If the Romano-British culture had endured, beating off the Anglo-Saxon invasion, what would the language would have looked like? Would it have become a Romance language in the French vein? Would it be a mixture of Latin and the local Briton languages?
Romano-British Language
- Thread starter SuperTechmarine
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What's the POD? If it's that the fall of the Roman Empire doesn't happen and Britannia remains a province, I think it would eventually flip to a Romance language in the French vein, probably with a lot of local Celtic loanwords. If the POD is after the fall of the Empire, and is just repelling the Anglo-Saxons (and presumably not inviting any of them over there), the language would have continued as it was, as Brythonic Celtic with some Roman loanwords.
Probably something like IOTL Breton. England was fairly untouched by Roman civilisation, compared to other western European provinces and while you could have lasting features, you probably not even had post-imperial Romanity features you had on the same scale than in Gaul or Spain.
I think the substrate would have been too small for that : culturally and structurally, it would look like a lot like other non-Gaelic celtic ones. (And from what we know, it already fairly looked like this IOTL after Roman withdrawal).
Romanity in post-imperial England can't be compared to what existed in Northern Gaul (to say nothing of mediterranean basin, we're talking oranges and apples there)
Most probably, trough Roman superstrate of course, but as well from clerical features (that were the main reason of the latin superstrate in gaelic). But again, structurally, we'd have a Brythonic language with more or less important Latin, Gaelic and Germanic influence (trough German settlements in the Channel)
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What LSCatilina says.
If you end with one language then essentially it will be Breton like.
I'd expect more of a continuum though with a Cumbrian in the North and Corno-Breton in the South.
If you end with one language then essentially it will be Breton like.
I'd expect more of a continuum though with a Cumbrian in the North and Corno-Breton in the South.
For a British Romance language, I think one needs a scenario where (1) Britain is more thoroughly Romanized than it was in OTL, and (2) while the Anglo-Saxons still come over (the idea of a massive "invasion" is incidentally rejected by many modern scholars) they adopt the local Romance language, while of course adding some words to it as the Franks did in Gaul. (And like the Franks, they may still give their name to the country--and to the language!) Maybe if Julius Caesar had conquered the island instead of just having made a few punitive raids, there could have been a more thorough Romanization.
One problem is that the most romanized parts of Britaina were apparently the ones that got the most Anglo-Saxons. If Wales had been more Romanized, maybe its surviving language would be Romance rather than Celtic.
BTW, here is the classic "thought experiment to create a Romance language that might have evolved if Latin had displaced the native Celtic language as the spoken language of the people in Great Britain": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brithenig
One problem is that the most romanized parts of Britaina were apparently the ones that got the most Anglo-Saxons. If Wales had been more Romanized, maybe its surviving language would be Romance rather than Celtic.
BTW, here is the classic "thought experiment to create a Romance language that might have evolved if Latin had displaced the native Celtic language as the spoken language of the people in Great Britain": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brithenig
Why was this, out of curiosity? Britain was occupied by the Romans for hundreds and hundreds of years, after all, not too much less than other areas that ended up being quite Romanized. Why was it different?
I agree with others, probably similar to Breton - but with lots of French loan words (though not enough to make it a Romance language). Even without the Anglo-Saxons, France and Britain would have had a very long, very close entanglement due to proximity, economic links, wars, etc.
If the Anglo-Saxons had never conquered Britain, would Britain still be conquered by the Normans later on? Or maybe the Romano-Britons would have had a ruling structure less conducive to repelling Norse invaders than the model of kingship pioneered by Alfred and successors in Wessex, making Britain a Norse domain before the time of William the Conqueror.
If the Anglo-Saxons had never conquered Britain, would Britain still be conquered by the Normans later on? Or maybe the Romano-Britons would have had a ruling structure less conducive to repelling Norse invaders than the model of kingship pioneered by Alfred and successors in Wessex, making Britain a Norse domain before the time of William the Conqueror.
First, we have to define what romanisation means.
