What makes French a Latin-Germanic mixed language

- joran:

Err...you might have your timelines a bit crossed there mate... when Gaul was conquered, it was conquered by a roman army, mostly of roman decent. There were no germanic legions in the roman army, at that time, at all. You can easily research that fact.

"bontiatum" as you put it was eroded over time, yes, but not because of bad German pronunciation nor any Celtic persons' bad hearing. And, it happened all over the empire, in places that Germanic tribes didnt really even venture to. So I dont really see your point.

Also, you quote someone who uses "unus" as proof of germanic influence. Well.. sorry to burst your bubble there, but Cicero, Virgil, and many others of Classical literature used "unus" or any of its forms. Any person who knows Latin knows that. ;)

-Joran: one last thing, in your quote you say that Germanic peoples were responsible for "in part" 3 things. Yeah.... Romance is mixed alright, its a creole! Its a pidgin, because of 3 whole big huge things that a germanic language contributed to it! 3 whole things!!! Well, I suppose Australian English is a creole language since it has more than three Aboriginal contributions and has several contributions from Asian languages. I think Aussies would be quite surprised to hear that their form of English wasnt English anymore, but rather a "mixed, creole language"

<<the Romance languages go down from the Germanic languages>>

I didn't read anywhere where anyone said this
_____________________________________________
<<Romance is mixed alright, its a creole! Its a pidgin, because of 3 whole big huge things that a germanic language contributed to it! 3 whole things!!! >>

Romance IS a creole. You're just being silly!

Romance languages are very evolved versions of ancient and lovely Latin, just like birds come from dinosaurs. At first glance it's hard to believe in the sense that Romance languages are very different with respect to Latin, but if you study step by step the evolution of the Romance languages, then you realize the logic behind how Romance languages are nowadays assuming their Latin origin, there is not mistery at all. That kind of Germanic-Latin hybrid is not supported by any linguists but only by some people on Antimoon who are too lazy and superficial to study the history of the Latin language, probably speakers of Germanic languages who pretend to make the Germanic branch to be more important because "uh, they influenced French lot..." and in reality they didn't. Romance is Latin after 2000 years of evolution , assume it ,dear Germanic folks. If you want to discover a Latin-Germanic hybrid take a look at English because it's the closest thing you'll find out

LOL - Joshqc, I loved the dialogue. I can just picture peasants sitting in a hut, surrounded by farm animals having such a deep conversation about language change! Though I'm sure some people on here won't understand your sarcasm.

Unless someone here can produce a secret text that has been hidden from us for a thousand years that tells us the true nature of the Romance Languages, can we just accept that these languages are Latin based, with a twinge of germanic and celtic influences here and there? Do we really need to go on and on about the pronunciation of "h" in the 600's and what word might have come from what word?

Take a text in French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Ladin, Rumansch, Catalan, Occitan, Picard, Sardinian, or any of the other 30 languages I'm forgetting, and compare them to eachother. They will all be similar in vocabulary and grammar. Then compare them to Classical Latin from the 1st century. The vocabulary will show some similiarity, but the grammar is not the same. Then take a Latin text from the 2nd or 3rd century. Compare that to modern romance languages. The similiarities grow in number. Then, if youre feeling really adventurous (and if you have nothing better to do), compare the romance languages in their earliest forms to really late forms of Latin (before or after this grand ol migration period that people keep mentioning), and you'll see they are even more similiar.

Now, for the sake of babbling, lets look at something else:

Take a text in English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Frisian, or hey, even Afrikaans (!) and compare them to eachother. They will show similiarities in vocabulary and grammar (though english tends to be the odd ball sometimes). Then compare them to a really really ancient form of Germanic (Old Gothic, or what the Swedish Chef spoke 2000 years ago for example, or whatever!). The vocabulary will show some similarity, but the grammar is not the same. Then take some germanic texts from the 3rd or 4th century or thereabouts. Compare them to modern forms of germanic languages. The similiarities grow in number. Then, if you youre feeling really adventurous (and if you have nothing better to do), compare the germanic languages in their earliest forms to really late forms of the mother languages (saxon, really really old high german, frankish, etc...before or after this grand ol migration period that people keep mentioning), and you'll see they are even more similar!

