French Without Germanic Influence

[Umbric Man]

We've a lot of threads on English without Norman/French influence and remaining far more Germanic, but French mirrors English in many ways with its local invaders (the Franks) giving a lot of loanwords to the Latinate French language.

How would French look without the major Germanic influence and thus remains far more Latinate? What would be some common words that would be butterflied away? Any syntax or orthographic differences?

 

[FleetMac]

One thing would change; WAY less silent letters.

IIRC one of (if not THE) reasons that French has so many idiosyncratic pronunciations and unspoken letters was due to the mixing of their Vulgar Latin dialect and Frankish (the latter of which being less widely spoken, but still important as the one-time tongue of France's leadership); essentially, it was what happened when Franks picked up the Gallo-Roman language while carrying over "bad habits" (picture an English speaker pronouncing quesadilla as "kwes-uh-dill-a", same principle). Of course it's possible that the lack of Franks would still result in some irregularities in spelling, but not to the frankly (ba-dum-tish) ridiculous degree that French shows to this day.

And of course, a fair amount of vocabulary would be different (especially if this also means no Normandy somehow), and the country itself wouldn't be named "France" since it was the Franks for which it was called such.

 

[Urcea]

I'm confused. I was always under the assumption that the Franks were Germans who ended up with a Latin influence? So how would you remove the Germanic influence?

 

[FleetMac]

I'm confused. I was always under the assumption that the Franks were Germans who ended up with a Latin influence?

Nope, the Franks were German foederati fighting for the Romans, who came to rule over the predominantly Gallo-Roman populace of Gaul (themselves Roman settlers and/or Latinized Gaulish Celts, or a mix of both, from Caesar's conquest thereof) during and after the fall/devolution/whatever of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, said Franks were a tiny minority in the land except for the northeastern portion (which later saw their dialect evolve into modern day Franconian languages, like Dutch and Flemish). Vulgar Latin was always there first, it just had a huge Frankish influence imposed on their language.

 

[Falecius]

One thing would change; WAY less silent letters.

IIRC one of (if not THE) reasons that French has so many idiosyncratic pronunciations and unspoken letters was due to the mixing of their Vulgar Latin dialect and Frankish (the latter of which being less widely spoken, but still important as the one-time tongue of France's leadership); essentially, it was what happened when Franks picked up the Gallo-Roman language while carrying over "bad habits" (picture an English speaker pronouncing quesadilla as "kwes-uh-dill-a", same principle). Of course it's possible that the lack of Franks would still result in some irregularities in spelling, but not to the frankly (ba-dum-tish) ridiculous degree that French shows to this day.

And of course, a fair amount of vocabulary would be different (especially if this also means no Normandy somehow), and the country itself wouldn't be named "France" since it was the Franks for which it was called such.

Arguably, French diverged so much from "Vulgar Latin" relative to other Western Romance varieties not because of the major Germanic influence but because of the Galic substrate. Or, even more likely, because of an interaction of both. The spelling factor is irrelevant, because, like any other "vulgar" that became a literary language in the Middle Ages/Renaissance, either Romance or Germanic or something else, the spelling form was defined in ways that had little to to do with the actual phonetical form assumed by the language. Moreover, both in English and French (which are BOTH ridiculously far removed from phonetics in spelling) major phonetical seem to have occurred WAY after major external linguistic influence had occurred. In other words, spelling is not very relevant to the evolution of Medieval French (arguably it is more relevant to modern standard French, but it is another matter).

 

[Falecius]

Nope, the Franks were German foederati fighting for the Romans, who came to rule over the predominantly Gallo-Roman populace of Gaul (themselves Roman settlers and/or Latinized Gaulish Celts, or a mix of both, from Caesar's conquest thereof) during and after the fall/devolution/whatever of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, said Franks were a tiny minority in the land except for the northeastern portion (which later saw their dialect evolve into modern day Franconian languages, like Dutch and Flemish). Vulgar Latin was always there first, it just had a huge Frankish influence imposed on their language.

This is true, although, IIRC, there is some reason to believe that some form of Gallic was spoken in rural Northern France until little before the Franks came or even at that time.

 

[Umbric Man]

That would be interesting to know it was the Gaulish language that ultimately removed French so far from its neighbors and not Frankish, albeit I'm surprised since Gaulish and Latin were much more similar than Romance and Germanic languages are to each other.

 

[bm79]

Well, grammatically there would be few differences. French follows a grammar and syntax structure which differs little from other western Romance languages.