It can be compared to creolization on this regard : what made a roman society was the law, the roman civic conception both imperial and municipal, and religion (imperial cult and later Christianism). On this regard, most oriental provinces were as much if not more romanized than the average western province, even if latin language wasn't dominant (outside urban centers, it was more a situation of diglossy than monopolist : Gaul was still a living language by the IV/Vth centuries).
People as Ambrosius Aurelianus/Riotomagus (whatever they were the same person, as I think, or not) clearly represented the romanisation of late imperial Britain up to still interacting with continental business.
But one of the differences with Britain from one hand, and Gaul or Spain on the other hand is that these two provinces were quite develloped already on their own (Spain beneficing from ancient trade, for exemple; and Gaul being an agricultural and artisanal powerhouse) while Britain was a bit more undevelloped.
Provincial elites were often the same than before the roman conquest, the romanisation fitting right in the shoes of the previous situation.
In Britain, it was far less the case : tribal structures remained largely in place (and survived up to the Vth century).
Of course, with more investements and colonisation, Britain could have turned like Gaul, but doing so would have been not really sensible. There wasn't a real economical reason to do so (Roman Britain is largely deprived of latifundiae or villae), no real military reason to do so...
There's good reasons if Romans wondered about the possibility of just evacuating Britain in the Ist century (not that they would have realistically done that).
Actually, Germania Inferior and Superior had probably a clearly more important roman influence because of the numbers of military colonies and important border cities which you didn't have in Danubian basin).
And on this regard, maybe south-eastern Britain was at the same level than continental Channel's coasts, but that's all. Really, Gaul as a whole was clearly more integrated culturally than Britain ever was.
I agree, and the links between Merovingian Gaul and Anglo-Saxon Britain can points that : however, these are mostly going to influence southern Britain as IOTL.
Links with Germany shouldn't be underestimated : you'd still have a Germanic presence in Britain (which existed since the IVth) even without Anglo-Saxons taking over.
And presence of Gaelic peoples (more important than IOTL without Anglo-Saxons) is going to be influential as well.
There's going to be butterflies. Which means that when an event changes in the Vth, you have a whole chain of events that existed IOTL that may not exist in the new timeline.
From what it appeared, they used a form of celtic kinghip, with an high-king of sorts.
If it interests you, there was a really interesting discussion about it there.
There is an argument that the English language split away from Continental German languages a lot earlier than was previously thought. Studies of the ways that Polynesian languages have diverged from one another after individual islands/island groups were settled in the Pacific have led to some scholars believing that this split occurred not in the fifth century when the Anglo Saxons invaded but instead up to two thousand years earlier.
This has been tied to the results of DNA studies that have revealed that the vast majority of people are descended from stone age hunters who migrated into Britain as the ice sheets receded at the end of the last Ice Age. These hunters followed two different routes, those from what is called the "Iberian refuge" followed the coast north into Ireland, Wales and western Scotland and England whilst others from the "Balkan Refuge" followed the rivers Danube and Rhine into the eastern parts of Britain before the North Sea and English Channel formed. In the days before the clearance of the primeval forests that covered western Europe it would be easier to travel by water, either by sea or up a convenient river going in the right direction. Even after Britain became an island those who made a living from the sea would not have found a sea journey of 21 - 60 miles daunting, especially if there was a promise of a better life over the horizon.
The DNA studies mentioned above can find little trace of a massive “Anglo Saxon” migration in the fifth-sixth centuries leading the authors of their report to conclude that the invasion was of a small elite group who took control over an already existing social structure.
Unlike France, where the Frankish elite very quickly adopted the language of the mass of the population there, in English the exact opposite happened and there is very little trace of any “Romano-British” loan words; the only words with Latin roots can at best be only traced back to their introduction by Christian missionaries some 200 years after the “Advent of the Saxons.” Yet when a similar elite migration took place in 1066 it added numerous French derived words to the English language not to mention the inputs from the Scandinavians who conquered and settled extensive parts of eastern and northern England. The only words that can clearly be traced back to Celtic origins mostly seem to relate to landscape features such as rivers for example.
