What makes French a Latin-Germanic mixed language

" This is a really good point. Perhaps we're splitting hairs on an issue without first defining what "mixed" means. "

If a latin-germanic mixed language is a language that have 90% of its vocabulary from classical latin and 5% from proto-Germanic (the rest being from Greek, Arabic, Celtic, etc.); in that case yes romance languages are latin-germanic mixed languages...


" Is there a linguist in the house who can tell us what would constitute a "mixed language"? (--outside of the fact that languages usually never truly merge?) "

yes, languages never merge. languages evoluate from on other language only, but of course they can (they almost always) do integrate during their evolution some elements coming from other languages.

If they could merge, then a mixed-language should have about 50% of each mother language. 50% of gramatical structures, 50% of vocabulary (in speech proportion), 50% of core vocabulary, etc.




PS; leasnam... I see you choosed not doing the lexical analysis yourself asked to make. I think it means you recognise that germanic influence in french vocabulary (and romance in general) in insignificant, especially for saying that french is a latin-germanic mix, or that it is "heavily germanized" or such other similar absurd claims...

If you don't I'm still waiting your analysis.

There are several posts showing analysis of French vocabulary. You can take a look at those.

Au fond le français que l'on connait est la langue adoptive de tout le monde incluant les francophones de souche, car elle n'était pas la langue maternelle des Germains, ni celle des Celtes, tandis que pour les Romains c'était plutôt l'occitan, eux qui ce sont établis au sud. Du côté germanique, il y a eu la loi de Grimm et la loi de Verner pour expliquer certaines mutations, mais du côté latin il pourrait y avoir eu une sorte de créolization partielle pour expliquer certaines divergences avec le latin classique, d'autant plus que le territoire de l'Empire romain était très étendu et le taux d'analphabétisation très élevé. Cette hypothèse me semblerait alors plus réaliste que certaines autres suggestions à moins que dans le futur il y ait des découvertes nous entraînant sur une autre voie.

Le problème en est plus un d'anachronisme. Le plus grand changement à mon avis s'est effectué au début de l'ère chrétienne, entre le latin que l'on appelle classique et le bas-latin, et non entre le bas-latin et l'ancien français.

Leasnam:''Is there a linguist in the house who can tell us what would constitute a "mixed language"? (--outside of the fact that languages usually never truly merge?)''

On peut aussi se demander ce qu'est un dialecte par rapport à ce qu'est une langue, où se termine l'un et où commence l'autre. Tout finit par être une question d'interprétation.

<<If a latin-germanic mixed language is a language that have 90% of its vocabulary from classical latin and 5% from proto-Germanic (the rest being from Greek, Arabic, Celtic, etc.); in that case yes romance languages are latin-germanic mixed languages...
>>

I am satisfied by the analyses done. Scores we have are 3%, 9% and 6.5% which averages to around 6%. This is precicely what we already knew and what Ouest originally postulated: that French has little germanic lexical influence. But now we have established it scientifically. We do not simply accept it cart-blanche ;)

Ouest's theory was not that French was inundated with Germanic words, but that its *syntax* and grammar resulted from contact with Germanic languages. This is where he makes his argument for the German-Latin mix.



<<If they could merge, then a mixed-language should have about 50% of each mother language. 50% of gramatical structures, 50% of vocabulary (in speech proportion), 50% of core vocabulary, etc.
>>

I disagree. A mixed language does not have to be 50-50% on all points. It can be any proportion, in any field. Otherwise, true, we could never get a "mixed" language except through artificial means.

<<That is correct: first ancester of Romance language (vernacular Latin?) as a whole has been born as a Germanized Latin, then the same process has been induced by the Franks in Northern France again. >>

My opinion is such:
Germanic mercenaries carried a creolised version of Vulgar Latin to the variaous outskirts of the Roman Empire, including Gaul (--Roman citizens speaking proper Vulgar and Classical Latin were not the ones deployed to the these regions). This was stage ONE in the transition of Latin into Romance.

Stage TWO saw the arrival of the lave of the germans infiltrating into the empire as it collapsed. This brought a new wave of influence from germanic which affected French, Italian and the languages on the border with Germania more than the others.