In terms of vocab, I think somewhere between 10-12% of all French words have Germanic roots. They tend to fall into the realms of the military and administration («bourg» for city, for example), but there's also a group of words in all domains with we English and French both retain from the Germanic, like «gâter», to waste or spoil, «guetter», to watch out for, «guerre», war, «guêpe», wasp.

Biggest question is, What's the POD that leads to no Germanic influence in French?

 

[FleetMac]

Arguably, French diverged so much from "Vulgar Latin" relative to other Western Romance varieties not because of the major Germanic influence but because of the Galic substrate. Or, even more likely, because of an interaction of both. The spelling factor is irrelevant, because, like any other "vulgar" that became a literary language in the Middle Ages/Renaissance, either Romance or Germanic or something else, the spelling form was defined in ways that had little to to do with the actual phonetical form assumed by the language. Moreover, both in English and French (which are BOTH ridiculously far removed from phonetics in spelling) major phonetical seem to have occurred WAY after major external linguistic influence had occurred. In other words, spelling is not very relevant to the evolution of Medieval French (arguably it is more relevant to modern standard French, but it is another matter).

I thought the Gallic thing was pretty well disproved, considering how much Latin was played up in Gallia after Caesar's conquest? I guess that explains why French has so much lenition and syllable-stress quirks that few other languages exhibited in the Romance family. IIRC Frankish influenced French vowels a ton (moreso than any other factor when it comes to verbs), as well as syntax and grammar, on top of vocabulary additions. And, like in English, there's a fairly large number of Celt and Germanic words included BECAUSE of Latin (which also had a fair amount of borrowed vocabulary itself).

EDIT: And yes, while there were allegedly Gallic-speakers hanging around parts of North France up into the Merovingian Period or so, I highly doubt its veracity or significance on the language, even in a local sense. HERE is a pretty interesting summary of Frankish influence on French vocabulary and phonology.

 

[bm79]

I thought the Gallic thing was pretty well disproved, considering how much Latin was played up in Gallia after Caesar's conquest? I guess that explains why French has so much lenition and syllable-stress quirks that few other languages exhibited in the Romance family. IIRC Frankish influenced French vowels a ton (moreso than any other factor when it comes to verbs), as well as syntax and grammar, on top of vocabulary additions. And, like in English, there's a fairly large number of Celt and Germanic words included BECAUSE of Latin (which also had a fair amount of borrowed vocabulary itself).

In modern French there are perhaps 400 words out of 200 000 that have direct Gallo-Celtic roots, and many of these would be considered very old fashioned today.

 

[FleetMac]

In modern French there are perhaps 400 words out of 200 000 that have direct Gallo-Celtic roots, and many of these would be considered very old fashioned today.

DIRECTLY from Gallo-Celtic, yes. However, I would also count whatever Latinate words derived ultimately from Celtic sources by etymology in the Celtic category too (words like "char", "glaive", "vassal", etc.). Latin was good for that.

 

[Umbric Man]

Biggest question is, What's the POD that leads to no Germanic influence in French?

It's more a spread-out one, but I'd suppose the POD is that the Franklish language just has no real impact, even if the tribe takes over like in OTL. A similar case could be argued on the Norman invasion somehow having no influence on English despite all other cultural or historical changes happening to the island (IE continental feudalism and the Norman Dynasty coming thanks to William I).

It's not a great POD, but I'd like to assume for the sake of this discussion historical and cultural trends in France progress like they did in reality. Just simply that the Frankish language leaves no real influence unlike OTL.

 

[The Professor]

My guess would be that it ends up like a Portuguese version of Occitan.
That is how Portuguese fits into Ibero-Romance whould be how "Gallese/Jaillese" fits into Occitano-Romance.
Plus one can expect TTL Arpitan equivalent to be much stronger.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

We've a lot of threads on English without Norman/French influence and remaining far more Germanic, but French mirrors English in many ways with its local invaders (the Franks) giving a lot of loanwords to the Latinate French language.

How would French look without the major Germanic influence and thus remains far more Latinate? What would be some common words that would be butterflied away? Any syntax or orthographic differences?

Well, it wouldnt be 'French', then at all. 'French', 'France', etc., come from 'Frank', the tribe that conquered Gaul after the fall of the WRE. Most of the French words of germanic origin are from Fankish, so youd have to avoid Gaul being invaded by Germanic tribes. Good luck there.

Note that a goodly number of such words deal with war and ruling.

There are a handful of words from Norse, mostly to do with boats and sailing, but thats pretty minimal.

Note that Spanish and Portuguese also have a fair number of germanic loanwords, often matching the french ones.