French Translation (The History of Britain Revealed)

[Mick Harper]

Ah, a problem solved at last. I had always wondered why the Swiss Bike Race was called The Tour of Romandie.

I shall then change the name Jean-Claude for the French edition though not of course to Jean-Paul (too obvious).

[Hatty]

[alincthun]

I have found this French forum (do you say "forum"?) on languages:
http://projetbabel.org/forum/index.php
On a thread about Gascon/Occitan:
http://projetbabel.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8371&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
someone (catoc, always interesting) mentions Les Serments.
After he has mocked at the Acad�mie Fran�aise's view of the Occitan language (as a dialect), then of Les Serments (as the first record of the French), he adds, being an French-Occitan-speaker:
"If they call that French, I'm pleased to announce that we really speak a French archaic dialect!"
("S'ils appellent cela du fran�ais, j'ai la joie de vous annoncer que nous parlons bien un dialecte archa�que du fran�ais!")
And further:
"We don't know if the 842 oath is Proto-French, Proto-Occitan or one forefather of Occitan and French!"
("On ne sait pas si le serment de 842 est du proto-fran�ais, du proto-occitan, ou du proto-anc�tre de l'occitan et du fran�ais !" Please correct me, Hatty).
The language used in Les Serments is an enigma for French-Occitan-speakers.

[Hatty]

Gilles has found a book by one Adolphe (Adolf!) de Cassagnac, published in 1859, called "ANTIQUITY OF PATOIS - Anteriority of the French language over Latin" which he's in the process of reading.

Rather than translating a 40-page, 19th century treatise into English, it seemed more sensible to have a summary of the argument laid out. Over to you, Gilles!

[alincthun]

First let me post up the first pages of the book, that Hatty had begun to translate:

ANTIQUITY OF PATOIS
Precedence of the French language over Latin

A. Granier de Cassagnac (pub. 1859)

I. AIM OF THIS WORK

There's a very widespread and very accredited opinion which makes the French language come from Latin. In a book, still famous, published in 1565, Henri Estienne strove to prove that it came from Greek and some modern philologists claim that it is derived from Sanskrit. Our belief, based principally on a study of the facts, which the reader will appreciate, is that these differing opinions are merely prejudice without a serious foundation.

It is evident that a large number of Greek and Latin terms have entered the make-up of the French language, above all since the Renaissance, in order to express moral, philosophical, political, literary, scientific, financial ideas, appropriate to modern society, but nonetheless the primordial, essential, popular elements of the French language have a national origin. They clearly belong directly to six or seven idioms, distinct branches of the Celtic language, which are still spoken today in France, such as Proven�al, Catalan, Languedocian, Aquitanian, Lower Breton, Auvergnian, Walloon, and these idioms, which are under the general name of patois, are incontestably anterior, not only to the Roman invasion but to the formation of the Latin language.

The aim of this work is to prove beyond doubt the antiquity of these patois and to show that they were spoken more or less as they are still being spoken two thousand years ago when the Latin tongue was barely established, to the extent that, instead of seeing a form of corrupted Latin in patois, it would be more accurate to see a purified version of French and patois in Latin.


II. GREATNESS OF THE CELTIC NATION BEFORE THE FORMATION OF LATIN

The Latin language, as we know it, did not yet exist at the time when the Gallic or Celtic nation was the most powerful and most feared in Europe. We do not wish to date its greatness from the first invasions of Italy by the Gauls, which Mr. Am�d�e Thierry apparently quite reasonably claims to go back to the 13th century A.D. Confining ourselves to historical times, we take as our point of departure the great Gallic migration which took place under Tarquinius the Elder, the details of which are reported by Polybius, Livy, Justin, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and some other similarly authoritative historians.

Under Tarquinius the Elder, about 650 B.C., two powerful Gallic armies bringing women and children in their wake crossed the Alps and the Rhine at one and the same time. They mainly consisted of peoples from Berry, Auvergne, Allier, Yonne, Bresse, Beaujolais, Seine, Oise, Loir, Cher, Loiret and Sarthe. The first was under the command of Bellovesus, the second under Sigovesus, both sons of a sister of Ambigatus, king of Berry, the most powerful leader of Gaul at the time.

