Rip : about cultural heritage

I am not gaulois or gallo-roman i am roman, this is my reality, my history and it's important! It's not books from school which teach me who were my parents : mes ancêtres les gaulois!, my ancestors the Gaulois!

This was in response of :

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/posts/6132.htm

title : The french are taking away...

Please believe us, here in what you call France, there is a real genocide!

We basques, bretons, Auvergnats, savoyards, provençaux...are victims of a real genocide.

I am with you Toinou!

Independenza! I put your name

Can you do something in your country for us? Can you ask to your respective governments to tell to the French government to respect the human rights! We auvergnats are victims of a real genocide! Our language is unallowed, our schools are closed, our artists are discriminated. The reason is the integration in the french culture, but our history is different! Our politics are sent in jail !

WE are not the only one, french flemmish, french bretons, provençaux, savoyards, corsicans and basques are in the same situation.

One could say that the modern Frenchman (or French person) is basically a German since they descend mostly from Germanic or near-Germanic peoples like the Franks, Burgundians, Allemands, Normans and Visigoths (primarily around Toulouse). In fact, Frankish which was still spoken by some French until the late seventh century A.D. was a dialect of Old High German.

The Bretons are what are left of the earlier Gaulish inhabitants of France that Julius Caesar encountered. The Gauls appear to have been a mixture of Brythonic Celts and some pre-Celtic peoples akin to the Basques. Their language was Brythonic Celtic. Some modern Breton words have changed little from their Gallic ancestors like: Broh "badger", Taro "bull", Karo "deer", Tud "people", Nenv "sky", Noz "night", Ruz 'red" (Gallic brokkos, tarvos, karanto-, teuto-, Nemo-, noux, roudo- )etc.

Today, however, probably almost every Frenchman (French person) can claim at least one Breton ancestor. Enough time has passed for the diffusion of Breton genes into the general French population. In other words , you have a population which is still basically Germanic but with a significant native admixture.

The Romans probably didn't leave much behind genetically in the French population. Their blood seems to have been watered down pretty thin even in Italy by the 2nd century A.D. when the Roman Army started becoming full of foreigners and many of the emperors themselves were foreigners. .

The term "Gallo-Roman" began appearing, I understand, about the time of the French Revolution. Many of the French revolutionary leaders thought that the French nobility were descended from Germanic Franks while the "poor, oppressed masses" of France were descended from Gallic and Roman peasantry. This was an illusion of course, but the terms "Gallic and Gallo-Roman" stuck . Later conflicts between the French and the Germans probably reinforced it. There was even a sort of Celtic or Romano-British type nationalism creeping up in England at that time too with the English making Celtic Queen Boudicca a national hero(ine) in much the same way the French had made the Gaulish king Vecingetorix one of their national heroes.

Auvergnats do not have any german blood, roman at 1sr, spanish, arabic and provençal at 2nd. Viva l'Independenza!

I am deeply convinced that the only thing that matters is cultural heritage, not race. For example, people in Hungary, where I live, are anthropologically closest to Central Asian peoples, linguistically to Voguls in Siberia, but culturally to Croats, Slovaks and Austrians, although the oldest layer of folk culture contains definite Central Asian elements. For the French (in the narrower sense, referring to speakers of langues d'oil), I would say the cultural heritage today is Romano-Germanic (both culturally and linguistically), not Gaulish, even if the Gauls were the first inhabitants of present-day France in historic times. This is because Roman culture had a strong influence on the original culture of the Gauls. The same (i.e. Romano-Germanic heritage) is true for other Romance cultures (including Occitans), although the Latin element is more prominent there.

It has nothing to do with races but it explains why some of our towns have an arabic name, why we have close traditions with spanish culture and not thr french one, why we can speak to provençaux without two many difficulties...

Easterner,

The original culture of Gauls? Gauls were several countries from north of France to north Italy + a little piece of actual Spain + a little piece of Germany (Koeln).

Gauls in its meanig does only mean they were all celtic population (celtic comes from Austria originnaly as you know it i guess).

It has not been romanised because their culture was close to the roman one even they were celtic by definition. That's why french people use the definition gallo-romaine. French people use to think italians are their cousins, it's true.

Germanisation did not really occure with french ancestors for many reasons.

