Romance Languages Not In Britain?

[Caius Maxentius]

I'm puzzled as to why Romania ended up with a Romance language but not Britain. Dacia was a province for only about 170 years, whereas Britannia lasted over 350.

 

Moreover, Dacia trampled over by all kinds of peoples -- Goths, Huns, Magyars, Avars, Slavs, Pechenegs, Cumans, Bulgars, Turks, etc. Britain didn't have quite this level of traffic, did it? Why is there so little Latin in Welsh and Cornish?

[longbow]

If you take at look at this map from Roman Britain.org it shows every known Romano British settlement.Whilst there is some settlements in Wales ,Cornwall has hardly any Roman activity.They may have kept the Language of there ancestors because they didnt intermingle very much with the other British kingdoms.

[Pantagathus]

I can offer some insight from my understanding but it's really a rather complicated issue Caius...

 

Primarily, Britain and Ireland seem to have acted as a cultural terminus over the prehistorical & historical periods for numerous continental migrating groups (Celts, Anglo-Saxons, etc...) whereas present day Romania was a consistant waypoint.

 

As you say it was 'trampled over' but not inundated my migrating groups who set up shop long enough to effect the language of the indigenous population as it was in Britain.

 

First, the reason Celtic & Gaelic languages remain today where they are found is because those people were either 'pushed' to these fringes by other migrating groups or moved voluntarily to find autonomous areas away from Roman areas of influence. That is why Celtic - Gaelic influences remain the strongest in the areas that saw the least Roman intervention like Wales, Cornwall, Scottish Highlands & Ireland.

 

As to the Roman occupied areas (in Britain), the Latin influence was overlayed by the migrating Anglo-Saxons and since they migrated to stay, the language morphed overtime to give us our modern English that contains a quite substantial amount of Latin loan words but uniquely different from the structure of Romance languages. Incidentaly, Old English spoken by the Anglo-Saxons was much more like Dutch.

 

I hope this helps in your understanding. At this point I earnestly hope for some input from our Forum member Andrew Dalby to elaborate on what I've said or correct me where I have it wrong.

Edited January 5, 2006 by Pantagathus

[Caius Maxentius]

Thanks to Long Bow and Pantagathus for these replies. I think I understand the British context better.

 

I still find the Romania question fascinating. I read that Aurelian pulled much of the Dacian population south of the Danube at the time of abandonment to beef up poor, depleted Moesia. Is it fair to say that enough of the latinized population remained north of the Danube to act as a cultural and linguistic base?

 

I take it that Dacia was simply settled less by other linguistic groups than the former provinces of Moesia, Pannonia, Rhaetia and Noricum?

[Pertinax]

The Romans were an excellent veneer of civilisation over a wild people, the Normans were a conquering overlordship, neither of their languages could take hold, Henry the Eigth considered the English to a "bloody, turbulent people" quite some time later . A national propensity to resistance seems to include language also.

[Andrew Dalby]

I think this is really a very difficult question. There are (at least!) two points where assumptions we usually make may or may not be right.

 

1. What language was spoken in southern and eastern Britain at the moment when the Saxons and Angles invaded? We usually assume it was Celtic, but it might have been Latin. In other words, there might have been a potential Romance language there, spoken by Arthur (??!!) and his Round Table (???!!!), just waiting to be obliterated by Anglo-Saxon. Since Anglo-Saxon borrowed few Latin and few Celtic words, and there are no relevant inscriptions, there is little evidence to answer the question.

 

2. Does Romanian survive in situ from the Roman settlements in Dacia, or, given that they were perhaps partly evacuated, did it spread northwards again, much later, from Romance speakers in the southern Balkans? There is plenty of evidence of a Romance language there, and indeed it's still spoken in some mountain areas (Aromunian or Vlach). The trouble with asking this question is that it excites redemptionist Hungarians to say 'See! We were in Transylvania before you!' and the whole political argument starts again.

[Pantagathus]

1. What language was spoken in southern and eastern Britain at the moment when the Saxons and Angles invaded? We usually assume it was Celtic, but it might have been Latin. In other words, there might have been a potential Romance language there, spoken by Arthur (??!!) and his Round Table (???!!!), just waiting to be obliterated by Anglo-Saxon. Since Anglo-Saxon borrowed few Latin and few Celtic words, and there are no relevant inscriptions, there is little evidence to answer the question.

 

In studying the Neolithic spread onto the islands I personally feel that it can serve as a cyclical template for understanding later influencial waves; in this case language. That is one reason why I feel inclined to seperate Gaelic from Celtic as it roughly reflects the devisions of Goidelic & Brythonic Celtic. Goidelic being the Atlantic maritime lingua fanca of the Bronze Age and Brythonic being more from the later Continental invaders.

 

So, my assumtion is that in the Roman occupied areas of Britain at the entrance of Rome, Brythonic Celtic would have been the primary tongue.

