French Remains A Germanic Language

Delvestius

Banned
I don't really buy that, because there are many, many more examples of large conquered populations adopting the language of a small conquering population. Surely the Turks understood that Greek was a prestigious language when they conquered Anatolia, and yet the majority of Anatolia speaks Turkish today, not Greek.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

There was definitely a chance to preserve a Frankish speaking entity by means of Frankish control.
 
I don't really buy that, because there are many, many more examples of large conquered populations adopting the language of a small conquering population. Surely the Turks understood that Greek was a prestigious language when they conquered Anatolia, and yet the majority of Anatolia speaks Turkish today, not Greek.

I never claimed that it was the reason for ALL linguistic change, merely in the case of the Germanic peoples switching over to Latin. And it is very common throughout history. As for Turkish, I'm not too sure about that case. I know that Greek people in Anatolia became rapidly "Turkified" in language and in culture. I don't know what caused this change. I would theorize that it could have possibly been due to the native Greek population converting to Islam, making a change in culture and language easier. Maybe. But you're right, it's definitely not like the adoption of Latin by the Germanics.

If size of the conquered population was ever a major factor, the Gauls wouldn't have switched to Latin in the first place. It's not like Latin-speakers from Italy beheaded the entire population of Gaul and mated faster than rabbits to replace it - Despite being outnumbered throughout their early history, the Latin-speaking Romans managed to assimilate large numbers of conquered foreign language speakers, from Gaul to Hispania to Dacia, and even much of Italy itself.

Once again, numbers of speakers certainly don't tell the whole story of linguistic change. Just look at the spread of English in the past few centuries.

Gaulish is an interesting case though. It did survive, apparently, until at least the fourth century. Empires of the Word suggests that they may have adopted Latin since it was the prestige language. After all, the Romans brought with them an advanced, civic, and urban society and assimilating into this culture would bring these benefits with them. Plus, with Latin, a person could communicate with someone from anywhere in the Empire.

Note that when I say the Romans had a more "advanced" culture than the Gauls, I don't mean it in a derogatory way. I only mean that adopting Roman culture would have brought many benefits.
 
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I never claimed that it was the reason for ALL linguistic change, merely in the case of the Germanic peoples switching over to Latin. And it is very common throughout history. As for Turkish, I'm not too sure about that case. I know that Greek people in Anatolia became rapidly "Turkified" in language and in culture. I don't know what caused this change. But you're right, it's definitely not like the adoption of Latin by the Germanics.



Once again, numbers of speakers certainly don't tell the whole story of linguistic change. Just look at the spread of English in the past few centuries.

Gaulish is an interesting case though. It did survive, apparently, until at least the fourth century. Empires of the Word suggests that they may have adopted Latin since it was the prestige language. After all, the Romans brought with them an advanced, civic, and urban society and assimilating into this culture would bring these benefits with them. Plus, with Latin, a person could communicate with someone from anywhere in the Empire.

Note that when I say the Romans had a more "advanced" culture than the Gauls, I don't mean it in a derogatory way. I only mean that adopting Roman culture would have brought many benefits.

There's also the fact that the close similarities between Gaulish and Latin would have helped the shift.
Think of how the Danelaw affected Old English prior to the Norman influx.
 
There's also the fact that the close similarities between Gaulish and Latin would have helped the shift.
Think of how the Danelaw affected Old English prior to the Norman influx.

That's an interesting factor that I didn't think of.

Isn't historical linguistics fun?
 
That's an interesting factor that I didn't think of.

Isn't historical linguistics fun?

Apparently, linguists points that the family of IE languages closest to Italic languages - like Latin - may have been the Celtic (like Gaulish) ones.
Something like how Baltic and Slavic languages where close and diverged recently... or something.
 
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Apparently, linguists points that the family of IE languages closest to Italic languages - like Latin - may have been the Celtic (like Gaulish) ones.
Something like how Baltic and Slavic languages where close and diverged recently... or something.

True for Celts and Latins, but appears to be wrong for Baltic.

The few remanings of Gaul language and toponymy seems to show that Gaul and Latin derives from the same branch (but remains mute about Ligurian), but the baltic is definitly an older derivation.

I remember that our teachers explained us that Lituanian served to explain changes by comparison with the Sanskrit, because the marsh's isolation somewhat protected a relativly "primitive" linguistic.

For the population of Gaul, well : assuming that the total population of the province was around 8 millons in the VII-VIII and propably much populated south than north (but much in Austrasia than Neustria), that the ethnic Franks relativly settled the same area, you have regions with an significant minority or even a short majority.