The french at this time did not learn the german used at this time, in fact the opposite happened, "german invaders" did not have the choice to learn the vulgar latin used by french ancestors. It hapened in phonetic for as you said langue"s" d'oil used at this time.

One of the langue d'oïl used at this time expanded on a few areas and became the common language used in France. It does not mean this language was used on all the french territory.

The best example is with some populations especially from Auvergne, Provence, Pays Basque and a few others who did not know they had a king called Louis or Henri... They did not know they were french, can you believe it, they even did not know a revolution occured in 1789.

It's only on the beginning of the 20th century, the french government decided to teach french to all the french people they were french and had to share the same language. In fact there was not any other choice in face to face with germans who has you know have shared 3 wars in less than 50 years.

No every french speak french as a 1st language.

Why some of them do not consider themselves as not being french, the reason is simple. Their culture heritage, native languages, traditions... are closed to italians, some others to spanish, germans...

One of the french hero is Vercingetorix whio was arverne, auvergnat. Auvergants did not appreciated french stole their hero.

Dear Toinu:

I have to say I pretty much agree with Easterner here. Celtic (Gaulish) was actually spoken in the provence of Auvergne until the seventh century A.D. when it succumbed to the regional Romance language, Provencal. Now, most of the population probably speaks French as their first language. Celtic survives in Brittany, Nantes was Celtic speaking as late as the ninth century, but its numbers are dwindling.

Although Auvergne was briefly occupied by Arab Muslims in the early eighth century, they were'nt really there long enough to father many children. Charles Martel promptly expelled them. If there is any Arab in the population there today, it probably comes from either modern North African immigrants or maybe the Ancient Roman slave trade.

Dear Easterner:

Two Gallic tribes ,the Eravisci and the Taurii, lived in what is now Hungary too. You may already know that. They were probably absorbed by Teutonic and Slavic arrivals to the region in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. Later, even the Teutonic and Slavic peoples were assimilated by the Magyars , which as you say , are related to the Voguls of Siberia. (Even to the Finns). While the modern Hungarians are essentially a Ural-Altaic people I would imagine that they still have some genetic links to all of their northern European neighbors as well including even the Celts because of their country's history.

brennus,

You don't know what you ate talking about : provence of Auvergne does not mean anything, maybe you said : province of Auvergne.

Province is not Provence. Provence is a special area in France, Province is everything outside of Paris.

Auvergne is not a province, province is all.

Auvergne is a country, as said auvergnats : here finishes France, here begins Auvergne.

Auvergnats have celtic blood but they did not speak celtic at the period you mentioned for a simple reason. Auvergnats and catalans (i should precise) have common blood.

I say you don't know what you are talking about because like our catalan friends, we still use speaking in auvergnats between us. Some places refuse actually to speak french even at work.We have arabic heritage, some of our villages have an arabic name.

In some places, you won't never hear people from the place speaking into french, if so, it's gona bee bad!

On my travels I have found that some of the most patriotic French people were from Auvergne. An anecdote of this is when I was Auvergne, I remember how many people were elated by France winning the soccer world cup. But in general, they were always talking up France, how wonderful the French language and culture are.

I don't know why people bother talking about common blood when it's obvious that the French like other Europeans are a melange of ethnicities. Predominantly this would be Celtic, Germanic and Latin.

I agree that if there is any Arabic influence, it would be from modern day, because for example, the possibility of a town bearing a "Saracen" name in early times wouldn't have been tolerated.

Brennus: <<While the modern Hungarians are essentially a Ural-Altaic people I would imagine that they still have some genetic links to all of their northern European neighbors as well including even the Celts because of their country's history.>>

They may have, but that's the only thing in common with either Celtic or Finnish people (although the language is Finno-Ugric, it is full of loanwords from Turkish and Iranian languages of the nomadic tribes they used to live with as nomads). Culturally the Hungarians (or, as we call ourselves, Magyars) have the most in common with the neighbouring Slavic people and the Austrians (in terms of material culture and lifestyle, though in the latter case the influence is restricted to the western part of the country).

By the way, Hungarians do have a thing in common with the Scots or Irish, in that they have had to assert their identity against the Turks or Habsburgs since the 16th century, and they have always had a reputation of being rebellious. However, my impression is that they through most of the 20th century they were way too subservient (ecxcept for the anti-Soviet revolution in 1956), but this is only indirectly connected with cultural heritage.