This conundrum has led to some people re-examining the earliest records we have of early western Europe. Roman records going back to Julius Caesar seem to indicate that languages and peoples categorized by them as “Celtic” to have been limited to the more central and westerly regions of France. Along the channel coast these records seem to show that some tribes had territories or sister tribes on both sides of the water. The Atrebates and the Belgae for example had branches both on the south coast of Britain and in northern Gaul whilst in south Yorkshire on the banks of the Humber was a tribe called the Parisi said to be related to the tribe that gave its name to the French capital.
There have also been those who point out that the Romans never specifically give a name to the language of the common people in their British province. They also imply that the various tribes of the south and eastern seaboard seemed to have been different to the more westerly and northern tribes. Being Romans they of course believed this was due to their contact with the more “civilised” Roman world. The archaeological record is said to support this as the more magnificent relics of the pre-Roman past, Stonehenge etc, seem to cluster more to the west than the east where the locals built in the less durable, but more readily available medium of wood. Overall there is said to be a discernable cultural split between eastern and western Britain created by the difficulties of over land travel in those times. This caused peoples to relate more closely with those across water barriers, because they were easier to cross, than land barriers.
My own personal opinion is that in prehistory rivers and seas were not the barriers we see them as today but rather conduits of trade and migration. Cultural and social entities would be linked rather than separated. Britain becoming an island didn’t halt the westward progress of tribes out of central Europe but could once people developed the boat building skills and the ability to cross water have actually improved it. Even in Roman times if a bunch of squatters had been found occupying some marginal land the authorities first response would have been to tax them rather than evict them. When the Anglo-Saxon “elite migration” occurred, the new Germanic landlords could well have found that their new tenants spoke a dialect of their own tongue that they could comprehend and very quickly adopt.
Indeed the available evidence is that when Rome left the peasantry were still speaking the languages they spoke when Rome came. The only part of the population speaking Latin were the gentry and those tied to the cities who very quicky adopted the language of those who laboured to support them reserving Latin for communicating with those who couldn't speak their tongue. Even in those areas not conquered by the Anglo Saxons Latin died away to become the preserve of churchmen who even then poorly understood it.
This has been tied to the results of DNA studies that have revealed that the vast majority of people are descended from stone age hunters who migrated into Britain as the ice sheets receded at the end of the last Ice Age. These hunters followed two different routes, those from what is called the "Iberian refuge" followed the coast north into Ireland, Wales and western Scotland and England whilst others from the "Balkan Refuge" followed the rivers Danube and Rhine into the eastern parts of Britain before the North Sea and English Channel formed. In the days before the clearance of the primeval forests that covered western Europe it would be easier to travel by water, either by sea or up a convenient river going in the right direction. Even after Britain became an island those who made a living from the sea would not have found a sea journey of 21 - 60 miles daunting, especially if there was a promise of a better life over the horizon.
The DNA studies mentioned above can find little trace of a massive “Anglo Saxon” migration in the fifth-sixth centuries leading the authors of their report to conclude that the invasion was of a small elite group who took control over an already existing social structure.
Unlike France, where the Frankish elite very quickly adopted the language of the mass of the population there, in English the exact opposite happened and there is very little trace of any “Romano-British” loan words; the only words with Latin roots can at best be only traced back to their introduction by Christian missionaries some 200 years after the “Advent of the Saxons.” Yet when a similar elite migration took place in 1066 it added numerous French derived words to the English language not to mention the inputs from the Scandinavians who conquered and settled extensive parts of eastern and northern England. The only words that can clearly be traced back to Celtic origins mostly seem to relate to landscape features such as rivers for example.
This conundrum has led to some people re-examining the earliest records we have of early western Europe. Roman records going back to Julius Caesar seem to indicate that languages and peoples categorized by them as “Celtic” to have been limited to the more central and westerly regions of France. Along the channel coast these records seem to show that some tribes had territories or sister tribes on both sides of the water. The Atrebates and the Belgae for example had branches both on the south coast of Britain and in northern Gaul whilst in south Yorkshire on the banks of the Humber was a tribe called the Parisi said to be related to the tribe that gave its name to the French capital.