Having reached the foot of the Alps, Bellovesus� army penetrated into Italy via Turin and flooded into the beautiful fertile valley of the Po, where it settled between the Adda, the Ticino and the Alps. It founded the city of Milan, which was the capital of the Insubrian Gauls. In the space of about seventy years four other invasions gained the Gauls the most fertile areas of Italy. At first these were the Cenomans, from Maine, who founded Brescia and Verona. Then came the Salluvians, gathered from the borders of the Drome and Isere, who settled in the Ticino valley. Later still were the Boians and the Lingonians, who came from the Allier and the country of Langres and who, finding the Po valley already occupied, chased out the Etruscans and Umbrians and occupied the countries which since then have been called Romagna and Ferrara. Finally the Senonians came, from the territory of Sens and Auxerre, who settled between Picenum, Umbria and the Adriatic, and whose principal towns were Sinagaglia, Pesaro and Rimini. It was the Senonians who showed up at Clusium where they picked a quarrel with the Roman ambassadors, as a result of which they converged on Rome, which they took and burned in 389 B.C.E.

Thus, more than four centuries B.C.E, the Gallic nation had overrun the Po valley and Tuscany and occupied, from Adria to Anconia, the territory of Ferrara, Bologna, Ravenna, Forli, San Marino and Urbino, so that, in the eyes of Pliny, Italy's greatest glory was not to have been dominated and absorbed by our ancestors.

[alincthun]

Then two pages more about the greatness of the Gaul nation three centuries B.C., how they controlled the best part of the Italy, how they settled in Illyria and in Thrace, and how, after having ransomed Macedonia, Thessalia, Beotia and Etolia, they burnt Rome and Troy, then ruled over all Asia Minor.

Of course, such a nation had its tongue, adapted to its needs and to its customs. It was rather the same as the one we use today. Since Gauls had not mixed with other nations, this language was pure. Moreover, it was free from any Latin element, for the Latin that we know (from Terence to Tacitus) didn't yet exist when Gauls had settled half of Italy and were ruling Illyria, Thrace and Asian Greece.

III
LATIN LANGUAGE - TIME OF ITS FORMATION

Latin has taken a long time to form ; it has constantly changed, and it was hardly fixed when it disappeared. There have been several Latins as we have several Frenches. Joinville�s, Rabelais�, Amyot�s and Boileau�s. After two centuries, Latin was becoming unintelligible. At the time when Quintilianus wrote, Salian priests didn�t undersand their hymns.

When Polybius wrote his General History (150 BC), the Latin of the beginning of the Republic (508 BC) had become unintelligible, even for the scholars. Nonetheless, in 508 BC, Gauls had been settled in the Po valley and in Romagna for 150 years.

On the other hand, the Latin spoken in 150 BC by the Romans (Ennius�, Plautus�, Lucilius�) was as different from Livy�s, Cicero�s, Virgil�s Latin as Rabelais� and Villon�s French was different from Racine�s and Pascal�s French. Horatius called that Latin 'manure'. And grammarians tried hard to explain its obscurities. Nonius Marcellus has noted 250 usual substantives of which the gender changed several times between Plautus and Cicero. This uncouth and wild language still was not real Latin ; however, at the time it was at its tentative beginnings, it was 230 years since the Gauls had burnt Rome and brought, from the Alps to the Taurus, the language of Toulouse, Autun, Lyon, Bourges, Arras and Trier. This Gaulish language, so old and so widespread from one side of the Europe to the other, before the formation of Latin, is not composed of Latin debris, a much more recent language. On the contrary, Latin, in order to form, borrowed a great part of its elements from the Gaulish language and from other rustic idioms of Italy.

