This is gonna sound stupid but I'm wondering. After the Roman Empire fell apart, the Frankish Empire (Who spoke Germanic Languages) came in to what is now Modern-Day France (Which I assume most of the peasants still spoke Gaulish and the higher-class folk would speak Latin.) Anyway, Why don't they speak some Germanic Language or Gaulish?
Vulgar Latin was by far the more common tongue, as the invaders were actually small in numbers and France had an extremely high population density historically. Couple that with Latin's use in the church and the general prestige that the language carried, and it's only natural that Latin and it's descendant languages would dominate.
>>1209427
Thanks!
>>1209427
I would also say that latin was the language of the imperial administration (which the Franks and visigoths and others tried to maintain) and that the celtic language in Gaul wasn't that different from latin, it would seem, so the two languages appear to have blended to an extent. Current french is essentially derived from latin, but with celtic influences (and some germanic influences as well).
>>1209413
This actually happened elsewhere, I can't think of a post-roman germanic kingdom in the West that managed to change the language of the majority of the population.
The exception is Britain of course. If anything the question would be how and why is english a germanic language (despite the obvious influence of romanic languages).
>>1209413
France actually had some different languages (or dialects) and like several countries it suppressed it in favor of one (such as in the Netherlands, Germany & Britain). Maybe look into that too.
>>1209686
True. Flemish territory came up to nowadays Calais where they did speak Flemish.
>>1209686
You're thinking of the language unification that happened after the revolution ?
Then it's true that before that point France had several dialects but most of it was romance languages. German dialects were only found in bits of France that were conquered in the 1600-1700s : alsace, moselle, and flandres.
As for OP question, we can make conjectures but we don't really know. Sometimes conquerors impose their language, like the anglo-saxons, sometimes not really, like the normans, sometimes not at all, like the franks.
>>1209765
Breton is celtic, does that count?
>>1209665
Britain was never thoroughly Romanized to begin with, and contrary to popular belief, the Anglo-Saxons did migrate there in large numbers.
>>1209776
Count as/for what ?
>>1209837
"Gaulish"
bigger question, how the fuck did romanians keep a romance language while surrounded by the slavic hordes?
>>1209860
No, breton is a language imported from Great Britain in the early middle ages, by briton settlers fleeing the anglo-saxon conquest.
It is not closely related to gaulish languages.
>>1209978
Ah makes sense
>>1209413
The people of Roman Gallia didn't speak Celtic by the time the Franks arrived, they'd been part of the Empire for ~400 years and mostly spoke Latin. The Franks adopted Latin because of the Church, which had managed to survive in the cities of Gallia much better than n Britain, which is why the English didn't adopt the Latin of Lloegyr after they conquered it.
>>1209978
>It is not closely related to gaulish languages
Wrong, British and Gallic Celtic were very similar. Also there is no language called "Gaulish", Gaul is a Frankish word meaning "foreigners", the language they spoke was Gallic.
>>1209665
English is still pretty heavily Germanic in basic vocabulary and grammar. It is rather divergent for a Germanic language in many regards, but to a linguist, it's still very obviously one.
Grammatically, it has been somewhat 'simplified' due to large influx of various foreigners in Roman/post-Roman times. It also got a large influx of French, and later Church Latin (this was also 16th century onward Latin revivalism) and so on, but English's 'Romance' injection is mostly for high register situations. Most uneducated peasant types would never have used the vocabulary.
>>1210087
Gaulish is an accepted term for the Celtic language that was spoken in Gaul.
Breton is not unrelated to Gaulish and other continental Celtic languages (and ultimately to all indo-european languages) but it is closer to cornish and Welsh.
>>1210280
Breton has evolved for over a thousand years, ofc it's no longer very close to extinct Gallic. Cornish, Welsh and Gallic were mutually intelligible / the same language at the time of the Roman invasions.
Breton in particular because of it's heavy influence from French is probably a fair equivalence to what Gallic would have become, had it survived.