Im a linguistics student, so by no means an expert, but it just seems to me that all languages will differ from their old forms, and the more time that passes, the more things change. How many times were we in high school and had no idea what the hell Shakespeare was going on about?

Languages take and borrow and give a bit too. Just like us humans. So, if I meet a person who's born and raised in Glasgow, but who's great great great great grandmother might have been Greek, I should just tell the guy from Glasgow that he isnt Scottish and that he should move to Athens? He's Scottish. He might not be 100%, but who is 100% of anything anymore? Give me a break.

Kudos to Josh and others for adding a bit of humor to this forum which is so full of idiot ideas and wannabe linguists.

Latin might be swahili Wed May 27, 2009 2:45 am GMT :

.....
Take a text in French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Ladin, Rumansch, Catalan, Occitan, Picard, Sardinian, or any of the other 30 languages I'm forgetting, and compare them to eachother. They will all be similar in vocabulary and grammar. Then compare them to Classical Latin from the 1st century. The vocabulary will show some similiarity, but the grammar is not the same.
......

Take a text in English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Frisian, or hey, even Afrikaans (!) and compare them to eachother. They will show similiarities in vocabulary and grammar (though english tends to be the odd ball sometimes). Then compare them to a really really ancient form of Germanic (Old Gothic, or what the Swedish Chef spoke 2000 years ago for example, or whatever!). The vocabulary will show some similarity, but the grammar is not the same.
.....
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while the first statement above is ok, the second statement exactly is NOT correct.

Old Germanic and modern German vocabulary show similarity, AND the grammar is similar.
Ancient Greek (especially Koine) and modern Greek vocabulary show similarity, AND the grammar is similar.
Latin and Romance vocabulary show some similiarity, BUT the grammar is NOT the same.

That is exactly the point - we try to explain why Romance syntax and grammar are so completely different from Latin. Other languages like modern Greek or modern German are not so far away from their ancestors.

Excuse me but English grammar and German grammar are not the same at all.

Ouest, give us an exemple of proto germanic text that dates back of around year zero. We could maybe compare what is comparable, and see if effectivelly the modern germanic languages did not have changed their syntax/grammar

" I am satisfied by the analyses done. Scores we have are 3%, 9% and 6.5% which averages to around 6%. "

You didn't counted all the posted samples: I remind you these (the ones you refused to analyse after having asked for it):

" Les Représentants du Peuple Français, constitués en Assemblée nationale, considérant que l’ignorance, l’oubli ou le mépris des droits de l’homme sont les seules causes des malheurs publics et de la corruption des Gouvernements, ont résolu d’exposer, dans une Déclaration solennelle, les droits naturels, inaliénables et sacrés de l’homme, afin que cette Déclaration, constamment présente à tous les membres du corps social, leur rappelle sans cesse leurs droits et leurs devoirs ; afin que les actes du pouvoir législatif, et ceux du pouvoir exécutif pouvant être à chaque instant comparés avec le but de toute institution politique, en soient plus respectés ; afin que les réclamations des citoyens, fondées désormais sur des principes simples et incontestables, tournent toujours au maintien de la Constitution, et au bonheur de tous. En conséquence, l’Assemblée nationale reconnaît et déclare, en présence et sous les auspices de l’Être Suprême, les droits suivants de l’homme et du citoyen. "


