72: On my experiences that involve French, & interesting ancient history, & related points

 

Article written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost on the 6th of September 2025. No AI was used, this article was published only on this website and is unrelated to other publications by me. This article contains 1117 words. Note that this article is titled with the prefix 72-:, note that originally the number 72: was given to a different article on this website, which is now published as number 73 on this website and was completed (published in final version) on this day also, the 6th of September 2025.

 

The paleolithic continuity theory is not what I accept as truth, although aspects of the theory are I think true, the main difference in my own beliefs, is that I believe that, whilst Indo-European languages are in a sense very ancient in their current localities, that the process of “Indo-Europeanisation” has distanced them from their linguistic forms and other substrate languages which were spoken in the past.

In terms of the Italic languages, I think it highly likely that aspects of them, or in a sense, related structural forms of them, were spoken in Italy, France, the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere in ancient times. The French language for example is curious to me in terms of phonology, the presence of the uvular r sound being in my opinion something ancient and indigenous to parts of ancient France, Germany and Denmark, and elsewhere. This contrasts with the modern explanations that these uvular r sounds simply “spread” across parts of Europe in more recent history. Whilst to an extent the uvular r sounds have spread further due to the influence of certain urban dialects, I am of the opinion that they were found in parts of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Holland, France and in some other areas, at a much earlier time than is commonly proposed. 

 

I studied French including in year 11 in school (when I was 16) and for a year in 6th form afterwards. My French teacher was a lovely person, sadly, the 6th form I went to was not so fun in a more general way, for me, too many pointless rules about dress-code which served no purpose whatsoever. In addition, I had one of my teachers tell me off and openly criticise me because I didn’t watch the news on television. So, that was bizarre. I also knew another French teacher when I was 16, who was French, and who informally helped teach me French too. The other teacher was not teaching me at the school nor connected with it, and as well as practising French, we talked a lot about other languages and about the Celtic and natural parts of France. She was shortish, beautiful, with brown hair, her face kissed slightly by the sun of late spring and early summer. She invited me to visit her that summer, which was really sweet, but she was about 24, and I was 16, and couldn’t afford to go. I felt like maybe we had a connection, and, she was a really gentle person, and for years after I thought, why did I not visit her? I did also really like another girl that summer who was the same age as me, but I soon learned that falling in love with someone when you’re young, and when she lived in Kent and I lived in Cumbria, was hard. But nevertheless this summer did shape my perceptions a lot, and my interest in French lead into a spiritual, personal interest in pursuing and discovering the Transalpine Gaulish and other continental languages, which connect today to the lands where Romance languages are spoken.

 

My interest in French has changed form a little over time, and I now appreciate it as a beautiful language even more so, even though I still find the upper middle class English pretentiousness around the French language and France to be extremely silly. I have realised that in fact it was always this pretentiousness within English society in relation to France & French which had put me off the French language for so many years when I was around 13 and 14. By the time I was 15 I started to really enjoy learning French though, I understood it as a beautiful language, a form of connection to a Romance, and in some ways Celtic world. 

 

I can still speak and understand a fair bit of French, despite that I rarely use it. Je sais que je parlais beaucoup de française quand j’étais dans le “year 11” et dans “6th form” aussi. Pour moi, toutes les langues ont intéressantes, et possiblement je parlerai le français à l’avenir aussi. Je suis essentiellement un homme des langues, et aussi de l’archéologie, de philosophie et de religion. Mais, oui, merci. 

 

The French above, I had to check a few things, but I wrote it well-ish, considering I haven’t used it in a while. Another curious thing about France for me which I do not believe I have discussed before is the Fontainbleau forest, and its unusual rock formations, some of which look like petrified giant animals. Similarly in England there are certain rock formations, such as Brimham Rocks or some of the rock formations around Tunbridge Wells, or those at Heysham in Lancashire (I have discussed other aspects of these elsewhere), which bare a resemblance to giant toads, reptiles, especially turtles or tortoises, or giant birds akin to the thunderbirds known in North America. Similar carved sandstone formations are found in Japan and Italy for example. It is curious because, I personally think it likely that many of these formations are not entirely natural, and may relate to an ancient belief system, and may have been carved during some ancient time. It is noteworthy that most of these sites were also ice-free during the ice ages, even Brimham Rocks, although I am less sure about Heysham, although Heysham was occupied at least 14,000 years ago, making it at least one of the (so far discovered) earlier inhabited places after the Ice Age in Northern Britain. 

 

And there are ancient links between Britain and France too. Kent has a strong French influence, and I wonder if, rather than all of it being post-Norman, that some of it might relate to much earlier ties between these lands, not to mention the Normans themselves being strongly connected to Denmark, and to the already existing close ties between Denmark and parts of England, which I have discussed elsewhere.

I hope that this article was a curious and interesting one! For reference purposes, the URL of this article you are currently looking at, is: https://www.bookofdunbarra.co.uk/website-articles-70-77/72-on-my-experiences-that-involve-french-interesting-ancient-history-related-points .