The Latin Roots of the French Language

The Romans fought a series of wars with the indigenous tribes of Gaul between 58 BCE and 50 BCE. These wars culminated in the decisive Battle of Alesia in 52 BCE with Julius Cæsar as the conqueror. The Roman takeover of Celtic lands, however, began in 125 B.C.E. At the time, there were several Celtic languages spoken including Ligure in the southeast, Aquitain in the southwest. Of course, Greek was spoken in Marseille, a great Mediterranean seaport. Linguists know little about these Celtic languages because they were only spoken and not written. Druid priests had forbidden writing what was considered a sacred language.

 

When the Romans defeated the Gaulic tribes, the language of Gaul gradually began to change to Latin, the language of the Romans. This transition began in the south in Narbonne around 58 BCE. Latin accounted for about 80 percent of the language with the remaining 20 percent in Celtic language, according to French linguist Henriette Walter (2014). Over the next 100 years the Gaullic aristocrats curried favor and privilege among their conquerors by speaking Latin. They also wore Roman togas and sent their sons to Roman schools in Bordeaux, Autun, and Toulouse.

  

Roman citizens also began to populate Gaul, which further spread the Latin language. Former army officers were compensated conquered lands, and Roman shopkeepers and artisans as well as teachers and various colonists came. Classical Latin authors like Cicero (106-43 BCE) and Seneca (4-65) were studied. Although the Celtic languages continued to be spoken in the rural areas, the people who lived in cities and along trade routes spoke Latin.

 

The Romans never adopted the languages of the people they conquered, so the Gauls had no choice but to learn Latin, especially if they were among the elite. Words like temple, stade (stadium), rosas (roses), frères (brothers) and temps (time) were incorporated into the vernacular. Of course, there were many mal-adapted uses of Latin words due to errors in pronunciation and/or spelling. For example, “augustus” became “aout” which became the French, août, for the month of August. Little by little with each generation, Latin became the common language, which came out of linguistic mixtures and their Latin and Celtic roots—and especially when Gauls and Romans married. Under the reign of Marcus-Aurelius (121-180), Christianity spread, and so did Latin. After the conversion of Constantine to Christianity in 313, Latin was spoken throughout the Roman empire not only in cities but in the countryside as well. By the fifth century, Celtic language was, in fact, regarded as crass.

 

Linguist Frédéric Duval (2007) contends that the strength of the Latin base in the language assimilated difficult local syntaxes just through the presence of the Romans in Gaul. Cities were given Roman names although they preserved a remembrance of the Celtic tribes who formerly ran them. For example, the city of Rennes was called Condate Riedonum out of respect for the Riedones tribe. The Romans payed homage to the Gallic god, Lug, by naming cities after him: Lugdunum (Lyon) was the capital of Gaul, and “duno” for fort in Gallic. Pronunciations were also assimilated from the Gaulois language. For example, ou in Latin was pronounced u as it is today; a became è (eg., from lavra in Latin to lèvra in French); hard c became ch (from calorem in Latin to chaleur in French). Learning the language orally also made silent sounds disappear. For example, the final m in Latin portam was transformed to French porte. Finally, certain Celtic and Latin words were fused like Celtic medio and Latin medius, which became au milieu in French; Celtic rix and Latin rex became roi in French.

 

Throughout the Roman empire, the Latin syntax became simplified over the centuries. Verbs too difficult to pronounce were replaced and then put in a different order in the sentence for better comprehension. Ending a sentence with a verb is the classic construction of Latin sentences. Metaphors and diminutives were also used. For example, the Celtic verb manducare, which means to “play with jaws” was replaced by edere, which eventually became the French manger (to eat). Some Latin expressions were retained, however, because they were easy to remember: eg., a priori, idem, maximum, ultimatum. So, common Latin speech combined with regional Celtic words and accents, says Henrietta Walker. For example, expressions in the Narbonne area after six centuries still distinguished themselves from other areas like the Aquitaine, Lyon, and Belgium. Eventually, modern languages derived from Latin would be born including French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

 

At the end of the fifth century and after the collapse of Rome, the barbarian invasions created more complex forms of the languages. In France, the Gallo-Romans intermingled with the Franks who had arrived with their own Germanic language, but decided to adopt Latin. Why? IT was a political decision. Clovis (466-511), king of the Franks (see photo), understood that in accepting the language of the natives of Gaul, he could gain the support of the grand Gallo-Roman families against future invasions from the East. The Gauls responded to Clovis by accepting his moves toward assimilation—but they adopted several Frank words many of which focused on war terms: bannière (banner), guerre (war), fleche (arrow), dard (dart), havresac (knapsack). German pronunciations also caught on. Examples of such sounds are the aspirated h as in hache (chopped), the hard g as in garder (to keep), and new sounds like eu in fleur (flower), which emerged during the Middle Ages. The Latin word, francus, whose origin signified an ethnic group, took on the geographical designation of the place (France) that was once called Gaul. The Gaullic lords gladly adopted and validated this name, which became the norm, according to linguist Bernard Cerquiglini (1995). 

 

 

Despite these assimilations of language in the northern and eastern part of Gaul, the influence of the Franks did not reach south and west of the Loire River (excluding Brittany in the far west). As a result, Charlemagne (742-814) made classical Latin the vernacular. He also asked the bishops of the Catholic Church to utilize Latin as well. From that time until the Renaissance of the 16th century, Latin words permeated religion, law, medicine, and science. 

 

Although the elites adopted Latin, the common people still resisted it in favor of retaining their own languages like d’Oc (southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan) and d’Oïl (northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands), which were much closer to frenchified Latin. The struggle over language was resolved by the 14th century when the common language of Gaul would be le françoys (le français, ergo French), which was a sort of “back to basics” Latin.

 

 

This article was translated from an article by Balthazar Gibiat entitled "Une Langue Qui n'en Perd pas Son Latin," which appeared in GeoHistoire (June-July 2020).