What if Welsh got Latinized when the Latin refugees arrived, how would a Romance Wales work out?
WI: Welsh is a Romance Language not a Celtic Language
- Thread starter kasumigenx
- Start date
Otto Kretschmer
Banned
Like Wales IOTL or like Aromanians in Greece.
Language itself? All depends on whether there is a long period of Latin-Celtic bilingualism or not. If yes, the Romance language in Wales will borrow some features from Celtic language spoken at the time. If not, hard to say. It will likely form a separate branch within the Romance family like Romanian does today but it's very difficult to say what features it might develop
I tend to think a Romance Wales can be allies of the Normans against their Anglo-Saxon subjects.
Welsh Nationalism probably draws more on neoclassicism. Maybe more Catholic as the Welsh vernacular would be closer to Church Latin instead of having a separate Welsh bible. Welsh poetry and stories would be more widespread throughout Europe due to greater ease of translation.
Is Welsh regarded as a separate language from the start or will it be treated as a dialect of Latin for a large part of the Middle Ages, the way French and Spanish were?
Is Welsh regarded as a separate language from the start or will it be treated as a dialect of Latin for a large part of the Middle Ages, the way French and Spanish were?
It will be likely treated as a dialect of Latin, perhaps it will get Norman influence later on.
In a certain (etymoligical/linguistic) way, this TL would make more sense than ours, since all the other languages / ethnicities with a similar etymology are Romance: Walloon, Welsch (= Romansh), Vlach, Włochy, Lahi, olasz (the last tree meaning/heaving meant 'Italian')...
During Subroman Britain, the Welsh latinize rather than remain Celtic.
Otto Kretschmer
Banned
Likely after the Anglo Saxon invasion
It is also worth determining how they Romanize others. In all cases (except Romanian) there were Romance speaking cities forming a nucleus around which the countryside then Romanized. Collapse of cities was cited as an important reason why the Anglo Saxons were so successful while all other Germanic people just assimilated into Roman populations
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It forms like Romanian but gets influenced by Norman basically.
Could lead to wider Latinisation/Francofication of England, with Welsh and Norman converging and creating a large population base for it across all walks of life. Maybe the Normans might try to present themselves as a Latin reconquest of Britain from the heathen and irreligious Anglo-Saxon invaders (ignore the centuries of Anglo-Saxon Christianity and missionary work).
There's some evidence they did OTL in the southeast where Roman presence was stronger. However that's right where Germanic settlement became strongest OTL.
OTL Welsh evolved mostly in the periphery of post Roman Britain.
So my next question is how do you get the periphery to latinise?
How though? Romance speakers essentially retreated from the northern coasts of Gaul OTL, which incidentally is how western Armorica could be settled by Britons moving away from the Saxons.
Probably not, TBH, as so much time would have passed by then that the Welsh and Normans/French would be considered separate peoples. If the Normans do choose to make the Welsh their allies ITTL, this would be as part of the classic divide et impera tactic, rather than because they feel any particular affinity with them.
There seem to have been comparatively few British senators, generals, or people in the highest ranks of the Roman government. One theory I've seen is that Britain was simply too far away from the centres of power for many Britons to rise to the top, so the people there (and especially the elites) didn't have the same incentive to Romanise as their counterparts in Gaul or Spain did. Maybe if you have more emperors spending more time on the Rhine frontier earlier on, and ideally also get the senate to follow them around, you might have more people from Britain coming down to join the imperial civil service or try and enter the senate, and they'd naturally want to adopt Roman language and culture in order to help with this process.
Perhaps a 3way split of the Empire could help?
Western based in Gaul, Central in Italy, Eastern in Anatolia/Egypt?
Good idea, but it’d have to be early enough so that the barbarians are too weak to just eat the splinters or force them to reunite. So the OTL split during the Crisis of the Third Century seems too late-but Britain isn’t that romanized early on. Maybe sometime in the early second century, then?
Not necessarily since the channel is a convenient route to pirate or settle.
Well yeah, but a Latin England would need to maintain the urban latinate environment, which means that Anglo Saxon settlers would likely latinise as well.
So yeah groups from *France might conquer parts of the British Isles, but the people they find are going to be very different.