to Anatolia in the 3rd century BC, when Celtic tribes – notably the Tectosages, Trocmii, and Tolistobogii – migrated south from the Balkans. According to the Greek historian Strabo, the Tectosages of Anatolia were related to the Volcae Tectosages of Gaul; the parent tribe of both branches, the Volcae, originally lived in central Europe.

Sometime in AD 48–55, the Apostle Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians in Greek, the medium of communication in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire. This may mean that Galatians at the time were already bilingual in Greek, as St. Jerome later reports. However, scholars are divided as to whether Paul was writing to Greek Galatians or to the Hellenized descendants of the Celtic Galatians. Lucian of Samosata recorded in circa AD 180 that the prophet Alexander of Abonoteichus was able to find Celtic speaking interpreters for his oracles in Paphlagonia (immediately northeast of Galatia). The physician Galen of Pergamon in the late 2nd century AD complained that the commonly spoken Greek of his day was being corrupted by borrowings of foreign words from languages such as Galatian. In the 4th century, St. Jerome (Hieronymus) wrote in a comment to Paul the Apostle's Epistle to the Galatians that "apart from the Greek language, which is spoken throughout the entire East, the Galatians have their own language, almost the same as the Treveri". The capital of the Treveri was Trier, where Jerome had settled briefly after studying in Rome.

In the 6th century AD, Cyril of Scythopolis suggested that the language was still being spoken in his own day when he related a story that a monk from Galatia was temporarily possessed by Satan and unable to speak; when he recovered from the "possession", he could respond to the questioning of others only in his native Galatian tongue.

Of the language only a few glosses and brief comments in classical writers and scattered names on inscriptions survive. Altogether they add up to about 120 words, including place and personal names. Scattered vocabulary terms mentioned by Greek authors include ἀδάρκα (adarka), a type of plant; αδες (ades), "feet"; βαρδοί (bardoi), "singing poets, bards"; μάρκα (marka), "horse" and τριμαρκισία (trimarkisia), "three horse battle group".

Attested place names include Acitorīgiāco ("[Settlement of] Acitorīx"; compare Acitodunum in Gaul), Άρτικνιακόν (Articniācon, "[Settlement of] Articnos" ["Bear son"]), Δρυνέμετον (Drunemeton; < Proto Celtic *dru "oak" and, by extension, "great"; cf. Old Irish druí, Welsh dryw [< *dru wid s], "druid, wise man" [literally "greatly wise"], Old Irish neimed, Welsh nyfed "holy place, [sacred] grove"), the meeting place of the Galatian tetrarchs and judges, and Ούινδια (Uindia "Fair/White/Holy Place"; Old Irish finn, Welsh gwyn [masc. ], gwen [fem.] "fair, white; holy").