Would a 2st Century farmer in Roman Gaul speak Latin at home, or Gaulish? To what extent did surviving Gaulish or other pre-Roman languages influence the divergence between Romance languages as they evolved from Latin into French, Spanish, etc?

by uponthecityofzephon
Libertat

What we know of Late Gaulish (i.e. more or less Gaulish as spoken in Roman Gaul) essentially comes from three sort of sources.

  • Gallo-Latin (i.e. Gaulish written in Latin script) epigraphy that can be itself divided roughly between writing on instrumenta and household objects; spiritual/magical texts (curse tablets, ex-voto, calendars) and monumental epigraphy on stone.

  • Scattered mentions in Latin texts of Gaulish sentences or words

  • Words in local romance language that can be attributed a Celtic origin.

Writing on instrumenta (ownership marks, jokes, love declarations and naughty shorts, accounting, dedications, advertising, etc.) rather gives the impression that Gaulish was not only spoken enough to appear in several small and common household objects but spoken in social circles literate enough to read Gaulish in Latin characters (and thus having some mastery of Latin) and thus that at least part of the literate population and not just low classes still spoke Gaulish. This impression is reinforced by the spiritual and magical texts and even more by the Coligny Calendar, an ostentatious and complex public religious calendar.

On the other hand, Gallo-Latin writing (and direct written evidence of Gaulish with it) disappears after the end of the IInd century. Some regions, and especially in southern Gaul, seems to have quickly switched from Gallo-Greek or absence of writing to Latin without passing trough a Gallo-Latin phase either; seemingly hinting that local elites and literate classes didn't felt the need to use it or felt it was simpler and more becoming to use Latin; eventually joined by the whole of Gallic elites and clerical society.

Still, there is indirect literary and linguistic evidence enough it possibly survived until the VIth century in central and eastern Gaul : words relative to farming (multon, sheep > french mouton, occitan moton, friulan molton) worksmanship (carbanton, chariot > french charpente), nature (bebros, beaver > french bièvre, occitan vibre) non-elite hierarchy (vassos, servent > french vassal), etc. seems to point that low classes kept a longer usage of Gaulish language enough so that these words were adopted in Late Latin. That in itself is a very important point, as the words of Gaulish origin in French, Occitan, Italian, Retho-Romance, etc. follow linguistic evolutions proper to Late Latin before it split over in various Romance languages while several of these are found in Romance languages where Gaulish had very little presence if at all as Spain or Central/Southern Italy, hinting that not only there was no co-habitation of Gaulish and emerging Old French, Old Occitan, Old Friulan, etc. but that entry in Latin predates for several of them the dissolution of Romance unity, that is the Vth and VIth century.

Basically, what we have at disposal seems to paint this (very) broad picture :

  • a period of a class-based unequal bilingualism (not everywhere, in all likeness) between the Ist century BCE and the IInd century CE, where Gaulish is still widely spoken, enough that literate people might use it in domestic and maybe religious context although Latin would be the attractive language of prestige, politics, trade, religion, basically of "modernity". If you were a Gallic farmer in the IInd century, you'd havea very good chance to have spoken Gaulish at home and at work, quite possibly to your landlord (who would have himself a good grasp of Latin)

  • a period from the IIIrd century onwards where part of the lower classes, especially in the countryside, would still speak Gaulish but in ever more dwindling numbers while they would be switching to Late Latin, until the former ceases to be used by the early VIth century at latest.

Why? To summarise a bit this earlier post, simply because Gaul quickly acceeded to Roman Imperial networks and structures, even before the conquest, with elites switching quickly to Latin and, as the provincial networks and hierarchies were largely preserved after the conquest, rippling down in urban and rural populations.

What would remain of Gaulish in the post-imperial Late Latin and emerging Romance languages? Not much. In fact, very little. 300 usual words, double if you count every dialectal form, which is basically nothing in regards to virtually any other linguistic influence (formative or not) to Romance languages. Admittedly, taking in accounts toponyms (Parisii > Paris; Areverni > Alvernha, Auvergne; etc.) you can add a good handful. When it comes to morphology, it's not impossible that the lenition of intervocal occlusives in provincial Latin (fi-d-em > foi, fe) would be due to a Celtic influence (Gaulish in Gaul and Northern Italy and Hispano-Celtic in Spain) as it can be observed in Insular Celtic languages, but it's not firmly evidenced. Besides that, nothing : the development of Gallo-Romance languages eventually owes very little to Gaulish itself.