" - Excusez-moi, Est-ce que vous savez si cet autobus va à Lyon?
- Nous ne le savons pas, nous sommes étrangers aussi.
- d'où venez-vous?
- De Belgique, on habite à Bruxelles, vous connaissez?
- J'y suis allé une fois ou deux l'année dernière pour mon travail. J'ai bien aimé l'ambiance.
- C'est vrai que chez nous il ne fait pas toujours beau mais les gens sont sympas!
- Oui, mais vous savez, moi je suis Italien mais j'habite ici, à Paris, depuis deux ans déjà.
- c'est vrai que les Parisiens ne sont pas très accueillants?
- et bien, comment dirais-je, en fait, il faut savoir les apprivoiser.
Comme dans toutes les grandes villes il y a de tout ici,
des gens de toutes origines et de tout statut social.
- Bon, je vous laisse, il ne faut pas que je rate mon bus, je dois être à Lyon ce soir et demain à Milan...
- Bonne continuation alors, à bientôt!
- Au revoir! "

Those texts are basic average usual french, one oral, one written. Their percentage of words with germanic origin is between 0 and 1% of all words used. If we had those results with your selected* samples the rate will fall...

* The 9% sample is a funny one! : In a text of 269 word, you tried deseperatly to overflate at maximum the number of words of "germanic" origins by repeting of few of them at almost each sentence: such as in "que choisir" (which is a name of a magazine, not the word "choisir" used in a phrase), repeted 5 times! The same way "engagment" and its variant "engager" or "re-engager", seen 6 times ! almost used in each sentence... the same way "français" was volontaryly repeated a lot of times to ridiculously inflate the number. The most funny thing is that, despite all these efforts to make "germanic"-rooted words being artificially overestimated, the final percentage is not even 10% !! hahahaha !!
Leasnam, see the reality as it is, germanic-rooted words average in french is not even 6% as you might like, but at best between 1 and 3%... with an average more likely around 1%. Don't take it bad.





"This is precicely what we already knew and what Ouest originally postulated: that French has little germanic lexical influence. We do not simply accept it cart-blanche ;) "

For your information it is "carte-blanche", not "cart-blanche". By the way I thought you said french was based on a paste-copy of german syntax, so why didn't you said "blanche-cart" ??
Also if you want to use really french expressions; you have not to use this one in that case; you should have said "we won't accept a "chèque en blanc"..."; "Carte blanche" means to have full powers...

Ouest said french has little germanic lexical influence only after a long demonstration french-speakers of this forum made to him... It seemed you needed more time to recognise the reality than him. It is strange for someone who thinks that he is able to teach french to native french speakers...



" 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. "

"Any proportion in any field " ?!!!... well in that case yes, french is (as all languages) a mixed language! but not only a germanic-latin mixed language but also a greek-arabic-latin-germanic-celtic-etc. mixed language...




" 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. "

Well I agree, if we follow "Ouest theory" isn't it a strange phenomenon that a language with cases such as German (probably proto-german had cases too, otherwise we could ask ourselves where german case system is from... ) would have had as main influence over latin to make it loose its case-system... Curious no?



"most of the people on here have no clue as to what they are talking about"

This is a problem. Leasman and West always make linguistic claims about french without even speaking or having learned it... As if we made statements about Chinise with past-copies of weak wikipedia quotes out of context.



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

Nothing curious, easy to understand. German might have less gramatical complexity than latin (which I'm not sure), it still has a gramatical complexity different to romance language's, + AND it has a complete LEXICAL complexity that latin absolutly doesn't have at all.
The result is that for us, German is doublely hard.



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

If it is difficult to anyone that already speak a language with very similar vocabulary as Dutch does, can you imagine how hard it might be for someone who, additionally to the syntaxical complex system, has to learn dozens of thousands of completly unknown new words... not even speaking about the spelling and pronouciation...
German for me, as a french speaker is as obscure as Chinese or Arabic, latin is not.



"but also introduced the current vigesimal counting system in French"
This system already existed in the celtic languages.

" Ce week-end j'ai été au showcase de break-danse à Bercy. C'était trop cool, bien que un peu trop hype et overbooké pour moi. J'ai pris mon scooter, j'ai mis mon sweat dans mon top-case et j'ai speedé à fond. "

46 words. 14 germanic words = 30%. Well that is what makes french a germanic-latin mixed language...