IV
MODE OF FORMATION OF LATIN

Ancient authors clearly and precisely tell us how Latin formed. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (in Augustus� time): � The language which is used today among the Romans is neither barbarous nor absolutely Greek ; but it takes after the former and the latter, and is close to Eolic. � Quintilianus (Galba and Domitianus� time): � Words either were born with the Latin language or are extraneous to it. I call extraneous those which came to us from almost all nations� I particularly think of the Greek language because ours has mostly formed from it, and we even use purely Greek words. � Thus Latin has arisen from two springs : Greek and barbarous idioms, i.e. Italian rustic patois and mostly patois from Gaul., and even from Spain. For Italian and Spanish patois are, like Gaulish ones, anterior to Latin, and they were spoken among the peasants during the period of the most beautiful latinity. Aulus-Gellius : barbarism = borrowing a word from the rustic language. Macrobus : Doing a barbarism is talking the way peasants do. Quintilianus tells the same.

In Cicero�s and Virgil�s time, ancient and numerous patois were spoken in Italy, that were almost the same as the diverse idioms spoken nowadays in Lombardy, Veneto, Romagnia and Campania
One knows at least six patois of ancient Italy : the patois of the Latium, or rustic Latin ; the Oskian patois ; Tuscanian ; Sabine ; Paduan ; Gallic. (Two pages follow about the Italian idioms that helped to the formation of the Latin.) Moreover, this can be verified thanks to epigraphic monuments, which have kept fragments of these patois.

[alincthun]

V
EPIGRAPHIC DEBRIS OF OLD ITALIAN PATOIS

As we know, proper names are ordinary substantives, applied to persons to qualify them, such as Le Noir, Le Grand, Le Masson, La Fontaine, Le Bois, and so on. The study of the proper names used in Italy at the time of Augustus can help to determine the characters of the idioms from which these proper names have been borrowed. We can see that a great number of these proper names were formulated in the Italian language that we know in modern times.
In the Museum of Naples, there�s a gallery devoted to seals and sealing tools found in Pompeii. We have transcribed some of these seals ; we�ll just quote one because it exempts from the others. It�s a family name : DELLI. AMICI. Isn�t it a name formulated in modern Italian ? This bronze seal was made during the century of Augustus.
In other galleries of the museum, there are marbles with inscriptions wearing the names of meritorious soldiers :

Marble number 1906
FELICIO. CANO.

Marble number 1002
FELICIO. LUCRIO. ACRO.
CERDO. VERNIO. BOTRIO.
ISIO

Marble number 1708
SPENDO. CALASTRO.
FAUSTIO. THEMISO.
PRIMIO. GELOS.
STRATO.

All these proper names are nominative cases, as, among others, the name GELOS proves it. More, they�re rather undeclinable, like the modern proper names. See also :
CELADIOTI. CAESARIS. AUGUS. SERVUS. UNCTOR. GERMANICI. (Celiadoti was a slave serving Germanicus).
These Italian patois had the definite article le la les, as the Pompeii seal has shown it. And substantives, already undeclinable, had endings o, io, i, as we have seen.

Latin still remained the official language of the Roman word a long time after the transfer of the Empire to the East since the Codex Justinianus dates from the middle of the VIth Century. Latin remained the language of the cultured society at least until the end of the fifth century, as Claudianus� poems and saint Jerome�s correspondence bear witness. The most famous grammarians (Festus Pompeius, Servius) lived in the IVth and Vth. Yet Italian poetry, with its modern forms, already flourished in the Xth, as a manuscript from the Monte Cassino monastery proves :

Io signori, s�io Favello,
Lo vostro audire compello ;
Di questa vita interpello,
Ed dell� altra bene spello.

If the Italian language had not existed before the fall of Latin, Italian poetry would have not found its definitive forms. Ennius would write six centuries after the foundation of Rome, and his Latin was almost unintelligible at the time of Augustus.

It would be interesting to subject Latin language to a kind of chemical break-down, in order to isolate its Greek and Gallic elements from each other. We have done it at an elementary level.
Latin always has two words to say the same thing, and of these two words one is invariably found in French patois. Latin has necessarily borrowed from the Gallic, because if the latter had borrowed from the Latin, it would have borrowed both words, and this is not the case.

Four columns :
French/Latin/Latin/Aquitanian patois
Terre/Tellus/Terra/Terro, terra
Mer/ Fretum/Mare/Ma,mar
Air/Aura/A�r/A�r�
Lumi�re/Lumen/Lux/Lutz
Chaleur/Aestus/Calor/Calou
Feu/Ignis/Focus/Soc, honec
T�te/Cervix/Caput/Cap
Bouche/Os/Bucca/Bouca, bouco
Mort/Lethum/Mors/Mort
Champ/Ager/Campus/Camp
Maison/Domus/Casa/Casa, caso
Chemin/Iter/Via/Via, viage, voyage
And 14 other examples.

