What makes French a Latin-Germanic mixed language
À ceux qui disent sans cesse que le français ne ressemble pas au Latin, je vous propose ce texte écrit en bas-latin (qui date de 670 après JC) on voit ici une forme du latin qui n'est pas du tout la langue de Cicéron.
To those who constantly say that French has little ressemblance to Latin, I present this text written in Vulgar Latin (dating from 670 C.E.). Here we see a form of Latin that is not at all like that of Cicero.
Dni nostri Jhesum Christi, et citherorum sanctorum quorum pignora in ipso monastirio habentur inserta, in loco noncopante Brocaria, situm in pago Stampense, prope de fluviolo Urbia, inspirante Christo, monastirium puellarum devotamente decrivi fundare, ubi nepte mea Mummolam instetuemus abbatissam
Bien que ce texte ne soit pas du français moderne (loin de là), mais il nous montre le developpement de l'usage des prépositions et des adverbes. Si on regardait un texte écrit bien plus tôt que celui-ci, on verrait les mêmes changements morphologiques.
Aussi, si on prend l'exemple du graffiti trouvé à Pompei, on voit des phrases comme:
Caesius Fidelis amat Meco Nucerin.
En latin classique, cette phrase n'est pas correcte. Si cette phrase était en latin classique, elle serait:
Caesius Fidelis amat Maconen Nucerinam
ou
Caesius Fidelis Maconen Mucerinam amat
On voit la disparition des déclinaisons, même dans une phrase écrite avant l'an 79 après JC. Intéressant...je pensais que c'était les tribus germaniques qui étaient responsable de ces changements.
Joshqc - pardon, mais je parle juste un petit peu de français, alors je dise ça en anglais.
There are also quite a number of other texts dating all the way back to the 200's that show misspellings in Latin (mostly word endings), and other texts written on purpose to imitate the spoken language where many word endings are left off and, dare I say, prepositions are put in!
Its astonishes me to see that a lot of people claim that romance grammar is so different from Latin grammar because of germanic influence. Spoken latin was pulling away from its written form long before germanic tribes had the chance to flood in. Also, though the numbers are debatable, the germanic tribes were not large enough in number to supplant the latin dialects spoken in continental Europe. They ended up adopting Latin because of its prestige and because it was the language of the vast majority of people. They left their traces, of course, but they didnt create a creole.
Any languages in a situation of political and cultural chaos do develop quite fast. When rulers change from year to year, and schools all shut down, and when there is little to no contact between former provinces of the Roman empire, the speech of the people will change and go in different directions. I think one of the major proofs that romance languages (including French of course) are not germanic creoles is their uniformity and similarity. If Italy was cut off from southern Gaul, and southern Gaul was cut off from northern Gaul, and the Iberian peninsula was isolated - all of these provinces having differing levels of germanic invasion and settlement (and we need to remember that the Germanic tribes spoke different Germanic langauges) - we should see some romance languages that still keep their case systems, or that dont share the same morphology. We should see romance languages that are strikingly different from one another.
What we do see are languages that differ because of isolation, but all of whom show so many basic similiarities that we have to conclude that they werent as affected by Germanic peoples as some on here would claim. They differ because they were cut off from one another, and began evolving indepenently from one another. By the time the political and social upheavals in Europe calmed down a bit, these latin dialects had become seperate languages, but all of them kept to their spoken Latin roots.
Joshqc : « Chose certaine, il n'y a pas assez de preuve pour dire que le français est créolisé. »
Ce n'est pas qu'il n'y en aurait pas assez : il n'y en a ***AUCUNE***.
Joshqc : « Ce qui me choque le plus, c'est les non-francophones qui pontifient sur la soi-disant "créolisation" du français en citant quelques exemples lexicaux et quelques innovations phonétiques qui sont parfois attribuées aux tribus germanophones qui se sont établis en Gaule. »
Le niveau de délire parfois atteint sur ces pages défie l'entendement. Ce qui me gêne n'est pas la non-francophonie de certains, mais plutôt leur monolinguisme germanique c'est-à-dire : non-italophonie + non-castillanophonie + non-lusophonie + non-catalonophonie + non-roumanophonie + non-francophonie + non-occitanophonie + non-wallonophonie + non-corsophonie + non-ligurophonie + non-gallophonie + non-galicianophonie + non-picardophonie + non-gasconophonie + non-lombardophonie + non-arpitanophonie etc.
Joshqc : « Bien que ce texte ne soit pas du français moderne (loin de là), mais il nous montre le developpement de l'usage des prépositions et des adverbes. Si on regardait un texte écrit bien plus tôt que celui-ci, on verrait les mêmes changements morphologiques. »
Bien sûr. L'usage des prépositions en latin n'était pas incompatible avec le système des déclinaisons.
