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Germanic influence on the Romance languages
At any rate, there was still a significant cultural impact brought about by the Germanic invasions. Most people tend to speak of the German conquerors/settlers as adopting Roman ways and civilization. This is true to some extent, but there was cross-cultural diffusion on both sides. The social system of the middle ages was based on the old Germanic society, of the "Thanes" (warriors) as the warrior aristocracy, or "knights". The Germanic peoples adopted much of the local culture in most instances, but they also entirely transformed Europe.
Evidence of their intermingling amongst the Romance speaking peoples can be seen to this day, with common Italian/French/Spanish/Portuguese surnames of Germanic origin, and the significant difference between the phenotypes of the people of some Romance speaking regions, and that of their Roman ancestors. Today's modern Spaniard or Italian, is not the same person that his ancestors were at the time of Trajan. Spaniards have since become a mixed Iberian-Visigoth or Hispano-Roman/Germanic. This is clearly seen in the phenotypes of northern Spain, which is where the Visigoths and Alans, and Suevi primarily settled.
But of any foreign influence on the Iberian languages, I would say Gothic had little impact. If anything, it was the Arabic influence which significantly impacted the development of Spanish.
««Today's modern Spaniard or Italian, is not the same person that his ancestors were at the time of Trajan.»»
Good thing you explained it. But was it really necessary? ;)
««But of any foreign influence on the Iberian languages, I would say Gothic had little impact. If anything, it was the Arabic influence which significantly impacted the development of Spanish.»»
Gothic had little impact at the time? How you know? I think you mean that not much vocabulary survived. And we know that the Goths adopted Latin as their language. They must have been bilingual for a long time.
In a 95.000 words Portuguese dictionary I can find 912 Arabic words. Not many words survived.
Can you say how many Latin words and how many Germanic words you can find on a Spanish (Castilian) dictionary?
No, I cannot. But the vast majority of words are of Latin origin, with maybe a couple of hundred of Gothic and Iberian origin, and a few thousand of Arabic origin. Remember. The Arabs at one time ruled nearly all of Spain, and for several centuries, ruled large tracks of southern Spain, with their capital at "Al-Andalus".
LAA
If you look up in an electronic dictionary, maybe on a library if you do not have one, you can get the number of words that derive from Latin.
Notice that although the Arabs ruled Al-Andaluz, Portuguese does not have the same number of Arabic words that Castilian has.
And I can tell you that, in my Portuguese dictionary, the majority of words are not recorded as being Latin. I always thought that strange, maybe because no one ever got to study all the words.
As Portuguese and Castilian have a very similar vocabulary maybe you could be interested in finding how many Castilian words are known to be of Latin origin.
Otherwise you will always be guessing.
Yes, besides those words, I doubt Spanish has much else in common with Arabic. Not enough to 'significantly impact the development' of the language.
What's more important than the number of germanic speakers to native Romance speakers in Spain, Portugal and France is the rank and extent of influence they had.
Remember, the Franks and Visigoths RULED over the native speakers and that impact is tremendous, regardless of their numbers. Like today, we have few celebrities vs the masses, but who has more influence over culture and language--the celebs.
The Franks diphthongized Latin to create Old French (Latin long "a" to "ai"/"e"; Middle French "ei" to "oi"); and also gave French it's Perfect Tense construction: "J'ai fini" --that construction's not Latin! It's Germanic (cf. I have finished). Latin didn't use any modal form of habere with the past participle of a verb! French names too: Guillaume, Robert, Charles, Bernadette, Henri, Raynard, etc.
With Iberian languages, I would say it's only lexicon that's impacted, along with names. The strongest Germanic impact on these languages comes through French itself. Italian also shows Germanic vocab: scherzo, balcone, stucco, palla, razza, schifo, scaramuccia, etc.
Le linguiste M.Pei donna, le pourcentage d'éloignement des différent langue romane par rapport au latin d'origine:
sarde : 8 % ;
italien : 12 % ;
castillan : 20 % ;
roumain : 23,5 % ;
occitan : 25 % ;
portugais : 31 % ;
français : 44 %.
ainsi nous remarquons que plus une langue romane est éloignée du latin, plus elle c'est différenciée du latin prématurément:
Dates de fin de la communication latine selon différente régions:
France d'oïl 750-800
France d'oc 800-850
Espagne mozarabe 850-900
Italie du Nord
et du centre 900-950
Italie du Sud Indéterminé
Afrique
en cours d'arabisation 750-800
Pour le cas du français (originaire du parler Oïl), je pense que ça différenciation beaucoup plus accentuée par rapport au autres langues romanes, serait du au langues germaniques (qui étaient parlées par la noblesse franque, et donc les plus hauts ordres sociaux, le premier roi franc à ne plus parler le germanique comme langue maternelle date du Xème siècle)
<<French has less than 13% (4200 words) of foreign words according to Henriette Walter, Gérard Walter.
On estime à moins de 13% (soit 4 200 mots) les parts des mots d'origine étrangère dans la langue française courante soit environ les 35 000 mots d'un dictionnaire d'usage.
