Re: Submerged Languages

Marc Verhaegen writes: Are there clear examples of Celtic influence in French? It's often stated, but I doubt it.

I wrote: The standard term is "substratum" or "substrate". A substrate language is what you are describing as a "submerged language".     A substratum language is spoken of when a population has undergone language replacement. In ancient France, Romance replaced the Celtic language of the Gauls, but left certain remains, both in  vocabulary, and in phonology. In other circumstances, even a few grammatical elements are passed on to the successor language.

If I go dig out some books, I should be able to come up with some toponyms and hydronyms. These are classic 'substratum' items.     French is also said to have a Germanic superstratum. As I remember reading someplace once, this Germanic superstratum, combined with the then-recent Celtic substratum, permanently warped French phonology. I cannot cite anything to support this, however.     Mark.

Celtic toponyms & hydronyms, yes, but more than that? If we knew the differences between Gallo-Roman and other Roman dialects we could get an estimation of the Celtic influence, but I don't think it was much greater than the Amerindian influence upon American English, Spanish or Portuguese. I think Germanic influence (Franconian) can explain most of French phonology.

Marc