Are Romance languages some kind of Germano-Latin?

greg indicated a very interesting article about the transition of Latin to Romance:
Roger Wright : http://medievales.revues.org/document586.html

Mr. Wright explains how the first written Romance texts were generated by the attempt of Germanic clercs and feudal lords to communicate with their "Vulgar-Latin" speaking compatriots. Here one of the most enlightening passages:


"Les circonstances dans lesquelles la Cantilène de sainte Eulalie a été élaborée quarante ans plus tard sont tout à fait semblables. Saint-Amand, comme Strasbourg, se trouvait dans une zone linguistique de transition entre les langues germaniques et romanes.Le maître de chœur de Saint-Amand, qui était alors le grand Hucbald de Saint-Amand lui-même ou l'un de ses proches collaborateurs, composa la Cantilène (en relation à la sequentia latine qui se trouve dans le même manuscrit) sur des principes phonographiques similaires à ceux utilisés pour les Serments afin que le chœur, qui était de langue germanique, puisse le chanter de telle sorte à être compris par des auditeurs de langue romane. À l'évidence, le chœur chargé de chanter la séquence latine connaissait déjà ce système de correspondances entre lettres et sons ; aussi celui-ci put-il immédiatement servir de modèle pour donner une forme écrite aux mots de la séquence en roman...
Ainsi que c'était le cas à Strasbourg, le texte en langue romane est accompagné, dans le manuscrit, d'un texte en langue germanique (le Ludwiglied) qui utilise les mêmes correspondances entre lettres et sons : par exemple, tous les deux écrivent [ts] cz, comme dans le mot de langue romane czo. Il est fort possible que l'habitude germanique fut ici la première et suscita une imitation en langue romane (étant donné l'absence de toute affriquée /ts/ en latin réformé)."

This seems to be another evidence that Romance languages are some kind of contact languages and that the abrupt transition from Latin to Romance and the splitting of Latin into Occitan, Sicilian, Castillian etc. was due to the close contact and population exchange between Romans and different migrating Germanic peoples during and after the migration period and within "zones of linguistic transition between germanic and roman languages".

Je crois que tu fais fausse route : Wright aborde ici la scriptolangue, pas l'orolangue. Et il s'agit d'une forme achaïque d'une scriptolangue d'Oïl qui transcrit un ororoman d'Oïl, à l'exclusion de toute autre forme d'ororoman (d'Oc, de Si etc).

To my feeling, the same what happened to the written Romance language happened before or in parallel to the oral Latin: Germanics tried to speak Latin, which has a high prestige but is also as we all know quite difficult, and simplified/modified it so deeply that Latin was transformed into Romance, which, since Alcuin, was characterized as being wrong latin.

See also the excellent article by Michel Banniard
Latinophones, romanophones, germanophones : interactions identitaires et construction langagière (VIIIe-Xe siècle)
http://medievales.revues.org/document753.html

One further citation:
In their introduction to <<Grammaires du vulgaire>>,
Christopher Lucken et Mireille Séguy state

La « grammaire » désigne en ancien français le latin. Lui seul est pourvu d'une grammaire : celle notamment que décrivent l'Ars minor et major de Donat (IVe siècle) ou les Institutions grammaticales de Priscien (VIe siècle), à une époque où le « bon » latin (celui de la rhétorique illustrée par les meilleurs orateurs et défendue par Cicéron, et qui deviendra le latin « classique ») semble devoir s'effacer devant l'invasion du latin « vulgaire », [..] parlé par le « peuple » rustique et les barbares!!!!


They obviously associate the genesis of "Vulgar Latin" (= Romance) to a process of "invasion in the IV century by "vulgar" Latin, which is spoken by the rural population and the (Germanic) barbars."
The IV century comprise the peak of migration of germanic Peoples into the Roman empire.

I think English is some sort of Germano-Latin.

<<I think English is some sort of Germano-Latin. >>

No Ian, it isn't.
As a language, English is firmly germanic. It doesn't resemble Latin, doesn't have a Latin origin, nor is there any time in its history where it "merged" with Latin or one of its descendants to become a pidgin/creole or a new language.
However, English does have a great number of words that have a Latin origin, more than half of our total dictionary vocabulary. (This is because the English language is *overpadded* with a lot of words it doesn't really use anymore. The majority of these are old terms used by Renaissance writers that still occupy spaces in our dictionaries, but are no longer in circulation. These words skew and throw off the percentages when we look at how many words come from which language group. If we pared down English to the size of, say, the French dictionary--eliminating the most unused words first--we would find the vocabulary of English to be much more in line with the type of language English truly is, a germanic one).

