What makes French a Latin-Germanic mixed language

No doubt that French and Spanish and Italian are closely related. The point is that they are all together as distant from Classical Latin as from Old Germanic.

For modern Germanic speakers, it is relatively easy to learn Gothic spoken in 4th century (Bible of Wulfila)
For modern Greek speakers, it is relatively easy to learn Classical Greek spoken in 4th century (Koine)
For modern French/Spanish/Italian speakers it is VERY DIFFICULT to learn classical Latin spoken in 4th century

Why does it take a French speaker years of intense studies to read Caesars de bello gallico? Why will he need further years of intense training to speak the Latin language fluently?

citation from http://www.etudes-litteraires.com/forum/sujet-4248-2.html:
"Pour ceux qui pensent que le latin est une langue trop difficile et pas adaptée à notre cerveau de français, mais alors que dire du chinois ou de l'arabe, deux systèmes linguistiques diamétralement opposés au nôtre? On ne pourrait alors apprendre aucune langue parce qu'on est habitué à un système?

Le latin c'est très important pour bien comprendre notre langue si difficile, il est très dommage de se priver d'un instrument si précieux. C'est une langue extrémement logique, il y a très peu d'irrégularités, sa propre régularité peut nous aider à mieux manier notre propre langue. De plus, entrer dans un système tout à fait différent permet de s'ouvrir l'esprit à un autre fonctionnement, à une autre façon de dire le monde, dont il nous reste des traces en français. Mais c'est sûr, il faut apprendre sa grammaire latine..."


So, learning Latin is for French pupils ("notre cerveau de français") like learning Chinese or Arabic language. That demonstrates clearly, that French/Spanish/Italian are not languages coming from Latin by simple evolution. Latin language must have been completely deconstructed at a certain period (the migration period) and then reorganized to the new Romance languages.

This text doesn't explain French doesn't come from Latin. It shows exactly the opposite :

-"Le latin c'est très important pour comprendre notre langue si difficile", Latin is important to understand French.

-"sa propre régularité peut nous aider à mieux manier notre propre langue", the Latin's regularity can help us to use better our own language (here French) : it demonstrates that Latin are closely related if Latin can help to understand some French irregularities.

-"dont il nous reste des traces en français", this sentence demonstrates also that French comes from Latin.

<<Why does it take a French speaker years of intense studies to read Caesars de bello gallico? Why will he need further years of intense training to speak the Latin language fluently?>>

Because French received influences (Gallic and Germanic the most) which modificated the language, but French evolved itself, the signification of the words changed from Latin : 'superbus' means something like 'selfish' but current French 'superbe' means something like 'wonderful' . Moreover the words evolved itselves : 'digitus' (finger) became 'doigt' and if you didn't learn Learn you can't guess the signification of the word.

The lost of the cases system is also a big evolution. In Old French the people was still using a 2 cases system (nominative and accusative if I remember) but the accusative became predominant (that's why the French plural is 's' : plural accusative 'rosas'----> French : 'roses').

South Sun Oct 26, 2008 2:55 pm GMT
"This text doesn't explain French doesn't come from Latin. It shows exactly the opposite :

-"Le latin c'est très important pour comprendre notre langue si difficile", Latin is important to understand French. ".......................

The text reproduces the very popular misunderstanding that Latin is THE ancestor of French/Spanish/Italian like Koine is the ancestor of modern Greek. But it seems that the assumed "evolution" of Latin to the Romance languages is a sepecial case - only the vocabulary has parallels (many of the parallels are artificial construction of Renaissance Latinists or wishful thinking of nationalistic ethymologists though), but anything else (grammar, syntax, morphology, pronuncialtion etc.) is so deeply altered or replaced by new elements (e. g. pronouns, articles etc. coming from Germanic languages) that, for a French, Latin appears as strange as Chinese or Hebrew.

It seems obvious that Romance languages did not evolve strightly from Latin but that they are something like the coproduct of century lasting language contact and population exchange between Latin speaking people comming from Rome and its Mediterranean universe (Greece, Egypt, North Africa) and the German speaking peoples migrating from central Europe into the Roman empire.