Joshqc : « On voit la disparition des déclinaisons, même dans une phrase écrite avant l'an 79 après JC. Intéressant...je pensais que c'était les tribus germaniques qui étaient responsable de ces changements. »
Les théories fumeuses qui attribuent à un élément exogène (= les paléolangues germaniques) les évolutions propres au latin sont bien entendu incohérentes, non-vérifiées et avant tout idéologiques.
Mais l'évolution du latin ne concerne pas l'évolution des langues romanes — si ce n'est quelques exceptions comme l'emprunt lexical ou le calque syntaxique.
Je rappelle les positions en présence :
1] MONOCENTRISME ROMAN (romanisation du roman)
langue italique inconnue → paléolatin et paléoroman
(romanistes radicaux dont Yves Cortez → latinoclaste avant tout, germanoclaste par suite → hypothèses non-démontrées mais basées sur l'essentialisme roman)
2] MONOCENTRISME LATIN + GERMANOPÉRIPHÉRISME (latinisation du roman)
latin tardif → paléoroman (avec emprunts lexico-morphosyntactico-phonologiques au paléogermanique)
(tradition établie → littérature abondante et ancienne + arguments dogmatiques non-démontrés + invention de faux étymons "germaniques")
2] BICENTRISME LATINOGERMANIQUE (latinogermanisation du roman)
latin tardif + paléogermanique → créole roman
(radicalisation des vues traditionnelles → absence totale de démonstration, rhétorique fondamentalement extralinguistique)
Joshqc Sun Jun 07, 2009 4:33 am GMT
Ouest - .......5000 germanic soldiers compared to over 40 000 roman legions is what I would call "there werent many germanic soldiers in the roman army".
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During the siege of Alesia, Caesar's army consisted of 40,000 Roman legionnaires (and not 40 000 roman legions!) + 5,000 Germanic cavalry + 15,000 auxiliary troops.
Caesar's army was an extremely cosmopolitan entity. Its core consisted of six (later ten) legions of heavy infantry, supported by the equivalent of two more in later campaigns. He relied on foreign allies for his cavalry and light infantry, recruiting from the Numidians, Cretan, Hispanians, Germanics, and Gaulish tribes. Caesar made very effective use of these forces, using individual units' pride to spur them to greater efforts.
It it assumed that Gallic defeat was, in part, the result of generations of warfare against German invaders who were subdued at great cost of manpower. Caesar mentioned that a long standing conflict between the Aedui and Arverni had ravaged and depleted the Gallic nobility, especially the Aedui nobility, thus causing Germanic military aid to be sought in this conflict.
So, many sources and facts point at the fact that the Germanic-Latin language contact has been considerable even at the very begining of the Romanization of the Gauls. This might have been the starting point of what is called today "vulgar Latin" or "bas-latin" or "Proto-Romance".
Sardinian seems like mix of Italian and Spanish (or Portuguese).
Ouest : « Caesar's army was an extremely cosmopolitan entity. »
Ouest : tu te trompes de débat → on ne fait pas la sociologie de l'armée romaine mais l'approche linguistique du paléoroman.
Ouest-
The American militias has French troops fighting along with them during their revolution. There were Albanian troops that fought alongside Greek troops during the Second World War. Does this really matter when it comes to language evolution?
Roman legions took orders in Latin. The army fought and functioned in Latin. The Germanic troops all learned Latin in the army. If you're claiming that 5000 soldiers could influence 40 000 Roman troops and somehow lead to influencing millions and millions of Latin-speaking peoples in the Roman Empire during the time of Roman expanisionism....I'm sorry to say, but your argument really needs some backing! If youre trying to claim that germanic influence started in Latin far before the migration period, then you need to come up with something a bit more substantial than this.
And....lets just pretend that there were tonnes of Germanic soldiers in the army...hundreds of thousands even. Where is the documented proof of their influence on other people? Where is the letter written by one Roman general to another saying "my god the troops speak bad Latin, and its catching on!". Where is the documentation? What about other major phonological changes going on in Italy, where there were very few Germanic troops just wandering around? Why did even the greatest statesmen of Ancient Rome write in a less than polished and grammatically correct Latin when they were "off the record"? To believe your theory, one would have to believe that there was some sort of major Germanic invasion and colonisation of the empire all the way back to the years before Christ.
I mean, should we re-name the Roman Empire the "Germanic Empire with a few Romans here or there that didnt matter"?