Now we have 1� to put beyond doubt the antiquity of the Gallic or Celtic tongue, first form of modern French, 2� to show the identity of the idioms spoken by our Gallic ancestors, conquerors of Italy, Illyria, Thrace, Greece and Asia Minor, and the idioms spoken nowadays in Marseilles, N�mes, and so on, and in the region between the Meuse and the Moselle, where Walloon is current, 3� to show that the patois currently (in the middle of the XIXth century) spoken by the French peasants are exactly the same as the ones Caesar found established among our fathers, as the ones Bellovesus brought to Milan, Brennus to Rome and to Delphos and that they�re anterior to Latin.

But, first, we must dispel from our readers� minds the preoccupation arising from some erroneous divisions of our language, such as the division langue d�oil/langue d�oc/langue romane.

[alincthun]

VI
LANGUE D'OC -- LANGUE D'OIL -- ROMANCE TONGUE

Nowhere has a language existed without a people to speak it. And no geographic dictionary has ever mentioned an Oc people, an Oil people and a Romance people. In no region of France do people say, in a general and systematic way, either oc or oil to say yes, either no or nenni to say no. And these differences have never characterised two distinct languages spoken on the right bank and the left bank of the Loire respectively.

One can find, it is true, in the poets of the XIIIth century, ways of speaking which, if they were not seriously verified, could lead one to think that a Northern French language and a southern French language could be distinguished by the difference in the words used for the negative or the affirmative ; but the study of the facts amount to very narrow proportions the inferences that one can draw from the language of these poets.

Dante has been, to our knowledge, the first to characterise a language by the word used for the affirmative : ' Ah Pisa, how you shame the people of that fair land where 's' is heard! ' Of course, the regions where si is heard are the whole Italy, and not only Tuscany. People say si, for yes, in the whole Italy, and this word is necessarily proper to the ancient dialects since Latin has no single word to say yes.

Oil belongs to the patois of N�mes and nenni also belongs to the patois of Languedoc and Aquitania.

Some southern regions say oil and nenni just as some in the center and in the North. Besides, English poeple use the same negation as the Aquitanians, no�, and it would not be reasonable to class English as Gascon.

The presence of the article le, la, les in all the branches of the Celtic language is, just like affirmation and negation, another proof of the precedence of patois dialects and of French over Latin. As a matter of fact, the Latin language, having neither the article nor the affirmative, could have not given to others what it doesn't possess itself ; and Roumanesc, which was the southern patois at the time of Trajanus, also has it.

When grammarians say that the article must be a part of recently formed language, we must pity them. Homer's Greek is not yesterday's, and it has the article.

And history has never related a congress of shepherds and ploughmen taking counsel together, from the Bresse lakes to the Belgian collieries, from the Crau plain to the moors of Brittany, to decide that they will henceforth put the article into all of the idioms of the Celtic language. The general locutions which are in the language of the people have been put in by God ; that's why they last and resist revolutions, whereas the langues savantes (how to translate ?) like Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, human works, perish.

The confusion brought in by the gratuitous hypothesis of a Romance language is still more unfortunate. Some scholars have presented as a special idiom the language used by some troubadours in the XIth and XIIth centuries (Vidal, Raymond B�ranger, Bertrand de Born).

Eventually, the language of the troubadours is just native patois spoken by each one of them, purified, put in a proper form (r�gularis�), elevated to a certain height (hauteur), embellished, but they didn't create a new language. Confirmed by Dante ; � (Arnault Daniel) was a better craftsman of the mother tongue.
Goudouli wrote in Languedocian, Despourrins in Bearnian, Jasmin in Agenian, and so on.

On the other hand, in the XIth and the XIIth centuties, it was usual to indiscriminately call Romance language all the French vulgar idioms, as opposed to Latin, which was the official language of the Administration, Justice and Church. So speaking Romance, in every part of France in North as in South, was to use the local idiom, a Proven�al, Auvergnian or French Walloon one.