1 054 de ces mots sont d'origine anglaise,
707 italiens,
550 de l'ancien allemand,
481 des anciennes langues gallo-romanes,
215 arabes,
164 de l'allemand,
160 du celtique ancien,
159 espagnols, 153 hollandais,
112 perses et sanskrits,
101 des langues des Indiens d'Amériques,
89 de diverses langues asiatiques,
56 de diverses langues afro-asiatiques,
55 de langues slaves et de la Baltique,
144 d'autres langues diverses.
* Source : Henriette Walter, Gérard Walter, Dictionnaire des mots d'origine étrangère, 1998. >>
These figures seem quite different from the ones I found here: http://www.multilingual-matters.net/cils/006/0195/cils0060195.pdf
According to those figures, French has at least 8656 words of foreign origin and more than 4000 of them come from Germanic languages. And these numbers are supposed to be from the same source as quoted above.
This and the previous interesting contributions of e. g. Ikasi, Gringo and LAA are in agreement with my findings. Germanic influence on the Romance languages must have been very important, and French as the most Germanized of the Romance languages seems to be 50/50 (vernacular) Latin and German.
Another fact in this context is that surnames in Northern France of the late middle ages were almost 100% of German origin like Robert, Lambert, Guilleaume etc.
"Another fact in this context is that surnames in Northern France of the late middle ages were almost 100% of German origin like Robert, Lambert, Guilleaume etc. "
It is the same in ALL Spain, Sanchez, Lopez, Rodriguez, etc.. are name of germanic origin...
"and French as the most Germanized of the Romance languages seems to be 50/50 (vernacular) Latin and German. "
50% of what ??
"
From what I've read, I know that French has a few hundred words of Germanic origin. As far as Italian is concerned, I know of a couple of them. The Italian word "borgo" is German derived. It means town, or village (from Germanic "berg"). Also, the Italian word "stivale", meaning "boot" has a Germanic origin. The word for "boot" in German is "steifel".
"
Here a list of (aproximately one third of the) French words of Germanic origin:
Vocabulaire d'origine germanique
La liste qui suit ne contient pas la totalité des 400 mots germaniques recensés dans la langue parlée en Gaule à date ancienne, car beaucoup d'entre eux, attestés en ancien français, ont aujourd'hui dispqru et n'évoqueraient plus rien à nos contemporains (brant - lame d'épée, fuere - fourreau, rouche - iris etc...)
Parmi ceux qui sont parvenus jusqu'à nous (environ un tiers) on trouve des termes relatifs à :
La guerre et la chevalerie : bande, baron (homme brave, mari), bière (cercueil), blason, brandon, convoi, crosse, échanson, éperon, épieu, étrier, félon, fief, flèche, gain, gant, garçon (domestique), gars (soldat valet goujat), gonfanon (étendard), guerre, guet, hache, hanap, harangue, heame, honte, lice, maréchal, marquis, orgueil, rang, sénéchal, trêve, choisir, éblouir, épargner, fournir, gagner, garder, guetter, haïr, honnir, souiller.
La vie des champs : blé, vois, bûche, fange, fourrage, fourrure, framboise, garbe, germe, grappe, haie, hameau, hêtre, houe, houx, jardin, maris, osier, roseau, saule, touffe, trappe, troëne, caille, chouette, crapaud, frelon, hanneton, héron, laie, mésange.
La vie artisanale : alène, étai, feutre, filtre, houille, maçon, tuyau, bâtir, broyer, déchirer, gratter, graver, râper.
La vie maritime : bouée, écume, falaise, flot.
Les couleurs, blanc, bleu, blond, brun, fauve, garance, gris, saur.
La vie domestique : banc, beignet, bille, buée, crèche, cruche, écharpe, fard, fauteuil, flacon, froc, housse, lanière, louche, poche, quenotte, soupe, hanche, flanc, téton, fluet, frais, gai, laid, long, broder, danser, guérir, héberger, lécher, regarder, rôtir, téter, trépigner.
Here is the estimate of Germanic genes in Spain, Italy, France and the British Islands according to the analysis of Y haplogroups (males):
Spain: around 12% same as Italy
France: around 30% same as Eastern England (this is consistent with English history)
Western England, Scotland and Ireland: around 12, 15%
Of course from these studies we can't only guess the amount of invaders, but it's better than nothing.
http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf
(page 2, Q haplogroup)
Ikasi : « Pour le cas du français (originaire du parler Oïl), je pense que ça différenciation beaucoup plus accentuée par rapport au autres langues romanes, serait du au langues germaniques (qui étaient parlées par la noblesse franque, et donc les plus hauts ordres sociaux, le premier roi franc à ne plus parler le germanique comme langue maternelle date du Xème siècle) ».
Et il ne t'est jamais venu à l'esprit que le vernaculaire du peuple (que son origine soit gauloise, romaine, germanique ou métisse) n'était pas exactement celui du roi ? La phonologie des parlers romans médiévaux du nord de l'ancienne Gaule devait certainement présenter une certaine variabilité, comme dans tous les ensembles linguistiques contemporains. L'explication de la "différenciation" phonématique des parlers d'Oïl par rapport au "latin" est certainement à rechercher dans cette direction.
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