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It's incredibly hard to answer a seemingly simple question like how many people in Gaul in 300 AD were actually Latin speakers. We know the elite all were at least L2 Latin speakers, you had to speak Latin to be in the Roman power structure. We think your average Gaulish farmer in the countryside spoke their ancestral language and might know a smattering of Latin words for going to the market or whatever. There's a whole range of things between those two ends. But we can't say concretely. E: From my personal experience living in places where I'm not a native speaker, it's very easy to get by only knowing a small amount of the language, and learning it takes serious motivation. That experience has led me to lean toward the idea that Latin as native language was relatively rare outside of Rome and Roman colonies settled by Roman expats. Latin as common/official tongue sure, but I don't think a lot of people in the western empire used it in day to day life. Merely an opinion though. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jul 3, 2020 |
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Jul 3, 2020 20:24
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There's probably a plausible alternate history where Britain speaks a latin/german creole language by the end of everything. I.e. a market language (a pidgin) that gains enough legitimacy that it starts becoming people's first language (a creole)
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Jul 3, 2020 20:27
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cheetah7071 posted:There's probably a plausible alternate history where Britain speaks a latin/german creole language by the end of everything. I.e. a market language (a pidgin) that gains enough legitimacy that it starts becoming people's first language (a creole) If you stretch a bit to treat Norman French as a kind of Latin this is basically what English already is.
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Jul 3, 2020 21:34
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Omnomnomnivore posted:If you stretch a bit to treat Norman French as a kind of Latin this is basically what English already is. I don't think it meets the proper definition of a creole linguistically. But that's a separate discussion
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Jul 3, 2020 21:38
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feedmegin posted:Though the Eastern Roman empire mostly spoke Greek, not Latin, of course... Yes, but there was a lot more Latin near Romania (Justinian’s laws were Latin, for instance) than near Britain after the fall.
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Jul 3, 2020 22:14
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My impression from historical reading is that people are way more willing to ditch the language they grew up speaking than we like to assume, probably because there's no Society for the Renunciation of Minority Languages (or if there is, it's called "the educational system, and capitalism.")
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Jul 3, 2020 22:27
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Grand Fromage posted:It's incredibly hard to answer a seemingly simple question like how many people in Gaul in 300 AD were actually Latin speakers. We know the elite all were at least L2 Latin speakers, you had to speak Latin to be in the Roman power structure. We think your average Gaulish farmer in the countryside spoke their ancestral language and might know a smattering of Latin words for going to the market or whatever. There's a whole range of things between those two ends. But we can't say concretely. the success of Vulgar Latin dialects in France/Spain argues the opposite, no? We know that provincial Roman elites had to have proper fancy old-school Latin (and we know this persisted beyond the end of the western empire through the church, so that you get guys like Gregory of Tours or Isidore of Seville), but if nobody really spoke Latin but those guys, then where does French/Spanish/Provençal/Catalan/etc come from?
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Jul 3, 2020 22:49
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In Spain, France, and Italy Germanic invaders coopted the existing systems. In Britain those systems were replaced. That simple.
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Jul 3, 2020 23:16
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Arglebargle III posted:If you go to an ethnic restaurant and order American food you usually get what you deserve. its the main selling point of said restaurant, including highway billboards and poo poo lol
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Jul 3, 2020 23:20
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cheetah7071 posted:how languages spread is a relatively poorly understood subfield of linguistics iirc. Or at least it was when I was an undergrad, where all my circumstantial knowledge comes from. Lately I've been reading about the "Farming / Language Dispersal Hypothesis," the idea that the early spread of agriculture happened (to generalize) via migration, with migrants from populous agricultural societies displacing and assimilating indigenous foraging societies, and so also spreading their language. It was initially proposed around the context of the Indo-European expansion in Europe, but seems to have been getting attention elsewhere lately*; that processes like this are (one of) the ways that the more wide-reaching language families got spread. Anyway it has had me wondering. What were things like culturally and linguistically back before these language families spread? Was the entire world like New Guinea, with distinct languages over every hill; would paleolithic societies have been living in the same places for tens of thousands of years, or moving around and mixing a lot? And was there vastly more genetic variation that's been watered down by those agricultural migrants from limited regions making up most of the ancestry for the people that are alive today? I mean even the papers I've been reading that are arguing for it have been repeatedly emphasizing how the FLDH theory assumes the migration would have been at very different levels in different areas and shouldn't be taken as some universality in every situation, and flat out wouldn't apply in many others too. But it has me curious all the same. *I've been reading about it in a series of papers as applied to eastern Eurasia--Millets and Beans, Languages and Genes, it's all open access and I'd recommend it in case anyone else is curious. Grand Fromage posted:E: From my personal experience living in places where I'm not a native speaker, it's very easy to get by only knowing a small amount of the language, and learning it takes serious motivation. That experience has led me to lean toward the idea that Latin as native language was relatively rare outside of Rome and Roman colonies settled by Roman expats. Latin as common/official tongue sure, but I don't think a lot of people in the western empire used it in day to day life. Merely an opinion though. I think this is one of those situations where status as an English speaker is going to wildly skew how you think about this. There are tons of places in the world today, let alone in a much less linguistically consolidated past, where multilingualism is incredibly commonplace.