Many proofs quoted by the author follow, that I won't translate for the moment.

[alincthun]

I'm statufied. I'm going for a little walk. At any rate, you have enough matter at your disposal as it is.
It's very Gallic, isn't it?

Here is the titles of the next chapters:
VII THE CELTIC LANGUAGE
VIII VARIETY OF THE CELTIC IDIOMS
IX IDENTITY OF THE OLD-TIME CELTIC IDIOMS AND OF TODAY'S ONES
X PATOIS AT THE TIME OF TRAJANUS
XI CONCLUSION

[alincthun]

VII
THE CELTIC LANGUAGE

What is the Celtic language ? There�s only one reasonable answer: The Celtic language was the language which was spoken by the Celts. So we must specify the number and the diversity of the peoples which the Celtic nation comprised.

According to the unanimous ancient historians� statement, all the people, indiscriminately, who lived in Gaul bore the general name of Celts, for which the Romans substituted the name of Gauls. � These peoples, Caesar writes, are called Celts in their language, and Gauls in ours. � Pausanias : � Formerly, the Gauls called themselves Celts. � Strabo : � In the past, all the known Western peoples called themselves Celts. �

In Strabo�s opinion, the Germans themselves belonged to the great Celtic family ; � The Romans seem to have given, rightly, the name German to these peoples, meaning that way that they were of Gallic race ; for in the Romans� language, German means brother. � The inhabitants of the Spanish coasts on the side of Mediterranean were also considered to be Celts, mixed with Iberians, of which they took the name of Celtiberians, given to the peoples of hither Spain. The same for the Helvetians.

Generally, the Greek historians used the term Celts, and the Roman historians Gauls.

I jump the end of this chapter. We all have already read everything of it, except for this (for myself) :

� Formerly, Pliny says, Aquitaine was called Armorique. Aquitaine is, as a matter of fact , the literal translation, to Latin, from celtic Armorique ; Aquitaine meaning maritime, and the sea still callig itself, in lower Breton, ar mor.

[alincthun]

VIII
VARIETY OF THE CELTIC IDIOMS

In France , there are eight or ten appreciably different idioms, though they visibly have a common fond (ground ? foundation ? base ?) and an undeniable original identity. Are all these idioms more or less recent ? Do they result from the decomposition of Latin ? Are they fruit of an influence allegedly exerted by the idioms of barbarous conquerors on the Gallic tongue ? Could the Celtic nation, being one in its essence, speak several languages ? � All these assumptions fall when faced with the fact that Caesar declares he has found all these idioms already settled in Gauls and that Polybius recorded their existence two centuries B.C.E.

� All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws �, Caesar wrote.

Strabo said the same, though he�s been even more precise : � Some divide Gaul into the three nations of the Aquitani, Belgae, and Celts. Of these the Aquitani differ a lot from the other nations, not only in their language but in their figure, which resembles more that of the Spaniards than the Gauls. The others are Gauls in countenance, although they do not all speak the same language, but some make a slight difference in their speech. �
(On the internet, I�ve found two translations of this text. When Granier de Cassagnac translates � a lot �, the others write � wholly � or � completely �.)

Polybius says that the Veneti who lived on the banks of Adriatic and who have later established Venetia and founded Venice were Celts, from the Vannes country, Brittany, and they spoke at this time a language different from the one spoke by the other Gauls : � But the district along the shore of the Adriatic was held by another very ancient tribe called Veneti, in customs and dress closely allied to Celts, but using a quite different language. �

Strabo confirms the identity of the Bretons from Vannes and of the Veneti of the Adriatic.

The antiquity of the diverse Gallic idioms is a constant fact. Already, in the time of Caesar, the Aquitanians did not speak the same language as the Celts of the center, and the latter did not speak the same language as the Celts of Belgium. Moreover, two centuries before Caesar, the Gauls of Low Brittany spoke a particular idiom.

This state of affairs, which existed two thousand years ago, still exists : the Aquitanian language differs from the one spoke in the center, which is not the same as in the walloon countries, and the language spoke in Low Brittany differs from all the others. However, the variety of the Gallic idioms does not disprove the unity of the Celtic language.