The same reasoning can be used for Frisia, quite independent culturally, politically and having a great econonomical prosperity but that use a Frankish-originiated language.

Again, Luxemburg, Franconia, Mosellan Lorraine, and a great part of Old Dutch are issued from Frankish, in the areas they settled the most.

For France, it's maybe the scaterring of frankish population, and a settlement towards west (Liddle Franke, by exemple) that increased the heavyiness of the gallo-roman (it don't explain all, and maybe that gallo-roman would have imposed itself anyway)

EDIT : A good thing would be to avoid a feudalization in the Frankish Kingdom, at least not an OTL one. If you manage to butterfly Charlemagne, and to avoid to too great Frankish Kingdom, it maybe could do it.
As the feudalisation is directly issued from Carolingian Empire, avoiding it should butterfly away at least its OTL form, and have a more "national" relied organisations (i'm thinking to the duchies of Frisians, Bavarians, Aquitains, Brittany, etc.)
 
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Norman wasn't English, was it? Same here with Old Frankish. The language of the Franks was a Germanic, not Romance language. French is the result of Roman colonization of Gaul, for France to be Germanic means that you're entirely butterflying away a Francophone population that was there from rather early on, and given Frankish settlements were going on since the 3rd Century CE.....

The Franks certainly had an influence on the development of the Romance Language in Gaul (especially in the Langue d'Oil), probably a greater influence than the Normans had on English.

Uh.....French was never a Germanic language to begin with. Hell, some of the Franks weren't even Germanic!
But I digress, perhaps the closest I can think of is that they'd end up being like today's Belgians, speaking both a Germanic language, and a Latinate one.

Well not exactly though the Flemish elite tended to be bilingual, most of the population wasn't; and those which were, were more often Dutch speaking than Francophone. This actually was and sometimes still is a source of annoyance (or worse) for the Flemish, since for centuries they were ruled by an elite (including the Flemish elite....), which treated their language as second rate. However the results on the Walloon dialects wasn't always good either.
Although apart from this language issue, the elite basically treated the common Flemish and Walloon rather the same.

Speaking of today's Belgium, Belgium is actually divided in two language groups (and a small group of German speakers and bilingual citizens of Bruxelles/Brussel) with heir own media etc.
 
True for Celts and Latins, but appears to be wrong for Baltic.

I think he meant that Celtic is to Italic what Baltic is to Slavic, i.e., that Celtic and Italic related in a similar way as Baltic and Slavic are within the Indo-European family. Balto-Slavic is one of the main subgroups within the Indo-European family but I think linguists are less sure about whether Italo-Celtic is a valid subgroup. But Gaulish and Latin certainly do share a lot of features.

On topic (because I feel like I've been derailing the thread a bit with my fondness for historical linguistics), I think if you can have the Franks create a stable kingdom in Austrasia, there will be enough of a Germanic presence to replace Latin in the area. Then, if they fight a series of wars to conquer Gaul, depopulating it somewhat, it will be easier for Frankish settlers to spread their language. The longer this process takes, the better.
 

Delvestius

Banned
The Franks certainly had an influence on the development of the Romance Language in Gaul (especially in the Langue d'Oil), probably a greater influence than the Normans had on English.

Not at all... The Franks had only a token influence on the development of French. Approximately 800 french words are derived from Frankish, while with English, 60% of our vocabulary is Romantic, thanks to the Norman Conquest.
 
Gaulish is an interesting case though. It did survive, apparently, until at least the fourth century.
I don't think there's evidence for that outside Jerome, and he's, ah, not exactly a linguistic authority outside of Greek, Ciceronian Latin, and Hebrew.
 
I once made a weird map about this. Northern France remains Germanic. Basically High German undergoes a number of very French shifts, like nasalization and palatalization. Here it is:


Note that it's written very... strangely. It appears to be in some bizarre combination on English and German, with some parts of the dialect stuff being IPA and some not. I honestly have no idea what I was thinking.

frankdeutschfin copy.png
 
I think he meant that Celtic is to Italic what Baltic is to Slavic, i.e., that Celtic and Italic related in a similar way as Baltic and Slavic are within the Indo-European family. Balto-Slavic is one of the main subgroups within the Indo-European family but I think linguists are less sure about whether Italo-Celtic is a valid subgroup. But Gaulish and Latin certainly do share a lot of features.