Stage THREE came with the arrival of Norsemen into Normandy, which contributed a few words to French (more to Normaund), but also introduced the current vigesimal counting system in French.

I will not count English as an influence, since that has yet to be concluded.

Language policy (assimilation) in France is "patriotisme"? Most of inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine are of German origin.

_________________________

aah aah, no, precisely, a recent article in a alsacian newspaper show that 90 % of alsacian are from south France, Britanny, central France, savoyard, and from Burgundy. No german there, this is how you kill a stupid cliché.
It was a study make with genealogy.

If I found the link about this article, I will put in.

I'm continuing to read the posts on this thread, and temptation took over, and I sent a link to colleagues of mine in the linguistics departement where I work, and we actually had a small "romance linguistics" forum yesterday, just to discuss some of the posts on here. Though, most faculty members' comments tended to hover around "most of the people on here have no clue as to what they are talking about", there were some really good points brought up, that I would like to share with you. These comments will cover many posts, recent and not so recent.

There were quite a number of posts talking about the migration period, and the "creolisation" of Vulgar Latin, thus creating a latin-germanic mix that was the basis of French and other languages, blah blah.. Well, there are a few issues with this assertion. I'll limit myself to information concerning French, since that seems to be the point of this thread.

a. Though Germanic peoples were migrating all over the place after 300 C.E., the Franks started entering Gaul in the 400's. Now, why is this significant? Well, for a few reasons. Some on here have claimed, erroneously, that many aspects of Late Latin/Proto-Romance/Old French phonology are of germanic origin. Unfortunately, many documents (the Appendix probi, which dates from the late 200's, for example) clearly show us that phonological changes were taking place long before the migration period. Why are these phonological changes important?

b. Some people here have stated that certain grammatical aspects of French (fixed sentence structure, lack of similiarity with classical latin - though classical latin had little to do with romance development) are the "smoking gun" that proves germanic influence. Well, Latin and its Vulgar/popular forms had much more loose sentence structure because declensions took the place of prepositions and word order, pronunciation of these endings would be essential (otherwise no one would understand what was the subject or object of a sentence). Most consonant endings which showed nominative, dative or whatever cases were dissapearing quite early during the empire. We can see this on many examples all over the place (spelling errors in texts, on graffiti and in other documents, especially in "corrective" texts which tried to reinforce proper spelling). Because of the "homogenisation" of pronunciation of many cases, meaning became less and less clear. Speakers had to become more dependent on prepositions and fixed word order. This is something that happened all over the empire, in regions with eventual Germanic presence and in regions with very little Germanic presence. Even late latin documents of a non-formal nature show the abundance of prepositions and loss of case endings. This was not because of influence from Germanic syntax but rather phonological changes that were happening in the empire throughout most of its history. One must also take note that modern German retains its case system to this very day. If any germanic language had true grammatical influence over French, I would think that French would actually have preserved more elements of Classical Latin syntax (or at least elements that were coincidentally similar to it) rather than lose its case system like all other romance languages.

C. Many people have stated (using the same exemples over and over and over again) that Frankish left French with certain grammatical features, such as the use of the pronoun "on" and the passé composé. First of all, there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that "on" is of Germanic origin. That, unfortunately, remains a mystery. The passé composé finds its roots in Vulgar Latin and it is believed that its origins predate any germanic migration. Also, I would remind the readers that the passé composé exists in all other major romance languages.

D. It has been said that Frankish, due to its supposed "harsh accentuation" has influenced the latin spoken in Gaul. Well, this was widely believed, until germanic linguists began devoting a great deal of time studying the phonological systems of old forms of the Germanic languages. Many linguists are starting to change their theories about how "harshly" Old Frankish was spoken. Using a comparative-historical method (that I wont get into, since it would take 30 pages to explain - I suggest anyone interested go to their nearest university library and look up the research), it seems that Old Frankish might have had a much less accentuated pronunciation than has been thought. Now...does that mean that French's phonological differences from other Romance languages is due to a Celtic influence? Or was it a linguistic fluke? We dont yet know for sure. Perhaps more research and more study will reveal the answer to this mystery.

