Basque and Dene-Caucasian languages

As early as the VIth century, most of the area where proto Basque (Aquitanian) was spoken became Gascon speaking (Romance language).

When I wrote Gascon, I meant ancient Gascon (Aquitanian), not the Occitan dialect. Btw the Gascon dialect didn't exist in the 6th century. It was still Vulgar Latin.

So it took over 500 years for the Basque/Aquitanian speakers in Gascony to adopt Latin since the Roman conquest. It only took the Celtic-speaking Gauls one or two generations, one of the fastest language shift in European history ! I think you are starting to see my point (about Lebrok's argument that Celts couldn't speak Latin well because it was too different, which it obviously wasn't).
 
So it took over 500 years for the Basque/Aquitanian speakers in Gascony to adopt Latin since the Roman conquest. It only took the Celtic-speaking Gauls one or two generations, one of the fastest language shift in European history ! .

This is not what I found on wikipedia. Aquitanian and Gauls probably became Latin speaker at the same time

Malgré l'apparente similitude des deux langues (syntaxe, numération, morphologie) le gaulois et le latin vulgaire, l'assimilation est plutôt lente puisqu’elle s'achève après plusieurs siècles, probablement après l'évangélisation des milieux ruraux sous Dagobert

What took one or two generations to adopt a Latin language is the adoption of Langue d'oil by the viking in Normandy.
 
They resisted Latinisation in the present day Basque country only, if you consider that all the Aquitania was a Basque speaking area.
Basque today is not jus spoken in Basque Country, also in Navarra, specially northern navarra, that area is a hotspot of basque speakers.
 
This is not what I found on wikipedia. Aquitanian and Gauls probably became Latin speaker at the same time.

There might have been pockets of resistance to Latin in some rural areas, especially those far away from the main Roman cities. But a sizeable part of the Gaulish elite already spoke Latin before the Roman conquest, and the rest of the elite adopted it very quickly to keep their political influence. Many Gaulish chieftains were nominated to the Roman Senate during Julius Caesar's lifetime. Gaul was the most Romanised part of the Empire and provided two temporary capitals of the Western Roman Empire, namely Mediolanum (Milan) from 286 to 402 and Augusta Trevorum (Trier) from 383 to 388. It may seem obvious now that North Italy was very Romanised but it was no less a part of Gaul. What may be less obvious is that the most Romanised part of Gaul besides North Italy was the Rhine region, which had the biggest cities and garrisons. The least Romanised part of Gaul was Western France, except the Loire Valley.
 
. It may seem obvious now that North Italy was very Romanised but it was no less a part of Gaul.

What the Romans called Gauls is really hard to comprehend. They included areas that had nothing to do with each other like Aquitania (Basque speaking), Gallia Belgica and the West side of the Rhine (Celtic but under Germanic influences).If Gaul was a nation gathering Celtic tribes, then it should have included all celtic lands of Central Europe, less Aquitania. I'm more and more convinced that the modern concept of "Gaul" is a Cesar's invention.
 
There might have been pockets of resistance to Latin in some rural areas, especially those far away from the main Roman cities. But a sizeable part of the Gaulish elite already spoke Latin before the Roman conquest, and the rest of the elite adopted it very quickly to keep their political influence.

Indeed, but you will notice that it has nothing to do with language similarity.
 
Edit. When I pasted it from my word processor many words got joined together. I hope it's readable, too much to edit now. :)



I don’t fully understand the causes of grammarsimplification. There could be many and with variousresults in every case. It doesn’t changethe fact that this is mostly the case when two or more languages “battle” eachother in one population.

Old English replaced completely and utterly all previous languages in England,be it Latin or Celtic. Old English almost didn't have any loan word from Latin,except words like belt or tower. That's why historians long believed that theAnglo-Saxons had exterminated or force-exiled the ancient Britons to Wales andCornwall, leaving a pure Germanic society (until genetics proved that it wasn'tthe case, so the native Britons all learnt Anglo-Saxon). Old English evolvedinto Middle English in pretty much the same way as Old Dutch evolved intoMiddle Dutch. The two languages were still quite mutually intelligible in the11th century, despite 500 years of separate evolution. Both grammars started toshow signs of simplifications without any outside influence.

In case of old english and old duth there is a hidden,from historical literature, element. Allwritten words come from educated elite, either court of ruling invaders, orliterature composed only to be read by them. Actually if only books written by clergy survived, one could think that allEngland and Dutch were speaking proper latin.

There is an interesting similarity with Poland. Till XIV century nobody wrote anything inpolish, only in latin and german. Germanbeing official language in cities, latin by clergy and polish nobility. I guess we can only assume that polish wasspoken in Poland, otherwise there are no record of it. It is interesting, because it was the firstlanguage of 90% of population, mostly villagers. Finally Polish language comes to the lightwhen literate elite and courts started using it on daily bases.

