This might be a stupid question but I feel like I found a gap in my education. Why do the French speak a Romance language and not a Germanic language? I get it that what is now France was a Roman colony for a long time but wasn’t it conquered and settled by the Germanic Francs? Did they just abandon their Germanic language(s)?
Hello, I wrote an answer here about the establishment of the independent Frankish kingdoms that you may find tangentially useful. The cogent point is that the Franks don't really 'overrun' anywhere; by the time that Roman imperial authority in Belgica and Gaul starts to diminish, the Franks had long been an established part of the military and civil apparatus of the Roman state.