The Roman Empire and the death of the Gaulish language - Dr Nicholas Ostler

The Romans gave Europe a lot, but what did they take away? The Gauls had a rich and complex culture - including their own belief-system, religion, art and language. But not three or four centuries after the Julius Caesar’s army defeated them, the language was completely lost to Latin and with it soon went all trace of their culture and beliefs. Today we are left only with a few inexplicable artifacts from a people we no longer have any connection to. Dr Nicholas Ostler here explains this single example of language hegemony across the Roman Empire, pointing out the great loss of culture and identity that came with it: “When people give up their language, they inevitably give up their culture too.“ The application of this historical example to the present day should speak for itself. This is a part of Dr Nick Ostler’s ’Why should we protect endangered languages?’. The full talk can be downloaded, along with any of the other four lectures from the conference on Rare and Endangered languages, from the