There�s between all the idioms of France, without exception, a manifest community of nature. Three quarters of the terms are the same, and it�s not difficult to recognize them under the differences of flexional ending or pronunciation. The Ile de France idiom, which a longer culture has made the pivot of the national language, can be recognized in all the patois. Moreover grammar is identical. Same conjugations of the verbs, same way to form plurals, all have two genders, masculine and feminine.

A few thoughful critics have claimed that the Lower Breton idiom was the unique type of Celtic, though it is in fact only one of the dialects spoken at all times by the great Celt nation, and that Proven�al, Languedocian, Catalan, Gascon, Auvergnian, French, itself are Celtic as Vannes, Leon or Tr�guier languages. Well ! the Lower Breton itself, so different at first sight from the other Gallic idioms, contains a good half of Aquitanian, Auvergnian, Catalan or Proven�al terms. It�s easy to be convinced in examining the Fran�ais-Celtique dictionary by the P�re de Rostrenen or the Celto-Breton dictionary by Le Gonidec. Aper�u :

3 columns
French/Lower Breton/Aquitanian
Bouillir/Birvi/Bouri
Chenet/Landreau/Landr�
Ecuelle/Scudellon/Escudelloun
Panier/Paner/Pa�, pani�
Ecluse/Scluzyou/Esclauso
Pell�e de terre/Palad/Palado
Liper/Lipat/Lipa
Loger/Logea/Louggea
Fermer au loquet/Cliqueda/Cliqueta
Luire/Leuchi/Luzi
Maille/Mailhou/Mailho
Prune/Prun/Pruno, pruo
Dommage/Doumaich/Dommatg�
Manchot/Moigned/Moignod
Manquer/Mancqua/Manca
Manteau/Mantel/Mantou, mantet
Marque/Mercq/Merco
Matelas/Matalacz/Mat�las
R�volt�/Ravoltou/R�bolto
Cassant/Brusk/Brusc
Brouter/Brousta/Brousta
Pr�ter/Presta/Presta
Ande/Kroummel/Cr�m�ro
Femme de mauvaise vie/Gauhinou/Gouhino
Accoutumer/Kustumi/Accoustuma
Danser/Dansa/Dansa
Fange/Fank/Fango, hango
Foin/Fouenn/Hen, fenn
Four/Fourn/Hour, four, fourn.

The Lower Breton itself has many dialects, such as the ones of Vannes, Tr�guier, L�on, Morlaix, Saint-Brieuc. We could quote one married couple in which the husband and the wife, speaking different dialects, are compelled to speak French to understand each other.

[alincthun]

"Femme de mauvaise vie", now old-fashioned, has been a rather widespread general term for a dissolute, a licentious woman.
But Gauhinou/Gouhino is near to 'gouine", which is a pejorative French word for lesbian.

I probably won't be able to translate the next chapter today. My summary is rather long, but that seems to me a good thing to stay very near to the original, and I don't want to interpret.

I still have not really understood what is the Aquitanian patois. Granier de Cassagnac necessarily knew this patois because he was a deputy of Gers, where he was born. Gers, an Aquitanian region, is not Basque. But I've just read that there was a "proto-Basque" substratum in Aquitanian language.
In the tenth chapter, he says that Romanian is based on the Aquitanian patois spoken by French soldiers of the Roman army who have settled in Dacia at the time of Trajanus.

[Mick Harper]

Mein Gott, but I'm glad I didn't know all this when I started out or I would never have bothered. How can the Academy stand against this kind of evidence? And how clever I was to guess everything without it? Or rather how powerful AE is.

[Mick Harper]

By the way, Gilles, you may not notice yourself but the chauvinism of this account is really quite pronounced to British sensibilities. Let me put it this way....you can tell the writer is a Frenchman.

[alincthun]

I had noticed. But, more than chauvinist, it's a patriotic book written by a bonapartist.
But, as you noticed yourself, the Acad�mie has not been convinced by this kind of patriotism. They surely were all royalists. (I believe I've also read that he knew Victor Hugo very well.)
In any case, as it seems, this book has been waiting for more than 150 years to find attentive readers.