IMHO the 2nd century is too late a date for the Gallo-Rmc.-NRmc. divergence. It is important to remember that two dialect areas which remain in contact with each other don’t break, but rather slide apart. Moreover I think we want Germanic phonology to have an influence from the outset, since that’s rather the idea with a substrate: when a language spreads into an area where it wasn’t spoken before the first generation will speak it with a broken accent, part of which will transfer to the native accent of the second and third generations. Also there is no need to assume that all Gallican innovations during the first century spread into Germania.

So we have some ‘Germanican’¹ innovations right from the outset and some Gallican innovations which do reach Germania as well as some which don’t. To a degree this means that we can pick and choose, but in so doing we should keep an eye on what was universal VL, what was only Western Romance and what was only Gallican.

Also the Germanic substrate would not be common Germanic anymore, but Early West Germanic. Some changes like rhotacism, the loss of -z and gemination before *j may probably be under way already. Which means that Latin [z] from simple /s/ between vowels will probably be equated with substrate voiceless [s] as Scandinavians do to this day.

The two changes which are most pan-Romance are of course the reorganisation of the vowel system and the palatalization of velars and dentals. As an allophonic process the latter may indeed be of indefinite antiquity. compared to that the palatalization of labials is a purely Gallican thing, and possibly also rather late, since no tell-tale misspellings are known from imperial age inscriptions AFAIK. So I think /pj bj mj/ can stand, and later develop into /pp bb mm/ as they would in West Germanic — /L/ and /J/ would probably also be equated with substrate /lj nj/ and develop into /ll nn/. I wouldn’t even rule out that /tj/ and /kj/ be treated as long and hence different from short /k/ / _{e, i} — cf. how they are treated in Italian, though given the Gallican /k;/ > /t;/ development CJ would perhaps merge with TJ, but this merged /tt;/ might stay distinct from simplex /t;/ k; > ts; > ts_m (> s_m) > [T], but the geminate remains long and ultimately is treated like West Germ. *tj/tt.

PGmc. The /s/ is [s_a], so > I suppose to be ultra precise I should list WRom [s_m] > > NRom [s_a].

That’s not a mere nitpick, since [s_a] is more [S]-like and [s_m] is more [T]-like. In fact in modern Icelandic “/T/” is [s_m] and “/s/” is [s_a], both alveolar. It is known that in the history of Spanish the following series of changes took place:

• s > s_a
• > z_a > s_a
• k’, kj, tj > ts_m > s_m > T
• k’ > dz_m > z_m > s_m > T
• g’, j > dZ > S > x
• S > x

and it is believed that Old French had a similar situation, although there /s_a/ and /s_m/ merged with each other instead, and likewise with /z_a/ and /z_m/.

So we can be quite assured that at some time OTL Western Romance had the following sibilant system:

where the parenthesized items were either rare or lacking in some areas.

Comparing this to the pre-West Germanic fricatives system I’d not be the least surprised if Germans learning Gallo- Romance would equate the foreign [ts_m] with their [T], especially if there wasn’t yet any /ts/ in their Germanic language. The biggest problem to me is what they’d make of [S]. There was perhaps no x to equate it with any more, since Old High German consistently keeps /h/ from Germanic *x and /x/ from Germanic *k distinct, in which case I’d have [S] merge with /s_a/ in substratization. OTOH with a time of contact as early as the first century I’d slate [S] to be equated with *x and then develop to a /h/ distinct from the lost Latin *h.

I have wondered for long how k’ merged with tj in Gallo- and Ibero-Romance and come to the conclusion that it was not via a progression k; > c > tS > ts but rather that k’ merged with tj directly. It is believable in that at least to the naked ear the two palatalized sounds k’ and t’ sound much more similar to each other than the non-palatalized k and t. But how come then that when g’ and d’ merge they both become /dZ/ and not both /dz/? Perhaps simply because d’ was so infrequent to begin with? The variant spellings DAZA and DAIA for the same name suggest that merger in some direction did happen. An older generation of Romanists thought that g’ in all positions went through a [j] stage before becoming /dZ/, and that this together with a prestige pronunciation of the letter z as d’ worked against a merger. It is notable that the lenited reflex of k’ is dz but that of g’ is [j]!

I wonder how Romance lengthening of vowels in stressed open syllables — in Iberian of all stressed vowels — and subsequent diphthongization would affect Northern Romance. The rising diphthongization of low mid [E:] and [O:] to /ie/ and /uo/ or similar is well nigh universal in Romance, but Old French also had high mid [e:] and [o:] become /ei/ and /ou/. Since OHG had both types of diphthong it is tempting to copy the Old French pattern in Northern Romance. OTOH Germanic had a very different vowel system from the VL one, so that it seems moot whether Northern Romance would preserve the distinction between two heights of mid vowels or merge them in the first place. Of course New High Germanican would still acquire ei and au from diphthongization of /i:/ and /u:/ at a later time. It is also moot whether open syllable lengthening would produce any minimal pairs. In Rhodrese I created at least the potential by letting open syllable lengthening precede syncope.

Related posts

• MGR-Northern Romance (2)
• Rhodrese will still be Rhodrese! (0)

With the sound changes now more or less in place, I’ve also been working on some grammar basics (pronouns, articles, etc) but I’m too tired to write up all of that right now!

Pete

Well, since I’m playing around with a Romanised ‘High German,’ and you are interested in a Roman Low German / English analogue, it seems obvious we need a common Proto-dialect, which I think of as “Northern Romance.” It’s clear these northern dialects are going to evolve from Western/Gallo-Romance, with a POD sometime in the first 2 or 3 centuries CE.

I’ve been working on phonologies and a ‘GMP’, as you know. To take us up to the point where our high and low dialects diverge sometime in the middle of the first millennium, I have two stages. The first stage applies the sound changes attested in VL to the CL lexicon. Not ideal, as the one language does not evolve from the other of course, but you need to make the best of what you have. Naturally, where there are known CL/VL differences I’ve gone with the VL and slotted it in as best I can.

The second stage considers the phoneme inventories of VL and Germanic and melds the one to the other. Hopefully, the result is the sort of Latin pronunciation that might come about from the substantial Germanic substrate that would have existed. Once that has been achieved it then continues onward, applying the OTL West Germanic sound changes (I then continue further with AHD, MHD and NHD changes, but these of course are irrelevant in the Low German areas).

Stage 1 (CL > VL, BCE up to circa 200 CE)

/j/ > /jj/ V _ V

/a, a:/ > /A/

/e, ai/ > /E/

/i, oi, e:/ > /e/

/o/ > /O/

/u, o:/ > /o/

/u:/ > /U/

/i:/ > /I/

/au/ > /o/ _ C

/I, E, e/ > /j/ _ V

/I, E, e/ > /j/ V _

V > 0 C _ /l, r/

/E/ > /e/ _ $ /i/ #

/O/ > /o/ _ $ /i/ #

/e/ > /I/ _ $ /i/ #

/o/ > /U/ _ $ /i/ #

/h/ > 0

/m/ > 0 _ # Except monosyllables

/w/ > /B/ (i.e. semivocalic /) /kw, gw/ not affected