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Jul 3, 2020 23:59
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I'd hazard a safe guess that local geography and climate (and change of said climate) would be a huge driver in the diversity (or relative lack of) in any given pre-agricultural area
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Jul 4, 2020 00:39
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There’s a theory which argues that Arabic only tended to spread in areas which spoke Semitic languages already, so the Punic and Aramaic portions of the empire were the ones which experience language shift
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Jul 4, 2020 00:46
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Grand Fromage posted:Britain losing Roman authority so early is what's different, I think. In places like France and Spain, the new bosses inserted themselves into the extant Roman system and assimilated to Roman-ness. The continental settlers that went to England were arriving in a place where Roman systems and authority were already gone. Portraying yourself as a Roman in France gave you authority and smoothed over the transition, doing so in Britain had no advantage. Yeah its also important to remember that the Romans essentially walk away from Britain at the end of the 4th century, when the Western Empire as a whole doesn't really start coming apart at the seams entirely until 50 years later, which is effectively giving the British a multi-generational lead on Gaul/Spain etc. Even the 450's and early 460's Majorian and Ricimer were still able to campaign and exercise control over Gaul & Hispania so the Roman system was still in place. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jul 4, 2020 |
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Jul 4, 2020 04:07
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Jack2142 posted:Yeah its also important to remember that the Romans essentially walk away from Britain at the end of the 4th century, when the Western Empire as a whole doesn't really start coming apart at the seams entirely until 50 years later, which is effectively giving the British a multi-generational lead on Gaul/Spain etc. Even the 450's and early 460's Majorian and Ricimer were still able to campaign and exercise control over Gaul & Hispania so the Roman system was still in place. Did Majorian have a shot at retaining control of his reconquests?
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Jul 4, 2020 04:52
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Lawman 0 posted:Did Majorian have a shot at retaining control of his reconquests? Maybe if he ruled another 20 years and got significant support from Constantinople.
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Jul 4, 2020 05:35
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Grand Fromage posted:Portraying yourself as a Roman in France gave you authority and smoothed over the transition, doing so in Britain had no advantage. Judging from Gildas and St. Patrick's surviving writings, Latin survived as a language in the more urbanized parts of Britain up until the Saxons showed up and ruined everything.
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Jul 4, 2020 10:48
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PawParole posted:There’s a theory which argues that Arabic only tended to spread in areas which spoke Semitic languages already, so the Punic and Aramaic portions of the empire were the ones which experience language shift I may be misunderstanding what you are saying, but Arabic definitely spread much further than the areas which spoke semitic language in the pre-Islamic period. Egypt, the Maghreb, Malta, not to mention Andalusian Arabic and Siculo-Arabic.
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Jul 4, 2020 13:31
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cheetah7071 posted:There's probably a plausible alternate history where Britain speaks a latin/german creole language by the end of everything. I.e. a market language (a pidgin) that gains enough legitimacy that it starts becoming people's first language (a creole) English kind of is a Latin German creole
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Jul 4, 2020 13:42
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Mr Enderby posted:I may be misunderstanding what you are saying, but Arabic definitely spread much further than the areas which spoke semitic language in the pre-Islamic period. Egypt, the Maghreb, Malta, not to mention Andalusian Arabic and Siculo-Arabic. yeah i would think the most predictive factor for spread of arabic is not "spoke xyz previously" but rather "a bunch of medieval arabs showed up"
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Jul 4, 2020 13:50
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euphronius posted:English kind of is a Latin German creole Pre- or Post-1066 though? Like, I thought basically all the "latin" was more imported Norman French (at least in terms of vernacular, obvs.)?
