* * * * *
The language spoken in Gaul from the fifth to the twelfth centuries
being evidently a mixture of the same Roman and Celtic ingredients, and
partaking of the same name with those of the Grisons; it will, I hope,
not be thought foreign to the subject of this letter, if I enter into a
few particulars concerning it, as it seems to have been an essential
part, or rather the trunk, of the language, the history of which I am
endeavouring to elucidate.
One of the many instances how little the laboured researches of
philologists into the origin of languages are to be depended upon, is
the variety of opinions entertained by French authors concerning the
formation of the Gallic Romance. A learned Benedictine[AJ] first starts
the conjecture, and then maintains it against the attacks of an
anonymous writer, that the vulgar Latin became the universal language of
Gaul immediately after Caesar's conquest, and that its corruption, with
very little mixture of the original language of the country, gradually
produced the Romance towards the eighth century. Bonamy,[AK] on the
other hand, is of opinion, that soon after that conquest, a corruption
of vulgar Latin by the Celtic formed the Romance, which he takes to be
the language always meant by authors when they speak of the _Lingua
Romana_ used in Gaul.
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