Xavier Delamarre (; born 5 June 1954) is a French

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

, lexicographer, and

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or interna ...

. He is regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on the

Gaulish language Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switze ...

. Since 2019, he has been an associate researcher for the CNRS- PSL AOrOc laboratory (Archéologie & Philologie d'Orient et d'Occident). Along with

Pierre-Yves Lambert Pierre-Yves Lambert (born 30 May 1949) is a French linguist and scholar of Celtic studies. He is a researcher at the CNRS and a lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Celtic linguistics and philology. Lambert is the director of the ...

, he is also the co-administrator of ''Thesaurus Paleo-Celticus'', a CNRS project launched in 2019 and aiming to update and replace Alfred Holder's ''Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz'' (1913). With linguist Romain Garnier, Delamarre is the co-publishing editor of ''Wékwos'', a journal founded in 2014 and devoted to

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...

Career

Born on 5 June 1954, Xavier Delamarre graduated from Sciences Po in 1977, then studied the

Lithuanian language Lithuanian ( ) is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language of Lithuania and one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.8 mill ...

at INALCO. Alongside his research in

historical History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

and Celtic linguistics, Delamarre followed a career of diplomat from 1984 to 2014. He worked for the French diplomatic post in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

(1984–86), then in

Harare Harare (; formerly Salisbury ) is the capital and most populous city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of 940 km2 (371 mi2) and a population of 2.12 million in the 2012 census and an estimated 3.12 million in its metropolitan ...

(1989–92), in Vilnius (1992–97), in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

(1997–98), and in

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...

(1998–2000). He was first counsellor at the French embassy in Helsinki from 2004 to 2006, and a special adviser for international cooperation to the Secretary-General of the French government from 2008 to 2014. In 2001, he published an influential etymological dictionary of the

entitled ''Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise''. A second enlarged edition was published in 2003.

Works

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References

Living people French lexicographers Linguists from France Celtic studies scholars 1954 births Linguists of Indo-European languages 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists {{France-linguist-stub