04-03-2010, 03:39 PM
This whole notion that there was a close linguistic connection between Northeastern Iranian languages (Alanic, Sarmatian, et al) or Tocharian (the language that was likely spoken by the Indo-European people of Western China who produced those fantastic mummies) and Celtic is simply false (which, of course, does not stop people from spreading this falsity on the Internet ad nauseam). At best, the Tocharian languages show some shared IE archaisms with Celtic, mainly grammatical in nature (languages on the periphery of the geographic spread of a language family often do show shared archaisms that are not present in the center of the spread), but they do not share much in the way of vocabulary (according to latest research, Tocharian is much closer to and shares most of its core vocabulary with Greek, Armenian, Balto-Slavic and Germanic, which makes sense, as it is believed that the Tocharians' ultimate roots lie in Eastern Europe). A good summary of the current state of knowledge about the Tocharian language family is available here: http://www.oxuscom.com/eyawtkat.htm . Also, seek out the work of Douglas Adams, one of the world's foremost experts on Tocharian (if you have Jstor access, this is an excellent article of his: http://www.jstor.org/pss/601651 ).
If someone has evidence to the contrary (which I guarantee you would cause a major stir in the world of Indo-European studies!), I challenge them to produce it.
If someone has evidence to the contrary (which I guarantee you would cause a major stir in the world of Indo-European studies!), I challenge them to produce it.
Christopher Gwinn
