Lusitanian (fl. -2250 to -200) was the main language of what is now Portugal before Roman times. It was spoken by the Lusitanians, an Indo-European farming people of western Iberia, regarded as barbarians by the Romans. The Roman province of Lusitania was named after them.
Sample (the original pictured above):
OILAM TREBOPALA
INDO PORCOM LAEBO
COMAIAM ICCONA LOIM
INNA OILAM USSEAM
TREBARUNE INDI TAUROM
IFADEM REUE…
Translation:
A sheep [lamb?] for Trebopala
and a pig for Laebo,
[a sheep] of the same age for Iccona Loim-
inna, a one year old sheep for
Trebaruna and a fertile bull…
for Reve…
All that remains of Lusitanian are place names, the names of some old gods, and about six inscriptions, one of them shown above.
The rise of the Roman Empire wiped out at least 48 languages, Lusitanian being one of them. Iberia had Lusitanian in the west, Iberian in the east, Basque in the north, Tartessian in the south, and Celtiberian in the middle. Only Basque is still with us. The rest were replaced by Latin.
The difference between Spanish and Portuguese goes back to Roman times: even as dialects of Latin they were different. Part of that comes from the difference between Lusitanian and Celtiberian. In effect, Portuguese grew out of a Lusitanian (and Gallaecian) dialect of Latin.
Celts: Lusitanians are generally regarded as Celts, by the Greeks and Romans in ancient times, and by historians and archaeologists in ours. As Celts they were cultural cousins of the Welsh, Irish and Gauls. In fact, many words for everyday things in Portuguese are Celtic not Latin, like caminho (road), camisa (shirt), carro (carriage), cerveja (beer), menino (boy), minhoca (earthworm), bico (beak), peça (piece), and manteiga (butter).
West Mediterraneans: The Lusitanians came from outside Iberia, maybe between -2550 and -2250 as part of the Beaker People (who liked to drink honey wine out of beaker cups and wear fancy jewellery). It seems that they mixed with the West Mediterraneans already living there.
Enter the pig bull: One of the few words we know of Lusitanian is the word for pig bull: porcom tavrom. The strange thing about that is it looks more like Latin than Celtic. The Latin words for pig and bull are porcus and taurus. The Celtic way of saying those words, on the other hand, would have been something like orcom tarvom, dropping the leading p and reversing the r and v – if not making the v into a b. In Old Irish bull was tarb.
Therefore some argue that Lusitanian is a lost cousin of Latin, one that strayed into the Iberian peninsula instead of the Italian one.
Others say that Lusitanian is Celtic but arrived in Iberia early, so early that it got cut off from the rest of the Celtic world before p’s were dropped from the beginning of words. Just like how North American English has kept more of the Original Pronunciation of Shakespeare than British English.
– Abagond, 2018.
See also:
- The history of Portuguese:
- Proto-World
- Nostratic
- Proto-Indo-European
- Proto-Italic
- Latin
- Vulgar Latin
- Galician
- Portuguese
- Original Pronunciation
535
I’m familiar with the Spanish cognates for about half of the everyday words you listed, and I never knew they were Celtic rather than Latin until today. Especially camino — I used that word every single day I lived in California because it was in the names for major roads in my neighborhood.
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And I just realized: If carro is from a Celtic root, then so is the English word “carriage” and from there ultimately the English word “car.” Talk about an everyday word!
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So would Lusitanian be why speakers of Portuguese are called Lusophones?
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@ Solitaire
Yes, Luso- comes from Lusitania.
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What are your thoughts on the homeland of Afro Asiatic? Personally I think it was somewhere in Africa(Sudan and Egypt region).
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@ Jason M
I think Afro-Asiatic languages probably began in Ethiopia or Somalia: the oldest branches are there and it is where you see the highest diversity. Also, from what I understand, the Egyptians say they came from that part of Africa.
I did a post on Afro-Asiatic languages:
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@ Solitaire
Strangely, Britain and Portugal went through the same basic stages before Moorish times:
Megalithic builders
arrival of Celts
Roman rule
Germanic invasion
Brazil and the US are also strangely parallel.
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@ Abagond
Interesting point about the strange parallels.
I did already know about one Celtic loanword that made it into Latin: gladius, from which English gets “gladiator” and the flower gladiolus.
Even this ties into Portugal, oddly enough. The original Celtic sword that the Romans adopted was given the full name in Latin of gladius hispanicus — the sword of Hispania.
I wonder how many loanwords came into Latin from all the different languages of the various peoples the Romans fought and/or subjugated.
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This clears up something. I always wondered why Spanish and Portuguese were so different despite being Romance languages. Apparently Portuguese have little problem understanding Spanish, French and Italian but they all struggle to understand Portuguese.
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