Possibly Middle English was a language of main populationof London or villagers flocking to cities during economic booms, slowlyreplacing pure Anglo-Saxon. I don’t know history of GB well enough to connectthe main shifts with big events, unfortunately.

Modern English resulted from the long brewing of Middle English withNorman French between the 11th century and the 16-17th century.

My point exactly, the big shifts are coming from “battle”of languages, and not by sense of fashion of speakers.
The two languages progressively merged, but that doesn'texplain why English lost its conjugation and grammar since both Germanic andRomance languages had them and have kept them to this day. English grammar keptirregular tenses only for basic Germanic verbs, but dropped the SOV(subject-object-verb) structure to adopt the Romance SVO. English also adoptedthe Romance plural in -s in replacement of the regular Germanic plural in -enand the numerous irregular Germanic plurals (except for a few common words likechild-children or foot-feet).
There was no change, if main population of Romans inEngland were most likely Vulgar Latin/Romance speakers therefore SVO. Not sure about the rest.
If you will, I would like to see one example of twocompeting languages culminating in higher complexity of grammar.



So the reason English grammar is simple is not because ofits ancient Celtic or Roman population, which didn't have any influence on themodern language, nor due to the fact that people were immigrants since therewas virtually no change in population after the Norman invasion, and theNormans were only a tiny minority, and an educated one at that, so not one thatwould simplify grammar. It's hard to really pinpoint why English simplified itsgrammar, just like it's hard to know why the English like to do so many thingsdifferently from other Europeans.

I would say that you have a point, if I didn’t seesimilar examples all over the map. English is a case of extreme mixing of languages and has the simplestgrammar.

Look at Slavic languages, the farther from source ofexpansion, the simpler the grammar gets.

Latin was the source of all romance languages, so why allromance languages have simplified grammar?

Note that Basque language has very complicated grammar. Also it never fully embraced language ofconquerors.


Actually the only people conquered by the Romans who adopted Latin werethe Italic and Celtic speakers, who spoke a language very close to Latin, theIberians (who were sandwiched between Celtiberians and Romans), and the Greeksfrom South Italy who were just too close to Rome not to adopt Latin (althoughmany South Italian communities kept speaking Greek deep into the Middle Ages,and Greek dialects are still spoken today in some remote villages in Calabria).The reason is that Latin was simply too difficult to learn for people who hadan non-IE mother-tongue (like in North Africa and the Levant) or spoke Greek(which is only partly IE). Aromuns in the Balkans probably descent from theCeltic communities that had settled in the Balkans as well as Romans (fromItaly) who moved to the region. Note that the Basques resisted Latinisationdespite being surrounded.

I agree, it is much easier to acquire language that issimilar to yours.



I don't see how the grammar of Vulgar Latin could be influenced byCeltic languages since they had grammars with declensions much closer toClassical Latin.

Excellent observation, I was wrecking my brain today toanswer this dilemma. I see twoscenarios.

1. Vulgar Latin popped very quickly duringLatin conquest of Italy, especially over non EI tribes like Etruscans. In this case already simplified grammar ofVulgar Latin was introduced all over Europe on Celtic tribes.

2. Celtic tribes already developed simplegrammar when introducing Celtic language over indigenous populations of Europe. All grammatically correct Celtic inscriptions,that we found, come from properly speaking elite of Celts, not from ordinarypeople of conquered lands. Same ascitizens of Rome spoke mostly Vulgar Latin.

In any case, the written records show the proper languagespoken by elite and not by plebs. This actuallycould be the main reason misleading our understanding of evolution oflanguages.
 
Excellent observation, I was wrecking my brain today toanswer this dilemma. I see twoscenarios.

1. Vulgar Latin popped very quickly duringLatin conquest of Italy, especially over non EI tribes like Etruscans. In this case already simplified grammar ofVulgar Latin was introduced all over Europe on Celtic tribes.

2. Celtic tribes already developed simplegrammar when introducing Celtic language over indigenous populations of Europe. All grammatically correct Celtic inscriptions,that we found, come from properly speaking elite of Celts, not from ordinarypeople of conquered lands. Same ascitizens of Rome spoke mostly Vulgar Latin.

In any case, the written records show the proper languagespoken by elite and not by plebs. This actuallycould be the main reason misleading our understanding of evolution oflanguages.

Regarding the Celtic languages, I am not sure I can wholly agree with these views. While I know that the above argument has been raised for the archaic Irish languages (the earliest stage of Irish, as recorded in the Ogham inscriptions), I'm not sure the same can be said about the older Celtic languages:

The Proto-Celtic language must have had the complete set of eight cases (just like Sanskrit), but both Gaulish and Celtiberian were already in some process of simplification there: Gaulish had lost the ablative, whereas Celtiberian had lost the instrumental and possibly the vocative. However, I would be inclined to think that this indeed reflects the spoken languages of the time, due to the fact that the content is almost always mundane. Where the situation is admittedly unclear is with respect for the situation in Britain: we have virtually nothing in the way of written text of ancient Brythonic. The only hint we have is the claim by the Romans that the Brythonic language was "almost the same" as the Gauls', so from that perspect we would expect that the typically "Insular Celtic" features developed only later.
 
