I’ve recently been reading some books about what happened in Western Europe during the decline of Roman Empire and the early “Dark Ages” and there’s one thing I wondered about. Why did the Britons (i.e., the Romanized Celtic inhabitants of Britain) seem to drop the use of Latin–even the vulgarized form of the language spoken locally–after the Romans left and go back to their Celtic tongue? In Gaul and Hispania, the inhabitants continued speaking the vulgar local versions of Latin (i.e., the precursors for modern French and Spanish respectively) even after the Romans left despite the fact the areas were under constant siege–and eventually taken over–by Germanic invaders. However, this didn’t happen in Britain. If it did, the language of the people of Wales would be some Romance language that evolved from the British variant of Latin instead Welsh, a Celtic language. So why didn’t use of Latin “take” in Britain despite the fact it was part of the empire for over 350 years? Was it a “conqueror’s language” that was spoken by the Roman colonials and military but mostly ignored by the natives? Were the Britons more resistant to using the language than other conquered peoples in the Western Empire?
Nobody really knows, for sure – the evidence is scarce.
There are inscriptions (tombstones and the like) that show that Latin did survive in Britain for a very long time after the Romans left, but it seems only in small Christian communities (I think in the south west). And not in a debased form, either, but a high literary form.
My best guess, from what I’ve seen, is that the majority of Britons outside the towns (and even, in some cases, within them) were not very Romanised at all, and that with the loss of the infrastructure and supply lines of the Empire (and the controlling influence of the army) they assumed control over more and more of the country.
Not an expert but one factor would be the conquest of the east and south of Britain by Germanic speaking invaders and the almost complete domination of Anglo-Saxon dialects in these areas. The areas not conquered were those on the margin of Roman Britain where Romanisation had progressed the least.
MarcusF has the answer, more or less. Modern Wales and Scotland represent the areas of Britain least “Romanized” during the occupation, and therefore the regions quickest to return to their native languages and customs (although the Brythonic Celts in the north subsequently vanished). Similarly, when the Angles, Jutes, Saxons et. al. arrived, it was the still-Romanized natives that “fell” to them.
It’s worth mentioning that the modern British Celtic languages (e.g. Welsh and Breton) still retain a large range of Latin loanwords in their basic vocabulary. Welsh for the metal lead is “plwm” (pron. ploom); Breton for Thursday is “Yaou,” (pron. yow, as in yow! that hurts!) from Latin Iovis. Not that Latin is a huge percentage of the vocabulary: the point is that the words which are borrowed from Latin are ordinary, everyday words, not ecclesiastical borrowings like the earliest ones in English. So even in Wildest Wales there was still some Romanization, and the portrait we have of who used Latin and how bilingualism worked is pretty thin.
But why did the Germanic tongues displace the existing language in England and not in France or Spain?
It was a matter of numbers. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes that invaded and immigrated to Britain eventually outnumbered the Romanized Celtic inhabitants and ended up pushing them to the west into Wales and Cornwall and across the Channel into Brittany. Disease also played a factor. In the middle of the 6th century, the plague hit Britain and struck down a lot more Britons than Anglo-Saxons. (Now exactly why the surviving Britons dropped their regional version of Latin in favor of their old Celtic tongue is, of course, the subject of this thread.)
In contrast, the Gothic and Frankish tribes that took over what became France and Spain were still greatly outnumbered by the Latinized population of these areas. So instead of imposing their Germanic languages, they adapted and learned the majority’s vulgar spoken Latin. It also helped that many of these Germanic invaders had learned and spoken Latin years before they took over the formerly Roman-held territory since they had served in the Roman army or as mercenaries.
But we haven’t established just what percent of the “surviving Britons” had actually adopted Latin as a primary language. If not many had, then it would take maybe one or two generations for Latin, as a language, to disappear from daily life once the Romans left even if a few words did survive.
And if use of Latin was not as pervasive among the populace in Roman Britain than it was in Gaul or Hispania, that, in turn, raises the question of why it didn’t despite the fact it was part of the empire for more than 350 years.
I asked a similar question a few weeks ago: Why did Latin replace Gaulish, but Frankish didn’t replace Latin rustica?
Who’re the Britons?
Going on the assumption that I’m not just getting whooshed here, the Britons were the pre-Roman Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles.
Yes, but there could be some pretty obvious, and interrelated reasons: Proximity, number of natives who traveled back and forth between Rome, and the number of actual Romans living in those areas.
If we look at the furthest edges of the Roman Empire at its peak, do any of those places still speak a Romance language? I wouldn’t necessarily count the Iberian peninsula as a “furthest edge” since it is bounded by water-- ie, not land past its edge for Rome to expand into. Perhaps Romania…?
Yes, whoosh.
Correct answer: We all are. And I am your king.
Actually I’ve heard it said ( and not being a linguist I can’t confirm this ) that the two languages closest to classical Latin are from the opposite extremes of the empire - Portuguese and Romanian.
Romania is a special case. It was in effect a geographic salient, heavily fortified and bounded on one side by the empire and on the other three by unsubdued Sarmatian-speaking peoples. Dacian thus became a language isolate ( Thracian was probably giving way to Greek by then, anyway ) and as an area of some strategic importance, there was quite a bit of Roman military colonization. Plus the Dacians themselves were a reasonably sophisticated, somewhat urbanized people and as such likely were fairly easily integrated into Roman society after a generation or two.
Comparatively, Roman Britain would have been much more of a backwater and I suspect the most heavily Latinized areas would have been exactly those most heavily impacted by the Germanic invasions ( i.e. the rich south and east ).
Well I didn’t vote for you.
That’s a very hard thing to measure, since different aspects of languages A and B might be closer/more removed from the ancestral tongue. I’m not sure about “Classical Latin” but from the linguistics books I’ve read, Italian (surprise!) is the Romance language which is closest to “Latin”. Romanian would be an odd choice, as it has a large infusion of Slavic words.
I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.