You mean that all languages like Spanish(Galician/Andalusian...etc), Catalan, Portugues, French (and Occitan/Provençal/Picard/Champenois/Wallon/Gascon/Béarnais/Corse /
Limousin/Auvergnat/Poitevin/Saintongeais/Gallo/Angevin/Orléanais/
Bourguignon/Franc-comtais/Savoyard/Jurassien/Lyonnais/Dauphinois/
Forézien), Italian (and all regional languages), Romanian (and reginal languages) are all "creations" ?

<<You mean that all languages like Spanish(Galician/Andalusian...etc), Catalan, Portugues, French (and Occitan/Provençal/Picard/Champenois/Wallon/Gascon/Béarnais/Corse /
Limousin/Auvergnat/Poitevin/Saintongeais/Gallo/Angevin/Orléanais/
Bourguignon/Franc-comtais/Savoyard/Jurassien/Lyonnais/Dauphinois/
Forézien), Italian (and all regional languages), Romanian (and reginal languages) are all "creations" ? >>

I would say it this way: The ancestor of all the above languages was a single language--Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance. This is obvious in how close they daughter languages are to one another, and how far they are as a group from the Latin language of the classics and the church.

Vulger Latin/Proto-Romance was a "creation". It would not have been possible for all Romance languages to adopt the same germanic words and divergent grammatical features individually by themselves (like for instance 'guerra/guerre' and a shared new future tense) and remain so closely aligned--something else must have been at work. These common borrowed words and features had to have been implemented much earlier when the whole of Romance was still a unified language.

Of course the language of the conquerors will affect the common tongue a lot. In some cases the conquerees will learn the new language completely but pass on substratal features, depending on how well the langauge was learned. Certainly there are substratal features from Celtic languages in both French and English.

<<Certainly there are substratal features from Celtic languages in both French and English. >>

And there are superstatal features from English upon Celtic (both old and modern Gaelic & Welsh), and from French upon Breton. Let's not forget the road goes both ways, and in this case, the effects of English and French on Celtic were probably greater. Obviously, as the Celtic languages are in strict decline...

Leasnam

"Vulger Latin/Proto-Romance was a "creation". It would not have been possible for all Romance languages to adopt the same germanic words and divergent grammatical features individually by themselves (like for instance 'guerra/guerre' and a shared new future tense) and remain so closely aligned--something else must have been at work. These common borrowed words and features had to have been implemented much earlier when the whole of Romance was still a unified language. "


Very interesting. What was spoken in the streets of Rome by the masses? Not Latin?

It was vulgar latin, not the classical latin you'll find in texts.

"It was vulgar latin, not the classical latin you'll find in texts."

... so the created language was Classical Latin and the real language was Vulgar Latin. There is something wrong in your theory. I think Vulgar Latin was an evolution Classical Latin. Remember that there was also an Archaic form of Latin really different from Classical that was spoken in Latium before Classical Latin.

Mr. white, Classical Latin was used by the upper class and scholars. The common and everyday people used Vulgar Latin, which eventually branched off into the various Romance languages. Vulgar and Classical Latin are the same language but different forms. Like British and American English but with more numerous differences.

Do you mean British English is akin to Classical Latin and American English is like Vulgar Latin?

I dont' think it's more difficult for Spanish speakers to learn Classical Latin than for English speakers to learn Old Norse.

There is a wrong idea about Latin here. You think Latin is only Classical Latin, but in reality is a language in evolution. What you call "Classical Latin" is the Latin spoken during Caesar rule (official language of Roman Empire), but after that there were a lot of steps of evolution: Archaic Latin (before 75 bc), Classical Latin (75 bc – 200 ad), Vulgar Latin (200 – 900), Medieval Latin (900 – 1300), Renaissance Latin (1300 - 1500) and there is a Contemporary Latin.

French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and other Neolatin languages are derived from Vulgar Latin. For example Italian and Vulgar Latin are intellegible. And are intellegible old form of French and Spanish with Vulgar Latin and contemporary Italian.