<<I actually gave that a lot of thought, and I've come to the conclusion that it is very much possible, not that the Dutch speak the language of Charlemagne of course, but that charlemagne spoke an ancestor of Dutch.
You see, it's impossible that Charlemagne spoke Old Frankish, the language of the migrating Franks, because that language went extinct around the 6th century.
Extinct? No, not really. It did two things, it evolved into Old Low Frankish/ Old Dutch, and it influenced certain High German dialects.
The point is however , is the fact that Old Frankish was never attested. So we don't know for absolutely sure that was "High or Low". But then again ... High German languages don't turn low ... so maybe, Old Frankish was "Old Low Frankish/Old Dutch" from the start ... >>
The Franks settled in large numbers in northern France, and the low countries. The lands most densely settled by Franks are given away by the language spoken by modern locals. Flanders and the Netherlands speak a derivative of Franconian. Most likely, they are the direct descendants of the Franks. So, the Dutch and the Flemish are modern Franks. Northern Frenchmen and Walloon-Belgians would have some Frankish admixture as well, but they are not wholly Franks, but mainly descend from Gallic and Celtic/Latin hyrbrids. These people constituted the majority of the populations, and that is why, to this day, southern Belgium and northern France still speak Gallo-Romance languages. Farther south in modern France, the Franks settled only in very small numbers, and were basically just administrators of a government centered in northern France and the low countries. Most Frenchmen are Celtic/Latin hybrid, with the farther south you go, the more ethnically mediterranean people become, and the farther north, the more Celtic they become. It must be noted as well that Celtic people do not necessarily look like Germanic people. In most Celtic populations, the people are an inch to two inches shorter than Germanic populations, and there is a high rate of dark hair and or dark eyes among the Celtic people. You might have heard of of the "Dark Welsh" or the "Black Irish". As for the claim that the English are not ethnically related to other Germanic peoples, and only came to speak a Germanic language and adopt a Germanic culture because of elite dominance, I say that it is complete load of crap. Genetic studies show that in large part, the Welsh and the Irish are descendants of the original inhabitants of Britain. They are most closely related, genetically, to the Basques of Iberia and southern France. The English DNA however, is most strikingly distinct from that of Welsh and Irish DNA. Not coincedentally, the English DNA is closest to that of the people of Friesland, in the modern Netherlands, the ancient homeland of the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Interestingly, Frisian, is the closest linguistic neighbor to English. How about them apples? It is possible that there was a roughly equal number of Anglo-Saxons and native Celts, who then interbred, while the offspring of the subsequent generations adopted Germanic culture and language because of the greater influence exerted on them by the Anglos who had a higher economic standing. The Germanic (as in northern netherlands) genetic imput is strongest in eastern England, where the new Germanic arrivals would have first settled in large numbers. This would have been the site of their initial raids and plundering, and obviously, their first enclave in the Britian. Most of the settlers would have settled close to the sea, on the eastern coastline, thus settling their in greater numbers, and displacing the locals on a larger scale. South western England, seems to be a mix of native Briton and Anglo-Saxon genetic material. The land in between seems to be primarily Anglo-Saxon, with Celtic components. Once you cross the hilly border into Wales, however, an entirely different picture emerges. The people here, by no accident, for centuries retained a unique, Celtic language and culture. And sure enough, people west of Welsh/English border show a completely different genetic ancestry, which stands in sharp contrast to those on the English side of the border, and an even sharper contrast to those of eastern England.
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