E. When people speak of French, they tend to speak of Parisian pronunciation and intonation. This is a bit misleading because French is a language spoken with many different accents and pronunciations. We must also take into account that Parisian pronunciation developed into what we know today during the French "classical period" into the period of the French Revolution. Some try to over simplify their explaination by talking about "northern" and "southern" French, stating that the latter is pronounced differently because of Occitan influence. I beg to differ. There are regions in France which are north of the oc/oil line (sometimes quite a bit north of it) which do not share the same accent or intonation that one finds in Paris.


F. The claim that Francophones can learn German in a jiffy and must consecrate much more time to Latin is misguided. Any romance speaker will have trouble with Latin grammar (with the exception of Romanians perhaps, though they would have difficulty with Latin vocabulary). Anyone who speaks a language that has no case system would find a case-system language difficult, at first at least. English speakers can learn Dutch far faster than Old English. Dutch speakers can learn Danish far quicker than Old Dutch or even Frankish due to the same difficulties. Just saying that "oh, Latin is hard for French people...and German isnt as hard..thats the proof! French is a Germanic mix!" is ridiculous.

Just as an aside, Id like to ask that people who claim to be "lovers of language" or "linguists" realise that by using a few examples here or there to prove their arguments, without looking at the big picture are doing nothing but sharing speculation and bad information. One must consider history, language evolution, the distinct separation between Classical and Vulgar Latin, and the socio-political culture of late antiquity in order to have a true understanding of where French came from. On behalf of some of my colleagues, here are some final words:

1. Did Germanic languages have an influence on French vocabulary? Yes, but only to a certain extent, not really composing a large portion of the overall lexicon. And, this chunk of germanic vocabulary shrank in size over the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

2. Did Germanic languages have an influence on French phonology? Most likely, yes they did. We do see true phonological development due to Germanic influence, which has been way overblown on this thread. Can Germanic languages be given credit for most phonological development in Proto-Romance - Old French, sadly no. We dont have enough proof.

3. What makes French a Latin-Germanic mixed language? Nothing, since French isn't a Latin-Germanic mix, at all. Is it Classical Latin, no. Is it Vulgar Latin, no. Is it Proto-Romance, no. It's French. Its a product of Latin, Vulgar Latin, Proto-Romance, with Germanic, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, English, Dutch, German (the list goes on and on) influences. Just like most other languages in the western world. Merci.

ive read lots of posts from lots of people on here, and to Joshqc - thank you. At least it seems like one person on here has some sense and bases what they say on looking at the history of french globally, and not just fixating on one or two elements. Im a student of korean, and in korean, there are many many chinese derived words. There is chinese phonological influence as well as some chinese grammatical influence. Though these influences do contribute to what we know today as korean, they do not make korean a mixed language. There is an element in east-asian linguistics to bring korean or japanese into chinese's linguistic family. This is mostly politically based or culturally based (sinophiles who just cant live in a world where korean and japanese can be their own languages). What I find the most amusing here is that the vast majority of people who are posting things about french seem to me, to be non francophone. They make horrid mistakes in French or use online translators to prove their points. And the endless quotes from wikipedia, guys, just give it a rest. I could go into a wikipedia site right now and just insert one sentence: French is a germanic language, and i bet id see that posted as a quote on here proving something. Wikipedia is great for beginners info, but not for someone who wants a deeper knowledge of a language or its evolution.

And to Leasnam, reading your "theory" in stages brought back horrible debates ive had with some "experts" in chinese linguistics. They wanted to prove Korean's "chineseness" though talking about stages of sino influence and creolization (quoting dates and historical facts that dont line up, and fringe linguists theories). Their arguments were as weak and unfounded as yours, and i make that comment based on lots of your past posts. Your problem, like so many out there is that you dont want to seek truth, you want to twist fact to suit your own version of "truth".

