Ad Infinitum

[Rumo]

I'm not. Are you? If not, why do you ask?

I'm asking to find out what do you mean by "lots of changes" and if you know how languages evolve. You make some strange ungrounded claims and whenever I ask for more details, I don't get any answers.

Did I say there was? Did I say we should suspend reason and research? Why are you overreacting as if I said anything like that?

I actually am not. What I'm saying is that dismissing something for being "not perfectly proven" is a self-defeating argument.

But to draw a map you must have good sources. For the, say, 6th and 7th centuries, there hardly exist such detailed sources that you can draw conclusions from them what the first and second language was of a group of people in a given region outside the main towns. It's like doing a study of 6th-c. migrations based on modern dna research.
One can speculate of course, go by the evidence available, but drawing 'perfect' lines on maps is not the same.

You're right in saying a map needs good sources, but you're making a couple of mistakes here.

No map contains 'perfect' lines. Well, you may imagine that, but that's your concern, not map maker's.
The map above compares the linguistic frontiers from 9th and later centuries (to be sure, the place names in Frankish documents start to be numerous enough since 8th century) with the Roman frontier, there's no "line" there drawn exclusively from 6th and 7th centuries place-names.

Who said anything about 'Jackson's work and maps'? I merely mentioned his map showing the Anglo-saxon conquests based on toponymic research, not ALL of his work?

I haven't mentioned all of his work. However I know of a book of his from 1953 (with a famous map of river names in southern England at page 220), and several other published articles, while you referred to a map of his from 1960s. That's why I used plural.

Indeed! I'm surprised to read that.

I am also surprised you say that, because that was only one example. Certainly several place names were reanalyzed, some chronologies revisited, but Jackson's map is in many aspects still actual.

But then they also quote Whitelock (1952) in saying that "the word for Briton simply means slave", which is also no longer a valid theory.

I don't know why you say "not valid", it is a current theory though. Just type "wealh" in Google Books and you'll get books from 1985, 1995, 2000.

Now imagine that this information dates to the 10th century. And that the next available evidence dates to the 5th c. How would you draw a map of the development of these dialects between the 5th c. and the 10th c.? Simply by assumption?

But no map attempts to draw that.

However the area of interaction can be relatively well delimited, even for a "dark period", because place names have this nasty habit to persist for many generations, and thus surface in documents centuries later. With no Germanic toponymy in Southern France and with no Romance toponymy on Elbe, the region of significant language contact and shifting remains the one already known, even if we don't have the actual details of how it evolved, step by step.

Can you just leave that Celtic alone please? My argument was about the supposed developemt of the language border between French and German, not about Celtic. My reference to Sidonius merely was to point out that we do not know the details and hence cannoy draw detailed conclusions.

Actually I cannot. I started the discussion on the assimilation of Celtic speakers in Gaul because it is relevant to the topic.

But of course Latin had prestige, no argument there. But why should we see this as the eradication of the original language? We are both writing English here, yet I doubt that we are to lose or own languages, simply because English is the Lingua Franca?

That's not even remotely comparable.

I'm writing English here on a forum, but in my country I have to speak and write Romanian, the public administration and institutions are in Romanian, the laws are in Romanian, the public schools teach in Romanian, the literature is published in Romanian. Moreover in my country the language with highest prestige is Romanian and not English. The abuse of English in public can get frowned upon or even mocked.

In the Latin-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire it was quite the opposite. And yes the prestige of Latin led to the disappearance of other languages, it's a phenomenon well documented both in ancient times and modern times. Even the language shift of non-Latin speakers is attested through several regional (or sometimes individual) varieties of Latin.

Severus could still speak Punic, did he? Celtic was still spoken around Trier, despite the city being the capital of the West for a time. Celtic was still spoken in some provinces by at least some people, as well as Germanic being the language spoken by immigrants in those same provinces. And yes, they probably all spoke Latin.

Punic and Celtic still spoken when and to what extent?

Not likely. Linguists have their own way to bend historical evidence. :twisted:

Don't blame the linguists for flaws which are not theirs