There have also been those who point out that the Romans never specifically give a name to the language of the common people in their British province. They also imply that the various tribes of the south and eastern seaboard seemed to have been different to the more westerly and northern tribes. Being Romans they of course believed this was due to their contact with the more “civilised” Roman world. The archaeological record is said to support this as the more magnificent relics of the pre-Roman past, Stonehenge etc, seem to cluster more to the west than the east where the locals built in the less durable, but more readily available medium of wood. Overall there is said to be a discernable cultural split between eastern and western Britain created by the difficulties of over land travel in those times. This caused peoples to relate more closely with those across water barriers, because they were easier to cross, than land barriers.
My own personal opinion is that in prehistory rivers and seas were not the barriers we see them as today but rather conduits of trade and migration. Cultural and social entities would be linked rather than separated. Britain becoming an island didn’t halt the westward progress of tribes out of central Europe but could once people developed the boat building skills and the ability to cross water have actually improved it. Even in Roman times if a bunch of squatters had been found occupying some marginal land the authorities first response would have been to tax them rather than evict them. When the Anglo-Saxon “elite migration” occurred, the new Germanic landlords could well have found that their new tenants spoke a dialect of their own tongue that they could comprehend and very quickly adopt.
Indeed the available evidence is that when Rome left the peasantry were still speaking the languages they spoke when Rome came. The only part of the population speaking Latin were the gentry and those tied to the cities who very quicky adopted the language of those who laboured to support them reserving Latin for communicating with those who couldn't speak their tongue. Even in those areas not conquered by the Anglo Saxons Latin died away to become the preserve of churchmen who even then poorly understood it.
This view shouldn't be systematized : "Celtic" could mean really different things eventually. Dominique Garcia, for exemple, makes the point of a culture that covered multiple situation (mostly due to what existed before, as in Celto-Ligurians groups).
Giving toponimy and names we had for the period, it seems that Celtic, linguistically speaking, covered more than Comata, but as well Belgia and parts of Germany (German people being themselves largely celtized).
Doesn't mean that you couldn't have large differences, of course, but what we found from continental celtic points out to a more broad presence than just parts of Gaul.
It's a fair point, but that should be really used cautiously. Roman ethnography was based on the idea that they alone (and maybe Greeks) had an history. Everyone else around was supposed fixed in time and socially : Celtic and Germanic people existed the same way they always did (it's not unlike Greek geography, unless more systematized).
With this point of view, it was less interesting to caracterize language than societies (would it be because it's what interested Romans in a process of conquest and/or clientelisation).
That for Romans languages or culture never really changed among non-romanised peoples is to be expected, and I'd be cautious of this bias when using such sources.
The absence of a real linguistical description for Gaul (Aquitani supposedly most different from Celts, when it was a patchwork of more or less importantly celtized people) is a good counter-exemple.
Or the fact that Gallic could be either Celtic Gallic or Gallo-Roman dialects.
It should be taken with a grain of salt. Tendency to identify as same or closely related peoples with a same or similar name isn't the most safe explanation.
It had been wondered, for exemple, if southern Celtic Volcae were related to others tribes named as such : the model of huge migrations of a same people wandering everywhere in Europe may be partially a construction.
It can be said the same for Boii in Bohemia, Italy or Aquitaine : while it's possible to have different branches of a same group originally, these quickly adapted to their new locations and eventually became as distinct culturally as geographically.
(And of course, without talking about Veneti of Gaul, Italy and Baltic, whom same name doesn't mean they were really related).
Now, there's a more important case to be made for Britain and its relations to the continent (for exemple, Eboracum in Parisii region; which could relate to the similar toponim in Gallic Parisii's people). Still, similar toponimy and common origin doesn't means cultural continuum; with Insular Parisii quickly integrating to Briton structures while Continental Parisii passed under Aedui hegemony and eventually went in contact with Rome trough this at the end of Punic Wars.
From what I gathered, the point is far less neholitic (in fact, it's the first time I saw it argued this way) but the more important presence of fortifications and proto-urban structures in Iron Age southern Britain.