If we go by the theory that if a language has taken vocabulary or certain features from another language, then every language on earth, except isolated languages spoken in very small language communities, would be a creole. Under your definition, english is a creole of anglo-saxon and norman french. Flemish is a creole of dutch and french, spanish is a creole of arabic and late latin, catalan is a creole of old provencal and spanish, norwegian is a creole of landsmal and danish, ukranian is a creole of russian and old slavic, romanian is a creole of germanic-slavic-latin base, classical latin itself is a creole of old latin, greek, etruscan and other latinate languages of latium and its surrounding regions.

In your line of thinking, no language is pure and unsullen. Cant you get that a language is defined by what is mostly is? Other than being a korean expert, I speak fluent catalan. Catalan has so many influences from spanish and occitan and even basque that it could be, according to your line of thinking, a creole or mixed language. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of catalan would be able to state that for it to be considered a creole, so many other factors would have to be in place. So many other grammatical features or phonetic changes would have to be present.

Bravo Joshqc. I wish more people had your insight and ability to explain things in a simpler and clear way. I think I'll consult some romance linguists where I study to see what they have to say on this. I have a feeling they'd find this forum quite amusing.

" "oh, Latin is hard for French people...and German isnt as hard..thats the proof! French is a Germanic mix!" is ridiculous. "


German is widely considered to be a very hard language in french schools. That is why german-first-foreign-language classes are considered to be constituted of the best students.
German is difficult by its vocabulary, which is completly foreign for a romance speaker, but also by its gramar (cases, different word orders)
Actually German would probably be easier to learn for a latin-speaking person than for a french.

The people who are using the word creolization to define the roots of the French language are forgetting one basic fact. In pre-medieval Gaul or France, any migrating Franks, especially those of the elites of Frankish society would have already had either a fluent command of Latin or a rudimentary command of the language, given the cultural dominance of Latin (in any of its forms, spoken or written).

All of these Latin speakers would have been second-language speakers of Latin (L2 speakers) and for their own native language to form a creole with Latin, that creole would have had to exhibit certain characteristics, such as:

loss of complex adjectives and adverbs
use of adverbs to express modality
very rigid word order, with almost no variation
deep and significant verbal morphology
reduction in plural formation or no indicators or plural forms
Intense vocabulary mixing (high percentages of vocabulary borrowing, especially any technical or "advanced" vocabulary. In the late roman period, this would have meant heavy borrowing of religious terminology, among other lexical domains)
A fairly rapid stage evolving from pidgin status to creole status.

If you were to compare these factual common charactaristics of creole languages, you would notice that basically none of them apply to Vulgar Latin nor to any proto-romance dialect/sociolect. French, along with its sister languages,

Retains complex adjectives and adverbs, all inherited from forms of Latin prior to the migration period.
Very little, or no use of adverbs to express modality
High variataion in word order, especially in older 16th, 17th century forms
Conservation of all main forms of Latin verbal morphology
Plural forms exist in all romance languages, deriving from Latin sources
No evidence at all of high levels of vocabulary mixing (though some Romance languages show differing levels of Germanic loan-words, most of the loan words were "fashionable" at the time, and were later repalced by other words, most of which were of Latin origins)
No documented stage of pidgin language production. No romance language shows any pidgin language characteristics. Nor did any form of Late Latin (Vulgar Latin for some).

I think that certain hypothosese suggested by some on this site do not take the facts into consideration. They simply use certain, isolated historical facts or morphological occurences as proof of a wider-reaching linguistic phenomenon. This practice, as easy as it may be to do, is quite contrary to the years and decades of lingusitic research that many have done, and in my opinion is an insult to their hard work.

-Guest Guest: German is widely considered to be a very hard language in french schools. That is why german-first-foreign-language classes are considered to be constituted of the best students.
German is difficult by its vocabulary, which is completly foreign for a romance speaker, but also by its gramar (cases, different word orders)
Actually German would probably be easier to learn for a latin-speaking person than for a french.