 

As you have already pointed out Andrew, from this point on were are only left with speculation...

 

How Latinized did common speach in this area become? Did almost all traces leave with the Roman administrators? Is Welsh an indication that the Anglo-Saxons pushed the Brythonic speakers there, implying that Latin did not take firm roots before the Anglo-Saxons arrived? -Or- Were the Brythonic speakers on the west side of the island as unmolested linguistically after the Anglo-Saxons arrived as they had been during the Roman occupation? In which case the Anglo-Saxons either completely obscured a heavy Latin influence on the local Brythonic or just Brythonic itself...

[DecimusCaesar]

Christopher A. Snyder's book The Britons has some mention of it, but I think basically that the most Romanized areas in Britain were in England. Most of the settlements found in Wales for instance were military, like auxillary fortresses and as such Roman culture and language never really took off. After the Saxons arrived in Britain in 410, they slowly conquered Southern Britain and over the course of about 500 years, Roman and Celtic culture eroded and this meant the languages died with them as well.

One thing I found interesting was that Cadwallon ap Cadfan, King of Gwynedd (North Wales) and a warlord; sent a military expedition into England around AD 633, and conquered Northumbria and areas in Southern England, but one of the problems he had was that the Brythonic or welsh tribes that still lived in England at that time had already abandoned their language and culture and as a result he found it hard to get their support. So it is apparent therefore that the native Britons who lived in the areas conquered by the Saxons quickly lost touch with their own language and culture and therefore they abandoned latin as well.

Even so we can still see small traces of Latin and Brythonic/welsh place names in England, like Stratford on Avon, 'Avon' coming from the welsh 'afon', which means river.

[eggers]

Christopher A. Snyder's book The Britons has some mention of it, but I think basically that the most Romanized areas in Britain were in England. Most of the settlements found in Wales for instance were military, like auxillary fortresses and as such Roman culture and language never really took off. After the Saxons arrived in Britain in 410, they slowly conquered Southern Britain and over the course of about 500 years, Roman and Celtic culture eroded and this meant the languages died with them as well.

One thing I found interesting was that Cadwallon ap Cadfan, King of Gwynedd (North Wales) and a warlord; sent a military expedition into England around AD 633, and conquered Northumbria and areas in Southern England, but one of the problems he had was that the Brythonic or welsh tribes that still lived in England at that time had already abandoned their language and culture and as a result he found it hard to get their support. So it is apparent therefore that the native Britons who lived in the areas conquered by the Saxons quickly lost touch with their own language and culture and therefore they abandoned latin as well.

Even so we can still see small traces of Latin and Brythonic/welsh place names in England, like Stratford on Avon, 'Avon' coming from the welsh 'afon', which means river.

After the Norman invasion of 1066, English went underground as an "illegal" language if you will. It changed significantly between then and when it was re-introduced. Old words were mixed together into new words, slang words took and re-placed other words and pronoucing certain words changed. Some words in English are still very similar to dutch today now though, words like mist and freeze. Other words exist today from french etc.

This is part of the reason, as well as the division between north and south before 1066 (and many other reasons), why accents (and many words) are more regional then national in uk

[docoflove1974]

This is an extremely interesting topic for me.

 

Rumanian is an extremely thorny topic for historical Romance linguists...pretty much because we have zero documentation from that area from the 3rd until the 15th century. I mean none. The influx of Turks, Slavic tribes, Greeks and so many others not only destroyed buildings, but destroyed documents and ways of life. The best that we can come up with is what we can observe when a group of people get put through such a series of events: they cling onto their individualism, their language, and their culture in whatever way possible. If that is the case, then it must be true that the Dacians of the late Empire era, once the Romans officially pulled stakes, clung onto their Romance-ways, despite the other linguistic influences around them, and still considered themselves 'Roman(ish)'...probably why they continued to call themselves 'Romanians' (or the more-correct term 'Rumanian') vs. Slavic or anything else. I cannot tell you what my colleagues and I would give for a time-travel unit, so that we could go back there and record linguistic data, or to save documents. As it is, part of my doctoral dissertation cannot be fully expounded upon, since I have nothing to say about Old Rumanian...we have nothing on that era of the language, or how it formed the way it did.

 

As for Britonnic settlements and Romanization...I commented on another topic on this issue. The quick and short of it is that the present-day England areas where the Romans settled were not fully Romanized, and the Britonnic Celts were never truly subjugated...never fully participated in the educational or cultural Roman offerings. The Cmyriam (Welsh), Cornish, Breton, and Gaelic (Irish and Scottish) tribes were even more fierce about their independence, and were never conquered at all. Hence the lack of true Roman influence on the language. All Romance elements can be directly linked to 1) the Norman Invasion, and 2) Renaissance introduction of terms, which was done pan-Europe.

Edited February 13, 2006 by docoflove1974