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Jul 4, 2020 13:56
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Schadenboner posted:Pre- or Post-1066 though? Many Germanic languages have some Greek/Latin influence, OE included. Especially likely for simple trade vocabulary (vinum->wīn->wine) and for church words (episcopus->biscop->bishop, monakhos->munuc->monk). But most of the modern Latin roots in English are either from Norman French or classicizing early modern Latinists.
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Jul 4, 2020 14:04
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Schadenboner posted:Pre- or Post-1066 though? From some point after the saxon invasion until 1066 its basically old english afaik which is most like the modern language frisian. The two are mutually intelligible. After 1066, though, french bleeds into the old english creating middle english that is fully formed into what we would recognize as modern english in the 1500s. The shift of language in those 500 years is so stark that english and englisc are unintelligible. If you haven't seen it, here's Eddie Izzard talking to a frisian farmer in old english: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34
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Jul 4, 2020 14:06
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Yeah I was referring to Middle English I know it’s not technically a creole or Romance language Also Latin was spoken regularly in England up to what Vatican 2. Although that is kind of a summarian / Akkadian situation
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Jul 4, 2020 14:30
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Old English is a trash language. It's simultaneously inflected (case system boo) and has a tiny vocabulary. No wonder it imported a ton of romance vocabulary and dropped case endings.
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Jul 4, 2020 14:30
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Koramei posted:I think this is one of those situations where status as an English speaker is going to wildly skew how you think about this. There are tons of places in the world today, let alone in a much less linguistically consolidated past, where multilingualism is incredibly commonplace. Fair, and now I'm thinking about the fact that most of my first generation immigrant friends had parents who refused to teach them their native language and enforced English only out of a misguided belief that speaking both languages would make them unable to assimilate/speak English properly. I think we can at least say for sure Romans didn't intentionally wipe out native languages. If there was any language and culture the Romans wanted to wipe out it was the Carthaginians, but we know Punic was still being widely spoken as late as the 400s AD according to Augustine.
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Jul 4, 2020 18:09
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There’s no way to wipe out a language without a government-controlled education system, short of just killing everyone who speaks it which is not very useful compared to leaving them in situ.
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Jul 4, 2020 18:15
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Grand Fromage posted:Fair, and now I'm thinking about the fact that most of my first generation immigrant friends had parents who refused to teach them their native language and enforced English only out of a misguided belief that speaking both languages would make them unable to assimilate/speak English properly. It's weird because I hear this sort of thing a lot but BVMW's family were the exact opposite: they only gavreeted pa rooski in their home. 
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Jul 4, 2020 18:15
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Schadenboner posted:It's weird because I hear this sort of thing a lot but BVMW's family were the exact opposite: they only gavreeted pa rooski in their home. Anecdotally I think it's much more common for Asian immigrants (most of my first gen friends are Asian, and not one of them spoke the native language at home), there's a strong belief in East Asia that language is almost biologically linked and if you speak an East Asian language or look East Asian, you cannot be native fluent in English. Obviously not everyone thinks that way but it's very common. One of the reasons why parents object if an English language school hires an Asian-American teacher, for example. And let me tell you about Korean tongue-cutting surgery to speak English better...
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Jul 4, 2020 18:20
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It's v.interesting to me because they were all semi-grown when they came over (BVMW was 17, BVMBiL was like 12 or 13, BVMSiL was maybe 6 or 7) and none of them have a trace of an accent, like when people hear they're immigrants they assume they're Canadian or some poo poo. Maybe it's actually because they didn't speak English at home that they speak it without an accent since they didn't have accented English being normed by their parents (while they're both perfectly fluent in English both BVMFiL and BVMMiL sound very obviously Russian)?
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Jul 4, 2020 18:27
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Accent is weird. Some people seem to be able to sound native at any age they learn a language, others can speak a language fluently but just cannot get rid of the accent no matter what they do. It certainly seems like your chances of sounding native are better the younger you are. I'm one of the latter, I am not bad at learning languages but I cannot pronounce them like a native, I do my best but I'm always going to sound like an English speaker.
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Jul 4, 2020 18:29
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Grand Fromage posted:And let me tell you about Korean tongue-cutting surgery to speak English better... 