C'est une chance que je faisais attention à ce site ce soir! Merci Guest Guest! J'ai suivi 2 cours d'allemand, et j'ai trouvé cette langue aussi difficile que le latin (à cause de sa grammaire). Me semble que c'est un peu bizarre...qu'un francophone...quelqu'un qui parle le français comme langue maternelle, trouverait l'allemand difficile, alors que l'espagnol et l'italien étaient faciles à apprendre. Oh, en et passant, merci à "this forum is stupid". Il y en a certains qui veulent se vanter en utilisant des termes qu'ils ont appris dans des cours de linguistique (des cours d'initiation, me semble). La raison pour laquelle j'écris sur ce site est simple: je viens du Québec, et ici, on a connu une longue période d'omniprésence de l'anglais. On a une longue expérience avec des gens qui font des jugements mal-informés par rapport à notre langue. Je suis prof de linguistique historique et ça m'étonne à quel point les gens ne savent rien du français, mais ça les empêche pas d'écrire sur notre langue, et surtout sur ses origines, même si leurs propos sont souvent erronés et basés sur quelques petits éléments qui n'expliquent pas l'évolution d'une langue. Mais, merci pareil. J'apprécie tes commentaires.

It's clear that if French is a Germanic creole , then the rest of Romance languages are too. So the question should be: What makes the Romance languages Latin-Germanic mixed languages?.

" J'ai suivi 2 cours d'allemand, et j'ai trouvé cette langue aussi difficile que le latin (à cause de sa grammaire). "


L'allemand est bien PLUS difficile que le latin.

Il est évident que pour un francophone maternel l'Allemand est une langue bien plus difficile que le latin. (Seuls Ouest et leasman semblent l'ignorer (PS: ou vouloir l'ignorer, celà parait les rassurer de penser que les langues romanes descendent des langues germaniques... toujours le même complexe germanique face aux questions culturelles...)

Le latin peut présenter des difficultés s'il s'agit de le pratiquer de manière correcte et subtile, mais il est absolument évident que la clareté et limpidité d'un texte latin mis à coté d'un texte Allemand ne fait pas photo. D'un texte Allemand, un francophone de comprend RIEN s'il n'a pas appris son vocabulaire auparavant. Ensuite, il doit apprendre à mettre les mots bout à bout et comprendre la logique qui les lie, logique, qui, est-il bon de le rappeler est fort différente de celle qui concerne nos langues romanes. Pour le latin, on reconnait quasiment TOUS les mots du premier coup. Il ne reste plus qu'à les associer les uns aux autres, et comprendre la logique (je conçoit cependant que celà represente une certaine difficulté étant la complexité du système des cas)

- Forgetting one major fact: Exactly. There was never any pidgin phase, no any creolisation period. Lets just consider one thing, I'll sum it up for you guys:

The Roman Emipre: millions of people. Many native languages all around. An Empire that covered the known world at the time. A population largely illiterate, having no knolwedge of the fancy classical Latin that some study in schools today. (Im sure if you travelled back to 3rd century Gaul, tonnes of people there would be able to quote Cicero!) A popular form of Latin, spoken throughout the empire, with its own dialects and sociolects, influenced by regional native languages, evolving quickly, developping regional differences.

Now, I have one question to pose: Does anyone, in their right mind think that several thousand, not million, not hundreds of millions, but several thousand germanic speaking peoples could wander about the crumbling empire (as vast as it was) and change the Latin spoken there in a systematic and rather even manner? Let's imagine a family in the 400's C.E.:

- "Oh, the empire fell. Well, that's no shock...so who's the current ruler of the region? It seems to change week to week?

- Its some person from that group of Franks..you know, the ones that have been wandering through here and settling in the area for a while now.

- Oh ok. Well, let them rule, I dont care. Everything has been so chaotic recently, might as well see what they can provide for us. Oh, by the way, they dont speak our language natively, do they?

- No, they speak some barbarian language. They speak Latin really badly.

- Oh ok, well, listen, we should just copy how they sound, even if they speak our own language badly. I mean, they are the new rulers. I mean, despite human nature and normal language development, lets just slowly abandon our own way of speaking, and adopt the manner of speech of a small majority of people, and let's just adpot tens of thousands of their words! I mean, our new king is a Frank..might as well speak like him, despite our own way of speaking. I mean, certainly, in this age of no media, nor any real communication technology, their way of butchering our spoken Latin will catch on eventually!