Yeah, it's what I meaned that could be.
 
Yeah, it's what I meaned that could be.

There's a lot of things that goes in the way of a same sub-group : many cultural, political institutions that are similar. And for the language, the quick abandon of Gallic for the latin.

The "but latin was seriously attracting" didn't explain all. There were many provinces, sooner annexed that have only a few latin-speaker in the V. In Gaul, all the urban elites were latin-speaker, and the rural aeras were half latinized.
 
There's a lot of things that goes in the way of a same sub-group : many cultural, political institutions that are similar. And for the language, the quick abandon of Gallic for the latin.

The "but latin was seriously attracting" didn't explain all. There were many provinces, sooner annexed that have only a few latin-speaker in the V. In Gaul, all the urban elites were latin-speaker, and the rural aeras were half latinized.

Actually, Continental Celtic and Italic merged back as one continuum in the time of the Roman Empire but latin became imposed as the literary language and the language of administration because of the Roman Empire while the Insular Celtic languages drifted more from Italic had the Etruscans assimilated by the Celts, Latin would have been turned to a Celtic language.
 
I never claimed that it was the reason for ALL linguistic change, merely in the case of the Germanic peoples switching over to Latin. And it is very common throughout history. As for Turkish, I'm not too sure about that case. I know that Greek people in Anatolia became rapidly "Turkified" in language and in culture. I don't know what caused this change. I would theorize that it could have possibly been due to the native Greek population converting to Islam, making a change in culture and language easier. Maybe. But you're right, it's definitely not like the adoption of Latin by the Germanics.



Once again, numbers of speakers certainly don't tell the whole story of linguistic change. Just look at the spread of English in the past few centuries.

Gaulish is an interesting case though. It did survive, apparently, until at least the fourth century. Empires of the Word suggests that they may have adopted Latin since it was the prestige language. After all, the Romans brought with them an advanced, civic, and urban society and assimilating into this culture would bring these benefits with them. Plus, with Latin, a person could communicate with someone from anywhere in the Empire.

Note that when I say the Romans had a more "advanced" culture than the Gauls, I don't mean it in a derogatory way. I only mean that adopting Roman culture would have brought many benefits.

The spread of Turkish and Latin are not isolated cases, though. In most of Europe and Asia, the dominant population is genetically descended from the first agriculturalists to settle there after the Ice Age, despite whatever language they speak today. Other cases include:

- The adoption of Anglo-Saxon by the Romano-Brits in England
- The adoption of Greek in Anatolia long before the Turks
- The adoption of Celtic languages in the British Isles in prehistoric times
- The adoption of Slavic languages throughout Eastern Europe during the Dark Ages
- The adoption of Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa with the spread of Islam
- The adoption of Magyar by the majority population of Hungary
- The adoption of Indo-Aryan languages in northern India during the Aryan invasion period
- The adoption of Sinic languages in much of southern China
- The adoption of Spanish by rural Mexicans

...And so on and so forth.

There's also the fact that the close similarities between Gaulish and Latin would have helped the shift.
Think of how the Danelaw affected Old English prior to the Norman influx.

Latin also managed to replace many languages that were quite unrelated to it, however - The Etruscans didn't speak an Indo-European language, nor did the ancient Iberians along the Mediterranean coast of Hispania.
 
The spread of Turkish and Latin are not isolated cases, though. In most of Europe and Asia, the dominant population is genetically descended from the first agriculturalists to settle there after the Ice Age, despite whatever language they speak today. Other cases include:

- The adoption of Anglo-Saxon by the Romano-Brits in England
- The adoption of Greek in Anatolia long before the Turks
- The adoption of Celtic languages in the British Isles in prehistoric times
- The adoption of Slavic languages throughout Eastern Europe during the Dark Ages
- The adoption of Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa with the spread of Islam
- The adoption of Magyar by the majority population of Hungary
- The adoption of Indo-Aryan languages in northern India during the Aryan invasion period
- The adoption of Sinic languages in much of southern China
- The adoption of Spanish by rural Mexicans

...And so on and so forth.

I agree with you completely. Languages are adopted by different peoples for different reasons at different times, mostly due to "prestige" or related cultural reasons. Most of the cases you posted above conform to this, in my opinion.

I think that the size of the conquered population can be a factor in many cases though. Look at the conquest of China by the Mongols, who were quickly assimilated. Or even how the Mongols in Central Asia were assimilated into Turkic culture. I guess my point is that linguistic change is really complicated and no two examples are the same.
 
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