>In the same sort of way, a probably quite small superimposed
>upperclass of Romans imposed a sort of Latin on the Gauls and made
>them into French-speakers.
It was probably not in the first place the Gaulish substratum that
transformed the vulgar Gallo-Roman into French, but, as the word itself
says, Clovis' Francs. Gallo-Roman (which was probably a bit influenced by a
Gaulish substratum, but not enough to make it very different from the Latin
spoken in Italy etc.) in the 3d & 4th centuries was generally spoken up to
the Rhine (now Dutch & German speaking). After the Germanic invasions,
Gallo-Roman & Germanic speaking people inhabited the region between the
Rhine and the Seine and there might have been considerable bilinguism (the
rulers spoke Francionian, but probably most of the people spoke
Gallo-Roman). Dutch has been more influenced by Latin (Gallo-Roman) than
English or German, but French has had a much stronger Germanic influence
(even a lot of every-day verbs (often on -ir) came from Franconian, eg,
haïr, honir, rötir, hardir), a lot more than Italian, Catalan, Provençal or
Castilian (in spite of the Gothic & other invasions in Italy & Iberia). The
question how the linguistic boundary arose between Dutch & French is of
course of considerable interest in Belgium, but a look at the medieval map
could make this clear IMO: the boundary went shortly north of the capitals
of the archbishoprics (Cambrai & Liège), IOW, the bishops kept the
Gallo-Roman language of the Church. (Probably the regions near the Rhine
already had already several Germanic-speaking tribes within the borders
since the 3th & 4th centuries. Generally, the further from the Rhine the
less Germanic-speaking people.)
Marc