- Well, I mean, they do have certain words that describe things that we dont have, and a few other words that we already have equivalents for, but ok..lets just change our accent and our grammar and everything just because the Lord of our region and his family and a few others in the village speak differently.

- Well, we wont change it right away. Let's just adopt certain things. I hear they use this new-fangled past tense, and they pronounce the letter "h" in words, lets just do that for now, and maybe our kids will adopt more features!

- Ok, we'll do that. And since the lower levels of any remnants of a civil service and clergy in the area, you know, people that we have real contact with each day are natively Latin speaking, we'll just be avant-garde and talk like the king....though the local priest might have problems understanding us when we go to confession. Oh well, who cares? Let's just talk like the distant rulers who live in the castle do!


- Exactly. Wait..I'm getting a vision!! I can see into the future...into this place called England..after 1066! They had a take over like we did. But, the difference was a new language was imposed on them, and their language absorbed thousands of new words. This new language was the language of prestige and knowledge and culture! Oh, its not the same here...since all offical decrees are made in Latin and anytime the new Lord wants to talk to us, he uses an interpreter

- Oh well, lets just adopt his way of speaking anyway! Let's just do it... we have nothing better to do! I mean, we live in filth, and all we do is grow turnips and go to mass 45 times a day!

- I bet you everyone in the village is doing the same thing we are! Let's all go to the nightly mass and bingo and virgin sacrifice and speak like Franks do! We'll be ever so posh and fashionable!


Yeah, I'm sure that happened. Even over 200 or 300 years, yeah...I'm sure that happened! .....lol

<<The people who are using the word creolization to define the roots of the French language are forgetting one basic fact. In pre-medieval Gaul or France, any migrating Franks, especially those of the elites of Frankish society would have already had either a fluent command of Latin or a rudimentary command of the language, given the cultural dominance of Latin (in any of its forms, spoken or written). >>

You are missing the point

When the Roman legions took the Vulgar Latin to Gaul, and the Celts heard the Latin word "bonitatum" and immitated it by saying "bonta", it was not because they heard it incorrectly--it was because the German who was saying it didn't say it correctly!

Forget about the Franks. Forget the Migration Periode. Those contribution was less and occurred much later. You have to understand that this all happened stepwise, in stages; piecemeal, a little at a time.

Does this mean mixture in the sense that it was of equal parts? No, I don't think so. But it was an impact that changed Vulgar Latin, and it was done by Germanics.



<<It's clear that if French is a Germanic creole , then the rest of Romance languages are too. So the question should be: What makes the Romance languages Latin-Germanic mixed languages?. >>

Yes, they all are. That is exactly what the title should be!


"It is not generally realized by most students and teachers of Spanish that the Gothic invaders were responsible, in part at least, for three major innovations in the syntax of the Latin they found in use in fifth-century Spain. Every foreigner who learns Spanish should feel grateful to the Goths for what they did to the old Latin declensions which still persisted in the Iberian peninsula when the Goths entered in 411 A.D. As Ticknor says (p. 371), the Goths forced 'ille' to serve as their definite article and 'unus' as the indefinite article from which Spanish derives its 'el', 'la', 'un(o)' and 'una' respectively. Then with the use of prepositions and the newly formed articles the Goths ultimately did away with the old Latin declensions.
The Goths wrought two principal changes with the Latin verb: the use of the present perfect tense conjugated with the Latin verb 'habere' as auxilliary, and the use of a true passive voice conjugated with the auxilliary 'esse'. As a result, the Goths said 'habeo victus', instead of 'vici' and 'sum amatus' for the old Latin present passive 'amor' "

This makes perfect sense and is a description of what makes Romance languages Romance. It is owed to the germans.

<<L'allemand est bien PLUS difficile que le latin. >>

Wow, really? In what ways is German more difficult? It has less grammatical complexity than Latin. Curious...


<<Il est évident que pour un francophone maternel l'Allemand est une langue bien plus difficile que le latin. >>

German perhaps, but what about Dutch?

German is difficult even for Dutch and English speakers to master, let alone anyone else.