Re: Submerged Languages

The general consensus among Celticists is that French phonology has its origins in Celtic sound-shift and mutations - in fact we see early mutations and sound-shift in the Latin names borrowed by Gauls after the conquest. There are many French forms which match Irish and Welsh treatments of Latin loans which seem to confirm this view.

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