"while the first statement above is ok, the second statement exactly is NOT correct.

Old Germanic and modern German vocabulary show similarity, AND the grammar is similar.
Ancient Greek (especially Koine) and modern Greek vocabulary show similarity, AND the grammar is similar.
Latin and Romance vocabulary show some similiarity, BUT the grammar is NOT the same.

That is exactly the point - we try to explain why Romance syntax and grammar are so completely different from Latin. Other languages like modern Greek or modern German are not so far away from their ancestors."

________________________________________________

I was just making a semi-sarcastic point. But, I think you misunderstood one thing I was saying. When I meant Germanic, I didn't mean German necessarily. German has changed a lot over 2000 years, we cannot deny that. Has it kept its case system? Yes. Has it kept lots of its stucture? Yes. Has it changed to the point that a speaker of Modern German cannot read a text in old High German without specialised training? Yes.

Modern Dutch has no case system. Old forms of Dutch did. Actually, the only germanic languages that retain their case systems are German, Icelandic, and perhaps Faoese (im not too sure about the last one though). All other germanic languages have drifted far from their roots as well. If you took someone who speaks Frisian, and gave them a text written in its early medieval form, they wouldnt be able to make heads or tails of it.

Finally, you say that romance languages' grammar differ so much from Latin. They do, for one main reason. No romance language is descended from the Latin that we study today. Classical Latin was a very stylized, formal and rigid form of Latin that had been kept in its 1-2 century form until the modern day. The spoken language of Rome began to differ from this formal register even in the 1st century A.D. Imagine if we had done something similar in English. If the social elites of society had decided to keep an older form of English as the written standard, while the population spoke a form that was ever-changing and moving further and further away from the written form (of course that would be impossible, since we do not share Ancient Rome's socio-political and cultural situation). But lets just imagine that English had a similar situation to Latin. We migth then be left with the following:

Alas, I pray thee, my most honourable confidant, to ne'er let it escape thy memory all the triumphs that thou hast achieved. For thou hast bestowed glory unto the land, and that, in our collective memory, throughout all time shall remain.

If you were to find someone in a pub somewhere talking to some friends, youd more likely hear:

Well, listen mate, don't ever forget all the great things you've done. You've brought a lot of honour to the country, and we'll always remember that.

Now imagine that the first form was the standard form of the language that was written even now in 2009. Any learned person would write in this way, but speak in the second way. The first form of English was rigid and didnt change very much at all. The second form changed and evovled more and more over time. One day, in the future, if this made-up scenario were reality, English's origins could very well be put into question. People would be on formus like this one saying "well, the English I speak has nothing no similarities in stucture or grammar to that old written form, so it cant be descended from that!"

Well, it is descended from that. It's just that we've allowed English writing to follow (albeit it lags behind sometimes) the spoken form of the language. In Latin, this wasnt the case. I'm sure if you could travel back in time to the year 300 A.D., and you spoke to people in the Classical Latin we learn today, they would have great difficulty undersating you or they might understand, but would burst out laughing saying "why are you talking like they did 300 years ago?" or "Why are you talking like a book?"

And upon that, milord, I take leave. or.. and on that, I'm outa here!

" Ce week-end j'ai été au showcase de break-danse à Bercy. C'était trop cool, bien que un peu trop hype et overbooké pour moi. J'ai pris mon scooter, j'ai mis mon sweat dans mon top-case et j'ai speedé à fond. "

46 words. 14 germanic words = 30%. Well that is what makes french a germanic-latin mixed language...

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Ce qu'on voit ici n'est qu'un sociolecte du français, une façon de parler. Est-ce un français anglicisé? Oui, bien sûr, mais cela ne montre pas l'aspect germanique de la langue, pas du tout. Cela montre l'adoption RÉCENTE des mots anglais dans la langue des jeunes. Cet usage, qu'on le considère bon ou mauvais (les opinions changent dépendamment de l'âge et du niveau de scolarisation de la personne) ne représente pas le français tel qu'on le parle au registre soutenu.

