What if the Romance languages were derived from Proto-Germanic instead of Vulgar Latin? Inspired by current experimental projects like Lao Kou's Japoné語 I decided to make a thread about this what-if-scenario I've had in my head for a long time now. Of course I was also inspired by how the Frankish loanwords in French changed and I wanted to see how French would look like if every word came from Frankish ... or well, Proto-Germanic in this case.
To begin with, I made some rules for myself on how to derive the vocabulary of the Germanic Romance languages:
- 1. If a word derives from (Vulgar) Latin, it is derived from Proto-Germanic in this scenario.
- 2. If a word has been (re)borrowed from Latin, it is borrowed from Proto-Germanic.
- 3. If a word has been borrowed from a different language, it is borrowed as well and is not derived from Proto-Germanic.
- 4. If a word from (Vulgar) Latin has a suffix (or prefix) attached to it, a suffix (or prefix) is added in the Proto-Germanic form as well.
- 5. If a word with a different original meaning changes its meaning, it changes its meaning in this scenario as well.
In this scenario, this new set of Germanic languages spreads throughout Europe the same way the current Germanic languages did. Thus, these languages are spoken in Central Europe, Skandinavia and the British Isles. The only part I had to think about was where to place the single languages, so I assigned each major Germanic language a Romance equivalent which looks like this:
But in this scenario it's quite hard for Germanic Spanish to import loanwords from Basque, so what is the solution to that problem? Exactly! Giving all influencing languages equivalents as well!
- Vulgar Latin Proto-Germanic
- Germanic Latin
- Celtic Slavic
- Slavic Celtic
- Basque Finnic
From Proto-Germanic to Vulgar (?) Germanic
Proto-Germanic and Latin have a different phonology, but luckily they're not too different and Proto-Germanic has more phonemes than Latin, so I just need to merge some consonants to get to the phonology of Latin. (I think most people on here know the basic phonologies of Proto-Germanic and Latin so I won't list them here)
ɸ, θ, x f, d/t, h
β, ð, ɣ b, d, g
ɛː ɛːː eː
ɔː ɔːː oː
ɑ, ɑu, ɑi a, au, ai
eu, iu o
The last sound change might look a bit weird but that's the only way to have a short o in Vulgar Germanic thanks to that damn o/a-merger in Proto-Germanic. And I really needed the short o. No short "o"s, no Spanish "ue"s and what would Spanish be without it's "ue"s? The change of /θ/ to /d/ or /t/ as well as the change of /xʷ/ to /w/ or /kʷ/ are irregular and I'll choose the one that fits the most to make it sound more Romance-ish (e.g. /xʷ/ to /kʷ/ in every question word). And here's an example of the sound changes and one of the rules mentioned at the beginning:
/tuŋɡɔːniz wiːdiːnɔːːz*/ <tungōniz wīdīnôz> /tuŋgoːnis wiːdiːnoːs/ <tungōnis vīdīnōs> = "Latin Languages"
*wīdīnôz is the equivalent of latīnum. Since latīnum is derived from Latium which is most likely derived from latus ("wide"), wīdīnôz is derived from Wīdiją/wīdaz ("wide"). I haven't found a good equivalent for Romance yet because I - obviously - still need a Germanic city for Rome that will be the base for the word.
- Deriving the vocabulary
- Applying the sound changes