AHC: Make French a Germanic Language

Not so simple, as entire parts of the Frankish aristocracy spoke the various romance languages of their lands (as exemplified by saint Guilhem's family). The Frankish language was not alway the first one of the Frank-descendend aristocracy. And, of course, Germany was not more populated than Francia.
If I remember my anthropology class well enough, when the Saxons moved in there were too man Saxon freemen for the amount of roman estates to simply take over so they had to sub-divide them. Compare this to the Frankish invasion where the roman estates remained roughly the same size, with roman nobility even remaining in power in the south, just accepting their new overlords. That would imply there wasn't enough Frankish freemen to take over all of the estates to need to divide them. Would a cultural PoD work to increase the number of freemen who demanded land, or is it other factors that kept frankish freemen out of the estates.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Might even be possible


I was going to suggest something along these lines as well, however I think you would wind up with a language closer to a Flemish / dutch at the end of the day. but I could see it if the empire could be held together an enlarged Holy Roman Empire.
Only issue is that in the good old days such empires usually had several languages. Just look at Austria-Hungary for starters. YugoSlavia, even the Russian Empire who were hell bent on trying to get the populations to speak Russian, never could kill Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, finish, polish, Belarusian, ukrainain, Georgian, Armenian, aziri and other assorted languages.

so you just may wind up with a big empire that the further east you go the more German they speak.. the more west the more gaulish with a a large central group speaking some form of Flemish/dutch hybrid of the two

I think that's very possible, although a general tendency has been to have one language gradually become absolutely dominant (if a country stays united, of course). This started quite early, usually favouring the language the bible got translated into, which usually was also the language of the central administration etc.

Of course, there could be regional minority languages. imagine a France where the Romance language(s) only survive(s) in the same way Occitan does in the south. (Or perhaps more succesfully: like Catalonian does nowadays.)

Not so simple, as entire parts of the Frankish aristocracy spoke the various romance languages of their lands (as exemplified by saint Guilhem's family). The Frankish language was not alway the first one of the Frank-descendend aristocracy. And, of course, Germany was not more populated than Francia.

True, but mostly in the south. Saint Guilhem being a case in point. In a united Frankish realm, I don't really see Romance winning out. But surviving as a regional language in what we'd call southern France? Yes. Sure. I can see that.
 
It's pretty noteworthy that only in England did a Germanic language ever replace a Romance language..

Not so, England was only one of many. Present-day Belgium (Flanders), parts of the Netherlands, southern Germany, and Austria were all once part of the Roman Empire. Of course I'd imagine that, like Britain, most of the people living in these areas didn't speak Latin. Never mind the various Gothic tribes who invaded pretty much all corners of the empire during the 4th and 5th centuries AD who provide examples of instances where Germanic languages replaced Latin (though people living in these areas speak Romance, Slavic, or Arabic today).
 
How does that make (Germanic) Frankish dominate northern Gaul instead of a Romance language? The Romance languages had already diverged in Gaul between the north and south.
The Franks actually have difficulties in retaining Southern Gaul, that area almost passed out from France and HRE during the time of the plantagenets and the rise of the crown of aragon..
 
As most people I think the Seine basin are as far as Frankish could come to dominate. If course that would also lead the the disappearance of modern France and resulting in the south dominated Occitan. The weaker position of Oïl will likely also make Breton do better.

But what's also interesting is the effect on Germany, with the split of the Frankish Kingdom, the east Franks was weaken against the other tribal groups especially the Saxons, so Germany developed into a union of Franks and Saxons with Bavarians, Swabians, Thuringiand and Frisians as secondary players. If the Franks instead of the being the largest group, now are able to dominate the unified Frankish state alone, they may have a harder time integrate the other German tribes into one nation. We may see the other tribes keep much stronger identities. Especially the Saxons and Bavarians are a threat against unity in the long term, as they room to expand.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
It's pretty noteworthy that only in England did a Germanic language ever replace a Romance language.



What do you mean? It's called Gaulish instead? Gaulish the Celtic language certainly isn't gonna survive by the 5th century.



How does that make (Germanic) Frankish dominate northern Gaul instead of a Romance language? The Romance languages had already diverged in Gaul between the north and south.

Except it didn't. It replaced a Latin influenced Brythonic one.


Jury's out here. The majority of linguists believe that Brythonic survived all over Britain, though there is a respectable minority position that the South East was Latin speaking. There's a great pro-Latin paper here by Schrijver, British Latin does resolve the question of why there is such a small British substrata in Anglo-Saxon, and is supported by the existence of the name "Lloegr" which seems to be what the Cumbrogi (Brittonic speakers) called the area east of the Severn-Trent line. If there was no difference in culture, why invent an exonym?

On the other hand, AS were very clear they were fighting Britons, and historical evidence points towards a Welsh speaking component in AS Kent where you wouldn't expect one if Romano-Brits spoke only Latin. For me, the most likely situation is that Vulgar Latin was a common second language for both Germanic peoples and lowland Britons, which explains the low level of Celtic in early AS.


Re. Gaulish, I'm pretty sure it survived until the 5th or 6th century OTL, and I've seen people claim it survived until the 9th in Switzerland. I think it was already at deaths door though, and barring a total collapse of urbanism and return to tribal polities, as seen in Britain, then I'd say it was impossible to keep Gaulish in the face of Latin.
 
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