Taranis, I fully agree. When Celts or IE in general arrived they possessed fully complete EI grammar. The best attestation is Latin.
I just don't believe that simplification of otherwise fully functional language would develop by itself, fashion wise, without strong stimuli.

Without good historic sources about spoken languages from the past it's hard to be 100% sure, which way it went.
In this case I was analyzing, known better, recent event from middle ages trying to extrapolate them on earlier events.

Take Slavs for example. During their expansion, in middle of first millennium AD, they were warriors-farmers. Whatever they conquered they surely settled in fertile areas, around local villages, fully mixing and exposing their language. The depopulation that happened in central Europe, for whatever reason, certainly helped at this time. Almost all Slavic nations now have full almost original Slavic grammar, with exception of Macedonia and Bulgaria.

If we consider the above to be true, then case of Goths is obviously on opposite side of spectrum. Wherever they went they didn't leave much of language influence, except some vocabulary, definitely not in grammar or pronunciation. They didn't leave much of genetic imprint either, though they ruled huge areas in Europe, and for hundreds of years. Even if they started as farmers around year 0, they must have changed quickly in just warrior class. Warrior class doesn't mix much with local villagers. They rather live on higher grounds, in forts or castles, big urban centers, overseeing population more than mingling and teaching their language to locals. They might have been the precursor of feudalism.

Looking at Iberian Celtic situation my guess is that something in between, two former examples, happened. Locals were mostly non IE speakers. Celts managed to mingle enough with locals, and for long enough, that locals took over Celtic vocabulary, but influenced grammar simplification and retained most of their pronunciation (judging by similarities to Basque, rolling r being a big feature.

So, where the heck Basque survived the onslaught of Celts? They either came later just before Romans, or where hiding away in Pyrenees till Romans managed to quiet Celts. These two scenarios can explain lack of Celtic vocabulary in Basque, and adoption of Roman vocabulary. By accepting some Roman vocabulary, but retaining sounds and full grammar, I would conclude that Roman presence in Basque area was more managerial than en mass settlements of Latin speaking citizens in Basque villages, a la Slavs.
 
So, where the heck Basque survived the onslaught of Celts? They either came later just before Romans, or where hiding away in Pyrenees till Romans managed to quiet Celts. These two scenarios can explain lack of Celtic vocabulary in Basque, and adoption of Roman vocabulary. By accepting some Roman vocabulary, but retaining sounds and full grammar, I would conclude that Roman presence in Basque area was more managerial than en mass settlements of Latin speaking citizens in Basque villages, a la Slavs.
There is actually Celtic (or at least IE non-latin) topnymia in today Basque Country, and as for the Roman presence, basques are not an excpetion, the roman presence was never en mass anywhere in Iberia. What made the difference is their technological and military superiority. The reason why basques didn't latinized as much (altough all the south of Navarre was romanized, like the founding of Pamplona by the romans), is because basques were allies of romans since day one of their arrival. Many of them were recruited into the roman armies, in exchange they were given more freedom,
 
There is actually Celtic (or at least IE non-latin) topnymia in today Basque Country, and as for the Roman presence, basques are not an excpetion, the roman presence was never en mass anywhere in Iberia. What made the difference is their technological and military superiority. The reason why basques didn't latinized as much (altough all the south of Navarre was romanized, like the founding of Pamplona by the romans), is because basques were allies of romans since day one of their arrival. Many of them were recruited into the roman armies, in exchange they were given more freedom,

Yes, as I said, the Basques lived more eastward and more northward in Antiquity. The western part of the modern-day Basque country was definitely Indo-European in Antiquity. I haven't found much on Basque-Roman interaction, but it's clear that Basque started to quickly absorb Latin vocabulary.

I've tried to visualize the approximate language situation in Antiquity, and it gives us roughly the situation below:

- Blue is the extend of Celtic name evidence (in Iberia, most often ending with '-briga').

- Cyan/teal is Pre-Celtic (Indo-European names that exist inside the Celtic context but cannot be Celtic).

- Red are Basque/Aquitanian place names names. Examples include 'Illiberris' and 'Iturissa'.

- Orange are Iberian names. Note that the prefix 'ili-' (compare Basque 'hiri', "city") existed in both Aquitanian and Iberian.

- Green are Phoenician place names (notably Cadiz, Cordoba and Cartagena).
 

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The Romans did not intend to ever romanize anything or anyone.

fideicomissa quocumque sermone relinqui possunt, non solumlatina vel graeca, sed etiam punica, vel gallicana, vel alterius cuiuscumque gentis

But it should be noted here, there was a cantabricum bellum, a bellum asturicum, but there was no vasconicum bellum. No war against the Basques and had taken place in the country of the Basques
 
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