It can be easily explained, tough, without using cultural differences (which is really hard to discern trough material culture, while it can be easily argued that a similar material culture doesn't mean a cultural continuity) : the ancient trade between the Mediterranean basin and Southern England (Channel/Seine/Rhone, Channel/Rhine/Danube, or Atlantic) with a more important access to different features than the North.
The presence of possibly related tribes (but I'll nuance it below) could hint to existance of trade relations eventually taken over (not unlike Saxons did eventually).
While it's most probable (I won't say certain, but I'm thinking it out loud) that you had Germanic settlements in Britian since at least the IIIrd century (the Saxon Shore is a good candidate), it can't be the only one explanation.
For instance, gallic coasts and borders recieved their fair share of Germanic settlement since the Ist century (refugees, migrants, laeti, etc.) and even more since the IIIrd century (with the countepert of Saxon Shore in Gaul as well) without for these groups forming a preparation to germanisation.
It's actually quite the contrary : with the existence of romanized Germans within Gaul, with northern Gallo-Romans being subject to some germanic influence; and Franks (being quite romanized already even before their entry in Romania); all of that prepared to the inclusion of Franks in the post-imperial Romanity.
The difference with Britain, again, seems to be a more superficial romanisation : few colonies, no municipal model worth of mention past the South-East, less develloped structures, less important contact with Rome before the conquest.
Eventually, it means that the traditional paths on which Romanisation progressed on the continent, didn't allow for a deep change.
As for the greater part of Britain using a Germanic dialect, that's more hard to swallow : Celtic toponimy, while being the only real trace of Insular Celtic in the Antiquity, is still widespread enough.
(Now, the case for Northern Britain, and their relationship with people we don't have real clues with as Picts, could be interesting.)
Traces of Imperial latin can be still found in Brythonic languages. It's essentially a matter of influence of late Latin and clerical Latin but it exists in a way that didn't in Anglo-Saxon even in Christianized times.
As for Latin being poorly understood in Early medieval England, I must strongly disagree : at the contrary, by the advent of Carolingians, English latinists were considered as the best in Europe.
There was a genetic study that came out a few months ago that indicated somewhere between 10-40% of the genetic ancestry of England is attributable to the Anglo-Saxons. It wasn't a majority population replacement like some had theorized, but it was still quite a substantial migration. Link to study.
With the numbers from the study I mentioned, this would seem to be explainable by a huge difference in the numbers of invaders. The same study found no genetic trace of the Normons. Which of course doesn't mean that the Norman elite didn't interbreed with the local English population, just that there weren't enough of them for it to be noticeable.
Interestingly enough from what I've read, Gauls may have been in most of France for only a few hundred years before they were conquered by Caesar.
Yeah. Brittania wasn't Romanized nearly as much as the other provinces were, so there was never any language flip.
That's to be really nuanced. As it was argued over and over and over, "Gaul" as a region determined by Rhine/Alps/Pyrenees is essentially a Cesarian creation.
That said, to say there was no Celtic or even proto-Celtic presence in Northern Gaul (especially on North-Eastern Gaul) since the early Iron Age at least, is hard to demonstrate.
At least up to 600BC, you have traces of Celtic political entities in Gaul (such as Mont Lassois' oppidum)
For earlier period, Urnefield Culture seems to have really interesting feature close to Celtiberian and Brythonic material cultures rather than directly from Halstatt (in fact, it had been argued that both were issued from Late Urnefield).
By the Vth/IVth centuries, it seems that Celtic culture took over most of Gaul, either by political control or migration, or by acculturation or transmission. Such changes could be partially motivated by the decline of Western Mediterranean trade and the subsequent decline of Celtic principalities.
Arguably, it's less clear for South-Western Gaul (or Western Gaul as a while) but material culture-wise, they were relativly quickly celtized by 200BC. (Volcae, Boii, etc.)
Now there's roughly two takes on this : Michel Py argued that southern Gallic peoples were quite distinct from their northern counterparts, while Dominique Garcia argues in favours of a more complete integration within Celtic civilisation.
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