Gothic Romance

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Gothic Romance

Building off of the original idea of what Valthungian was supposed to be, before it became what it is instead, Gothic Romance is actually a collection of three languages in several stages. It starts with the idea that the Goths who sacked Rome in 410ᴀᴅ continued to speak Gothic (or a close relative thereof) in parallel with Latin, rather than just switching to Latin completely as they did. This gave way to Old Valthungian, much as described, but from there, the development changes course from what eventually leads to Middle Valthungian, and by around 1200ᴀᴅ we find ourselves in a remote northern Italian town where the locals all speak both a form of Gothic and a form of post-Vulgar Latin which come to have a roughly equivalent phonology. From this point, the two languages exist in tandem, borrowing words back and forth between them until eventually we end up with Gothic Romance. Is it a Romance language with a lot of Gothic vocabulary? Maybe. Is it a Germanic language with a lot of Latin vocabulary? Maybe. Is it a creole? Probably not, but also maybe. Is it dark and spooky and probably something that vampires would speak if they were feeling particularly poetic? Definitely.

Gothic Romance is the result of the evolution and gradual merging of two historic languages, Italian Gothic (a 13ᵗʰ-century descendant of Old Valthungian) and a yet-unnamed Romance language (possibly of the Rhaeto-Romance or Gallo-Italic persuasion; a 13ᵗʰ-century descendant of Vulgar Latin).