Ouest : « To my feeling [...] ».

Le problème est là : tu *t'imagines* 1] un processus de cérolisation — 2] basé sur du latin — 3] déclenché par des germanophones.




Roger Wright : « [...] on établit une distinction systématique entre le latin (une grammatica standardisée que nous appelons latin médiéval) et le roman. »

Roger Wright : « Une distinction consciente entre le latin et le roman fut faite de temps à autre pendant le ixe siècle et ce développement métalinguistique était une conséquence des réformes carolingiennes. La moitié latine de cette nouvelle distinction est le nouveau "latin médiéval" [médiolatin] plutôt que l'ancien "latin tardif". La "grammatica" du "latin médiéval" [médiolatin], telle qu'elle fut institutionnalisée par les clercs carolingiens, dépendait pour la morphologie de l'« Ars minor » de Donat, qui était alors vieux de près de cinq siècles, et, pour la syntaxe, des « Institutiones » de Priscien, compilés à Constantinople en 527 et donc vieux de près de trois siècles. Et comme aussi bien Donat que Priscien avaient tenté à l'origine de reconstituer la grammaire écrite du passé plutôt que décrire la langue vernaculaire orale de leurs contemporains, leurs ouvrages étaient d'autant plus dépassés. Aussi, la morphologie et la syntaxe du latin enseigné aux scribes dans les écoles carolingiennes réformées étaient-elles volontairement archaïques, et, sur des points importants, bien différentes de la langue romane contemporaine. »

Greg,

What characteristics of romance languages, and French in particular, if any, are attributed to Germanophones?

-Roger-

The closest language to a mixture of Latin and German is English, and it's still a Germanic language with some Latin atrezzo. Romance languages only have some Germanic words, much less than the words of Latin origin English has.

<<The closest language to a mixture of Latin and German is English, and it's still a Germanic language with some Latin atrezzo. Romance languages only have some Germanic words, much less than the words of Latin origin English has. >>


No. Having words does not mean mixture. As in the case with English, the Anglophones never came into contact with Latin-speakers as in the case with Romanian and Slavic...the Latin influence in English is *artificial*, being created by the English speakers themselves (i.e. bookworms and scholars inkhorning terms into English).

If this were the case, then one could say that Japanese is a mixture of English and Japonic...Korean is Sino-Tungusic, and Albanian is a mixture of Greek and Slavic.

In truth, the closest language to a mixture of Latin and German is French with a ratio of approx. 80% Latin , 15% German, 5% Other.

btw, "atrezzo" is an Italian theatrical term...

I said that English is the closest language to a mixture of German and Latin, but it's not really an hybrid, just a Germanic language with 60% of its vocabulary coming from Latin, which is a remarkable thing anyway. Romance languages don't even have such percentage of their vocabulary coming from German in order to be considered a mixture of German and Latin.

Thanks for the answers.

<<The closest language to a mixture of Latin and German is English, and it's still a Germanic language with some Latin atrezzo. Romance languages only have some Germanic words, much less than the words of Latin origin English has. >>

If we said "I go-erai" for "I will go" or "qua" for "what" or "we bring-ons" I might see that reasoning.

My reasoning is perfect, since I didn't say that English is an hybrid of German and Latin, just the closest language to that thing, despite Engish is still far from being a mixture of German and Latin, just a Germanic language heavily latinized as far as vocabulary is concerned.

<<just a Germanic language with 60% of its vocabulary coming from Latin, which is a remarkable thing anyway>>

Yes, but this is a skewed percentage. A large portion of that 60% is made up of words we don't use anymore. Words like 'suppedaneum', 'resistentialism', 'expede', etc. They're in the dictionary, but they are old-fashioned, and obsolete.

What if this happened: What if I went to work for Oxford on their dictionary and decided I wanted to "borrow" Russian words and put them in my English dictionary. I take all the words in Russian, however many there may be, and superimpose them on the English lexicon. Of course no one will actually use them. They just sit there in the dictionary nice and snuggly. If I run a percentage of English word origins, all of a sudden ENglish is 50% SLAVIC!?? because it has 50% of its words from Russian?

That's nuts. Very close to the Same thing.