To europeo:
Italian can sound like a mix of French and Romanian. Spanish can sound like a mix of Portuguese and Catalan. Catalan can sound like a mix of Spanish and French. Occitan can sound like a mix of Catalan, Italian and French. All Romance languages share enough similarities with each other to sound a bit similar, but to just say "Sardinian seems like a mix of Italian and Spanish" shows that you know nothing of Sardinian.
Vietnamese sounds like a mix of Thai and Chinese, but since I know nothing of all three of these languages, I would never say that in order to prove a point.
Sardinian seems more similar to Portuguese (in written form)than to Italian.
Italian:
Nessun individuo potrà essere sottoposto a tortura o a trattamento o a punizione crudeli, inumani o degradanti.
Nessun individuo potrà essere arbitrariamente privato della sua proprietà.
Sardinian:
Nemos at a poder esser assuzetadu a sa tortura, ne a penas o a tratamentos crudeles, inumanos o degradantes.
Nemos podet esser privadu arbitrariamente de sa propiedade sua.
Portuguese:
Ninguém será submetido a tortura nem a penas ou tratamentos cruéis, desumanos ou degradantes.
Ninguém pode ser arbitrariamente privado da sua propriedade.
http://www.lexilogos.com/declaration/index.htm
As for the Sardinian language, it may be the most conservative and most isolated, but "most isolated" does not mean "isolated". There are adstratums applied from various Continental Romance languages, especially on Northern Sardinian dialects.
Northern dialects use a definite article from ille/illa/illud where Southern use ipsus/ipsa/ipsum, also words in N dialect are closer and/or taken from Continental languages like Spanish, Catalan, etc.
I don't think the argument using Sardinian as a Control holds much water given this
I found a dictionary of Sardinian. It is not etymological, but it has translations in several other languages, English being one of them.
Using comparative analysis based on words I know the etymology of, I can conclude with well enough accuracy that the following Sardinian words are Germanic words.
I am at work, so I only went through a couple bookstaves of the alphabet (part of B and part of G)
(Note: I am missing accents over some bookstaves)
biaitu (blue)
gadangiai (to gain, earn)
gala (gala, party)
galanteu, galentire
gantu (glove)
gardanera
gardarobba (wardrobe)
garbosu (polite)
There were other words that I suspected, but do not know for wis.
Knowing this, we must conclude either
A). Germanic words were introduced from other Romance languages (gantu is a good byspel of this),
B). That Germanic words were already ingrafted into Vulgar Latin when it was brought in the 3rd century, or
C). All of the above
In any event, Sardinian is by *NO* means pristine, though it be the most conservative in phonology
<<I do have to say though, that this certain area of verbal morphology isnt my strongest point. Im bascially regurgitating what I learned in lectures in grad school and read in the texts we used. >>
This is debatable. Most of the literature I have read seems to lean toward a possible Germanic origin, although not openly stating such.
What we can see clearly though is the evolution of the present and past perfect formations in the Germanic languages, knowing that they are innovations which occurred independent of language contact.
And that today's Romance formations mirror those of the Germanic languages to different degrees: those that have a close proximity to Germanic languages have more points in common than those that do not.
Speaking a language doesn't mean you know about its development. (obvious)
Francophones' perspective is unilateral.
What others say about you is more true than what you say about yourself.
<<Sardinian seems like mix of Italian and Spanish (or Portuguese). >>
&
<<Vietnamese sounds like a mix of Thai and Chinese, but since I know nothing of all three of these languages, I would never say that in order to prove a point. >>
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But Sardu, sometimes people are simply stating opinions or are making observations as the first one above...you should not shoot it down and say "You know nothing of Sardinian"--europeo never said he/she knew anything. It was a comment relaying an observation, which frankly you agreed with yourself ("All Romance languages share enough similarities with each other to sound a bit similar").
We don't always have to post something in an effort to "prove a point" (sigh)
Leasnam : « Using comparative analysis based on words I know the etymology of, I can conclude with well enough accuracy that the following Sardinian words are Germanic words. »
C'est le serpent qui se mord la queue.
Je ne connais rien à l'étymologie des langues romanes
↓
De cette non-connaissance, j'extrapole à une langue romane que je connais encore moins bien que les autres (si c'est possible)
↓
De cette double ignorance, je brandis une nouvelle "connaissance".
Risible. Navrant mais risible.
BB : « Francophones' perspective is unilateral. What others say about you is more true than what you say about yourself. »
Sophisme facile.
Si un Martien aveugle venait me dire : « Tu possèdes quatre jambes et huit bras », j'aurais tendance à penser qu'il se trompe et à me faire confiance.