What impact did the migration of Germanic tribes have on languages in the rest of Europe?

Question

I am currently looking for information about the migration of the Germanic tribes, and especially it's effects on European languages, or other languages.

Google Search provided me information about the migration itself, but not about the effects of Germanic migration on language.

Answers will be helpful, but sources would enable me to extend my research.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because a request for sources is off topic. — Tom Au, Nov 30 '17 at 06:36
After extensive discussion on meta, we've determined that most source request questions are out of scope. Your question is unlikely to result in a canonical source, and is therefore likely to be closed as out of scope. I'm going to offer a friendly revision to try to keep you in scope, but get you the answer you need. — MCW, Nov 30 '17 at 09:14
I'm reminded of the quote French is what happens when Germans learn Latin from @NSNoob's answer to a similar question on here. — sempaiscuba, Nov 30 '17 at 13:56
Unclear / too broad. The effect on Latin was negligible. The effect on German, on the other hand... — DevSolar, Nov 30 '17 at 14:12
A wee bit more clarification might be nice. Are you looking for info on loanwords and grammar changes to non-Germanic languages? Or are you interested in where Germanic is spoken today, and what languages used to be in those places before Germanic languages displaced them? Are you perhaps only interested in the migrations that occurred prior to the collapse of the western Roman Empire, or are we talking all migrations from the Proto-Germanic period (750BCish) onward? — T.E.D., Nov 30 '17 at 15:36

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 30 '17 at 14:16

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This topic is described in detail in Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler. It includes references to his sources.

Short version: relatively little, and we're not really sure why. Germanic Tribes were mostly assimilated wherever they settled.

The only exception is England - most likely due to the plague wiping out everyone else.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/166433.Empires_of_the_Word

edited Nov 30 '17 at 14:16

Semaphore

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Kargathia

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I believe this is the correct answer - Germanic speakers were largely assimilated with the exception of England, and for a while at least, in Crimea. But I think your post would be improved by including a little more details from the book. – Semaphore Nov 30 '17 at 14:16
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@Semaphore Noted. I'll dig up the book when I get home. – Kargathia Nov 30 '17 at 14:43
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@Semaphore - I find it kind of tautoligical. (Not blaming the poster for that. I suspect this is a faithful reporting of Ostler's work). As a people they likely all originated in Scandinavia somewhere. They were assimilated where they were assimilated, but obviously in Germany they were not. – T.E.D. Nov 30 '17 at 15:24
Which plague in which year? – KorvinStarmast Nov 30 '17 at 19:41
@KorvinStarmast The plague of Justinian, 6th and 7th century. – Kargathia Nov 30 '17 at 20:09
Please add that specificity to your response via an edit. Thanks. :) That time period provides some context to your answer as well ... – KorvinStarmast Nov 30 '17 at 20:11
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French has a lot of German roots – Gort the Robot Nov 30 '17 at 20:30
Such as, the name of the country and its language. – kimchi lover Nov 30 '17 at 22:52
@StevenBurnap - Those aren't roots, they are leaves. – T.E.D. Dec 01 '17 at 10:25
Perhaps my language was imprecise. French is definitely a romance language, but there was a lot of linguistic influence from the Franks, and other Germanic tribes. (Whereas Italian/Spanish/Portuguese show little Germanic influence.) The question of whether a borrowed word is a "root" or a "leaf" really just shows that plants are lousy analogies for language change. – Gort the Robot Dec 01 '17 at 18:14

AllInOne · Answer 2 · 2017-11-30T20:59:39.803

For Romance languages there is more German influence on the grammar than the vocabulary.

Wikipedia on the history of the development of Vulgar Latin (which led to the Romance languages):

What emerged in Western Europe was a common form of Latin which, though mostly Latin in vocabulary (with many Germanic words introduced), was heavily influenced by Germanic grammar and represented a radical shift away from the original Roman language. For a few centuries this language remained relatively common across most of Western Europe (hence the fact that Italian, Spanish, French, etc. are far more similar to each other than to Classical Latin), though regional dialects were already developing...

What impact did the migration of Germanic tribes have on languages in the rest of Europe?

2 Answers2