Je pourrais facilement dire, "ouais, j'ai booké un billet pour Paris, mais avant de partir, faut checker les bagages. Oh, et faut que je checke mes mails aussi."

Aussi, je pourrais dire, "ouais, j'ai acheté un billet pour Paris, mais avant de partir, faut vérifier les bagages. Oh, et faut que je vérifie mes messages (courriel) aussi."

Si on analysait le nombre d'emprunts anglais dans n'importe quelle langue, on pourrait dire que toutes ces langues là sont mélangées avec l'anglais.

Yo soy hispanoparlante y el alemán me parece mucho más fácil que el latín. Para saber el significado de una frase latina hay que perder minutos descifrandola, mientras que el alemán es una lengua indoeuropea moderna como el español, las declinaciones son mucho más fáciles que en latín.

<< The 9% sample is a funny one! : In a text of 269 word, you tried deseperatly to overflate at maximum the number of words of "germanic" origins by repeting of few of them at almost each sentence: such as in "que choisir" (which is a name of a magazine, not the word "choisir" used in a phrase), repeted 5 times! The same way "engagment" and its variant "engager" or "re-engager", seen 6 times ! almost used in each sentence... the same way "français" was volontaryly repeated a lot of times to ridiculously inflate the number. >>

Wow, guest guest. NOooooo!, No--You are NOT a fool! I refuse to believe it!, inspite of your behaviour (but you are a little annoying though ;)

That post was a proper enough sample. It was published March 21, 2006 by Ariane Beky on a French Tech Journalism site NetEco (just copy a sentence of the draft and search it like you normally do ;) I certainly don't trust myself, nor do I trust you, to provide real samples. We are too close to the argument.

Regardless, French has enough non-Latin syntax that it doesn't matter.



<<"but also introduced the current vigesimal counting system in French"
This system already existed in the celtic languages. >>

This is why no one can believe what you say, because you are completely Incorrect (as usual). If you knew what you were talking about, rather than condemning yourself by fulfilling your own accusations (--which thing you do), you would already know that the Celtic vigesimal system completely passed away before the current system was introduced. The current system began in Normandy and spread south. But you do not know this, because you are a fool. You are unable to be taught. Good Luck in life. You're gonna need it LOL :|)

Btw, please feel free to continue to post as you like. I will not read your posts going forward--they are crazzzzzzzzy stupid and senseless. You leave me no choice, but to have to skip over them :)

But before I go, I just want to say Thank you! Because you have holpen me. When I first started reading Ouest's posts, and thinking about them, I was not sure about his claims. I recognised that the possibilty for mixture was there, and the plausibility was even more there. But none of your rebuttals has had any power, no counterdrive, no ability to dissuade me. Given several opportunities to prove his claims false, you didn't. You couldn't. Why? Because they are true, and you know nothing about the Truth. All you could muster was throwing up smoke (cheap parlour trick hehe ;). I believe Ouest's theory more than I did at the beginning. Thanks guest guest!!!

To leasnam:

"This is why no one can believe what you say, because you are completely Incorrect (as usual). If you knew what you were talking about, rather than condemning yourself by fulfilling your own accusations (--which thing you do), you would already know that the Celtic vigesimal system completely passed away before the current system was introduced. The current system began in Normandy and spread south. But you do not know this, because you are a fool. You are unable to be taught. Good Luck in life. You're gonna need it LOL :|) "


Youre totally wrong. Totally. There are two theories out there, one suggested by Vennemann et the other by Menninger. Menninger suggests that the vigesimal system originates with the Norsemen. Vennemann suggests that there is an even older continental origin of this counting system. As a specialist in this matter, I have to say that Menninger's theories have bascially been rejected by most linguists. The general consensus is that Vennemann's theories are correct.