"except the names of most of your kings!"
First I personally don't have any king. I'm a republican (ps : not in the USA meaning...)
the kings who had germanic names were the "merovingiens" and "carolingiens". At this time they were frank kings, not french kings...
We were colonized and ruled by this little germanic minority, who naturally had germanic names.
Of course.
Louis, Charles, Henry - good example of cross-border exchange.
And here we are back to our original topic, the Franks!
For how long did they go one using their Fraconian?
People in Provence better understand Italians than Normands understand Italians.
False. It is difficult for you to understand that even if northern France could look like in its lanscapes with other northern european countries. (Yes, I consider northern France to be northern european (geographically speaking) - the only area of latin culture in northern Europe -), culturally it is different.
People of normandie speak the same french than people of provence and don't have more difficulty than them to understand italians.
"In my opinion geographical closeness (proximity) IS often cultural similarity!"
Sometimes maybe but not always, I'm sorry. Compare the culture of the mexicans who live in tijuana, and their united-statian neighbours... you'll see that geographical proximity doen't mean necessary similarity, even if the two people interact (immigration, etc... they are two completly distinct groups)
"I am just trying to point out that these concepts are very unclear and differently defined by each of us."
the concept of geographical-cultural similarity is very unclear, but linguistic-cultural group are not unclear at all. the cultural limit between latin europe and germanic europe can be drawn quite precisely. It would cut belgium in two (wallons don't feel close at all to flanders, and flanders hate the wallons). It would pass trough alsace and cut switerland, and then folow the alps between italy and austria.
How coud you draw on a map your concept of "central europe" ?...
Cette fois j'y vais je vais dormir. Ciao
I would call Scandinavia (not counting Finland, even though that would fall under the categorization of "Nordic") as being basically germanic culturally, as, as it has already been said, that such would include at least most natively germanic language-speaking groups overall (even though some'd say that the English've had quite a bitta French influence compared to most other germanic language-speaking groups), not just Germans per se.
Well, all Swiss feel Swiss! They are an example of how a homogene region with different languages did become a reality!
With people in provence I meant langue d'oc speakers.
And there is a BIG cultural exchange taking place over the Mexican-American border. Rich Americans having fun in Mexico, poor Mexicans working in the US.
Of course we are Germanic here in Norway, too! But just like the French we have wanted to distance us from the Germans and therefore played heavily on Scandinavian-Nordic.
And what is Germanic culture? The Finns are just as stiff as us, even though they are not Germanic!
And our kinsmen the Germans were not really democratic in 1905, a year when ultra-democratic Norway democratically abolished the union with Sweden!
" Well, all Swiss feel Swiss! They are an example of how a homogene region with different languages did become a reality! "
Swiss is homogeinous politically (as European Union is) but diverse culturally, I'm sorry. Ask a french-swiss if he's culturally closer to an french or to a swiss-germanic...
"With people in provence I meant langue d'oc speakers."
fisrt of all "occitan" or "langue d'oc" is just a latin language as his own, distinct from french and from italian. Occitan is not an italian dialect (like corsican is).
Secondly, and I speak about what I know because I AM a people of provence. listen : occitan is not spoken anymore. (like most provence people I think it is a shame it diseappear, but it is like that, and now our native language is only french)
I suppose the Swiss would have said that some ties connect him to German Swiss and some ties to French people.
Wether the language is dead or not is not my point. If you knew it, you would understand Italians better, because it is a language in the middle!
Greg, Krako, and Fabbrice,
Thanks for getting back to me. I wasn't expecting this much response.
First of all, my friend Jean-Paul was college educated and the words I quoted were his actual words to me, scout's honor.
A second point, very central, is that linguistic facts must be kept separate from anthropological facts. People can change languages. For example, the Bulgarians were originally a Hunnic (North Turkic) people from Central Asia. However, they gave up their native language within a few generations and adopted the language of their Slavic subjects. The Franks did the same thing in Gaul, going over from High German to Gallo-Romance gradually between the late 3rd century A.D. and the middle of the 7th century A.D.
The study of the human genome is still in its infancy but I'm sure that an honest study of it would show the French and many North Italians to be a good part Germanic. On the other hand, it would also show the modern Germans to have more Slavic in them than they would perhaps like to admit as well as a touch of the Mongol and the Tartar. The swarthy complexions of many southern Italians is probably partly due to an Arabic influence but not entirely because the Romans brought many Greek slaves (from Greece and Asia Minor) into Italy as well as Arab and Syrian. In fact, a Pompeiian inscription reads Antiochus servus Liviae (Antiochus, the slave of Livia) attesting to the man's Greek origins. Recently, geneticists have even discovered that many Greeks and Italians share some of the same DNA with many American Indians almost half-way around the world so it will be interesting to see the whole big picture of the human genome when the study finally completed.
Spain was basically Carthaginian territory but I'm sure that Iberians, Celts, Roman slaves, Alani, Vandals and Visigoths all contributed to the mix too. Even here, archeologists have found the grave of a slave girl whose Greek name was Glyke (Sugar) but her Roman slave master had renamed her Flavia. After she died, it is believed that her friends saw to it that her Greek name was placed on her gravestone along with her Latin name.
Although the French language has a Latin basis I don't think that it's lexicon is as high as 95% Latin. Wikipedia claims that perhaps as much as 15% of the vocabulary of French is of Germanic origin, higher than any other Romance language; Celtic words are still to be heard in many terms pertaining to the hearth and rural life: chene (oak), sapin (fir tree cf. Welsh sabwyn), bouleau (birch), alouette (lark), boue (mud cf. Welsh bawa) charrue (plow), charpentier (carpenter cf. Old Irish carpat 'wagon') ruche (bee hive cf. Breton ruskenn), boulanger (baker cf. Irish bulog;builin 'a loaf of bread') etc.
In the final analysis, I'm not so much concerned that any of you agree with me (go ahead disagree!) as I simply am that you have an interest in the subject. Many people have no academic or intellectual interests in geography, linguistics or anthropology at all. While this is not totally bad or unnatural we still need more people who will think about these subjects and contribute to them.
I speak the same language that was once spoken in French Flanders . I have to say ' spoken ' and this pisses me off . In the fifties W-Flemish was the language of each home in French Flanders , but now you have to consider yourself lucky to hear somebody mumble some flemish words . I'm so angry the french latinized this part of France ! Why ? There never been any riots or something like that what so ever ! How could you !?
OHHHHHHHH NO "!"
This forum is not going to the belgian problems again!
It happened twice on the "What do you know about the dutch" topic (Wich bye the way was/is the most succesfull topic in the excistance of Antimoon-forum)
I make a new topic for you okay its probably already installed when you read this....