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Jul 4, 2020 18:30
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Last I'll post on this derail: you see, white people have longer tongues than Koreans so we can speak English properly and they can't. If you cut the frenulum under the tongue, it lets you speak English better. It's not a common surgery, but it is emblematic of the weird race-linked language beliefs that are quite common.
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Jul 4, 2020 18:34
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Grand Fromage posted:Anecdotally I think it's much more common for Asian immigrants (most of my first gen friends are Asian, and not one of them spoke the native language at home), there's a strong belief in East Asia that language is almost biologically linked and if you speak an East Asian language or look East Asian, you cannot be native fluent in English. Obviously not everyone thinks that way but it's very common. One of the reasons why parents object if an English language school hires an Asian-American teacher, for example. And let me tell you about Korean tongue-cutting surgery to speak English better... Different gen but my grandmother's dad spoke mostly Swedish and bad English ditto her mother but Norwegian and better english. Neither taught her or her brothers either of their old country tongues.
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Jul 4, 2020 18:56
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Grand Fromage posted:Accent is weird. Some people seem to be able to sound native at any age they learn a language, others can speak a language fluently but just cannot get rid of the accent no matter what they do. It certainly seems like your chances of sounding native are better the younger you are. I'm one of the latter, I am not bad at learning languages but I cannot pronounce them like a native, I do my best but I'm always going to sound like an English speaker. It’s kind of insane. I have two kids, both raised trilingual in English, Cantonese, Mandarin. Both speak English as a first language and Mandarin as a second. A, the elder, speaks unaccented English, accented Mandarin and accented Cantonese. B, the younger, speaks without an accent in all three languages. He is also a talented mimic, able to copy accents with little deviation.
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Jul 4, 2020 19:23
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Arglebargle III posted:Old English is a trash language. It's simultaneously inflected (case system boo) and has a tiny vocabulary. No wonder it imported a ton of romance vocabulary and dropped case endings. Tolkien's skeletal finger curls...
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Jul 4, 2020 19:48
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Grand Fromage posted:Accent is weird. Some people seem to be able to sound native at any age they learn a language, others can speak a language fluently but just cannot get rid of the accent no matter what they do. It certainly seems like your chances of sounding native are better the younger you are. I'm one of the latter, I am not bad at learning languages but I cannot pronounce them like a native, I do my best but I'm always going to sound like an English speaker. Also accent doesn't correlate at all to comprehension. I'm a journalist and we work with a lot of freelancers and overseas stringers, and it's always very interesting proofing someone's copy. There are colleagues I thought had weak english skills, and then I read their copy and see it is very well written. Then I speak to them again and realise they have basically native level english, I just didn't notice because they have strong accents. On the other hand I worked with a Portuguese guy who could talk fluently with a very light accent, and it took me months to realise that when we spoke he understood about half of what I was saying because he had very poor comprehension, and when he wrote he would make basic errors like messing up word order or getting tenses wrong.
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Jul 4, 2020 19:59
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yeah its weird how much it can individually vary how much one pikcs up an accent. A friend of mine is born and raised in a southwest Swedish town and now lives in Gothenburg which is in the same province with a related accent, but has a very weak local accent and often mistaken for a Stockholmer or a central swede in general. His brother though, born and raised in the same home and only a couple of years older has a very noticeable southwestern Swedish accent. Very intriguing how accents can vary so much between two brothers with virtually identical backgrounds.
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Jul 4, 2020 21:27
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It's also easy to forget Latin was one of those languages where there was a standardized written form but the spoken form was a wide dialect spectrum. The assorted vulgates were mutually intelligible, they didn't really start to split apart until the empire did and people weren't routinely moving around anymore and smoothing out the differences, but they still weren't the written language that you learn if you take Latin classes.
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Jul 4, 2020 21:33
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Grand Fromage posted:It's also easy to forget Latin was one of those languages where there was a standardized written form but the spoken form was a wide dialect spectrum. The assorted vulgates were mutually intelligible, they didn't really start to split apart until the empire did and people weren't routinely moving around anymore and smoothing out the differences, but they still weren't the written language that you learn if you take Latin classes. Isn't it true that many in the empire didn't even speak it? Kind of like medieval monks who all wrote Latin in their illuminated manuscripts but spoke Frankish or French or Norse or whatever. e: eh, this obivously even applies to scientists way into the Enlightenment
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Jul 4, 2020 21:41
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aren't Spanish and Italian still mutually intelligible?
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Jul 4, 2020 21:43
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