Editing French language (section)

=== Vulgar Latin in Gaul ===
Due to Roman rule, Latin was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti.<ref name="Adams" /> This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as [[Franco-Provençal]].

The evolution of Latin in Gaul was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native [[Celtic languages|Celtic]] [[Gaulish language]], which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the [[fall of the Western Roman Empire]].<ref name="Helix">{{Cite book |last=Hélix |first=Laurence |title=Histoire de la langue française |publisher=Ellipses Edition Marketing S.A. |year=2011 |isbn=978-2-7298-6470-5 |page=7}}</ref> Because few Latin speakers settled in rural areas during Roman times, Latin there held little or no social value for the [[peasantry]]; as a result, 90% of the total population of Gaul remained indigenous in origin. The urban aristocracy, who used Latin for trade, education or official uses, would send their children to Roman schools and administered lands for Rome. In the fifth century, at the time of the [[collapse of the Western Roman Empire]], the vast majority of the (predominantly rural) population remained Gaulish speakers. They shifted to Latin as their native speech only one century after the [[Franks|Frankish]] conquest of Gaul, adopting the [[prestige language]] of their urban literate elite. This eventual spread of Latin can be attributed to the social migration from the focus of urban power to village-centred economies and legal [[serfdom]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lodge |first=R. Anthony |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hfanhTGi-z0C |title=French: From Dialect to Standard |date=1993 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-08071-2 |page=46 |access-date=28 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918104347/https://books.google.com/books?id=hfanhTGi-z0C |archive-date=18 September 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Cravens |first=Thomas D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XvODm8_Y6CgC&q=Braudel&pg=PA1 |title=Comparative Historical Dialectology: Italo-Romance Clues to Ibero-Romance Sound Change |date=2002 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |isbn=1-58811-313-2 |page=51 |access-date=11 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918104417/https://books.google.com/books?id=XvODm8_Y6CgC&q=Braudel&pg=PA1 |archive-date=18 September 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Mufwene">{{cite journal |last=Mufwene |first=Salikoko S. |author-link=Salikoko Mufwene |year=2004 |title=Language birth and death |journal=Annu. Rev. Anthropol. |volume=33 |pages=201–222 |doi=10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143852}}</ref>

The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable [[Romanization]].<ref name="Helix" /> Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the [[Vulgar Latin]] dialects that developed into French<ref name="Mufwene" /><ref name="Helix" /> contributing [[loanwords]] and [[calque]]s (including {{lang|fr|oui}},<ref>{{cite book |first=Peter |last=Schrijver |title=Studies in the History of Celtic Pronouns and Particles |location=Maynooth |isbn=9780901519597 |publisher=Department of Old Irish, National University of Ireland |year=1997 |page=15}}</ref> the word for "yes"),<ref name="Savignac" /> sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence,<ref name="PellegriniCeltic">{{cite book |last=Pellegrini |first=Giovanni Battista |year=2011 |chapter=Substrata |editor-last1=Posner |editor-last2=Green |title=Romance Comparative and Historical Linguistics |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |pages=43–74}} Celtic influences on French discussed in pages 64–67. Page 65:"In recent years the primary role of the substratum... has been disputed. Best documented is the CT- > ''it'' change which is found in all Western Romania... more reservations have been expressed about... ū > [y]..."; :"Summary on page 67: "There can be no doubt that the way French stands out from the other Western Romance languages (Vidos 1956: 363) is largely due to the intensity of its Celtic substratum, compared with lateral areas like Iberia and Venetia..."</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Henri |last=Guiter |chapter=Sur le substrat gaulois dans la Romania |title=Munus amicitae. Studia linguistica in honorem Witoldi Manczak septuagenarii |editor-first=Anna |editor-last=Bochnakowa |editor-first2=Stanislan |editor-last2=Widlak |location=Krakow |year=1995}}</ref>{{sfn|Roegiest|2006|p=83}} and influences in conjugation and word order.<ref name="Savignac">{{Cite book |last=Savignac |first=Jean-Paul |title=Dictionnaire Français-Gaulois |publisher=La Différence |year=2004 |location=Paris |page=26}}</ref><ref name="Matas">{{Cite conference |last=Matasovic |first=Ranko |year=2007 |title=Insular Celtic as a Language Area |book-title=The Celtic Languages in Contact: Papers from the Workshop Within the Framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies |page=106}}</ref><ref name="Adams">{{Cite book |last=Adams |first=J. N. |title=The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC – AD 600 |date=2007 |isbn=978-0-511-48297-7|pages=279–289 |chapter=Chapter V – Regionalisms in provincial texts: Gaul |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511482977}}</ref> Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by the gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Polinsky |first1=Maria |last2=Van Everbroeck |first2=Ezra |year=2003 |title=Development of Gender Classifications: Modeling the Historical Change from Latin to French |journal=Language |volume=79 |issue=2 |pages=356–390 |citeseerx=10.1.1.134.9933 |doi=10.1353/lan.2003.0131 |jstor=4489422 |s2cid=6797972| issn = 0097-8507}}</ref>

The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the ''[[Petit Robert]]'',<ref name="SchmittLex">{{Cite journal |first=Christian |last=Schmitt |year=1997 |title=Keltische im heutigen Französisch |journal=Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie |volume=49-50 |pages=814–829|doi=10.1515/zcph.1997.49-50.1.814 }}</ref> which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Müller |first=Bodo |title=Festschrift für Johannes Hubschmid zum 65. Geburtsag. Beiträge zur allgemeinen, indogermanischen und romanischen Sprachwissenschaft. |date=1982 |editor-last=Winkelmann |editor-first=Otto |pages=603–620 |chapter=Geostatistik der gallischen/keltischen Substratwörter in der Galloromania}}</ref> Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life (''chêne'', ''bille'', etc.), animals (''mouton'', ''cheval'', etc.), nature (''boue'', etc.), domestic activities (ex. ''berceau''), farming and rural units of measure (''arpent'', ''lieue'', ''borne'', ''boisseau''), weapons,<ref name=HolmesSchutz30>{{Cite book |first1=Urban |last1=Holmes |first2=Alexander |last2=Herman Schutz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jbjX4ebc2lsC&q=gAULISH&pg=PR5 |title=A History of the French Language |date=June 1938 |publisher=Biblo & Tannen Publishers |isbn=978-0-8196-0191-9 |page=30 |quote="...sixty-eight or more Celtic words in standard Latin; not all of these came down into Romance.... did not survive among the people. Vulgar speech in Gaul used many others... at least 361 words of Gaulish provenance in French and Provençal. These Celtic words fell into more homely types than... borrowings from Germanː agriculture... household effects... animals... food and drink... trees... body -- 17 (''dor'' < ''durnu''), dress... construction... birds... fish... insects... ''pièce'' < *''pettia'', and the remainder divided among weapons, religion, literature, music, persons, sickness and mineral. It is evident that the peasants were the last to hold to their Celtic. The count on the Celtic element was made by Leslie Moss at the University of North Carolina... based on unanimity of agreement among the best lexicographers... |access-date=10 June 2021 |archive-date=18 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918104350/https://books.google.com/books?id=jbjX4ebc2lsC&q=gAULISH&pg=PR5 |url-status=live }}</ref> and products traded regionally rather than further afield.{{sfn|Roegiest|2006|p=82}} This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being the last to hold onto Gaulish.{{sfn|Roegiest|2006|p=82}}<ref name=HolmesSchutz30 />