Questioning of the elite dominance theory

[Rick Mc Callister]

	Ideology and cultural dominance may be a key. Most Germanic tribes
tended to merely replace the local elite while respecting a variation of
the existing system. The Goths and Franks were Christians (albeit Arianist)
and attempted to maintain the same structures through an aparteid-like
social hierarchy. The Turks were also a small minority elite but they
welcomed anyone into their fold who converted to Islam. This probably made
the difference

>I do not think elite dominance is enough for a conquered people to adopt the
>invaders language, sure they will adopt some words from the invading language
>and change the conquered peoples language, depends if the invaders or the
>invaded are more advanced than another. In those cases where a small elite
>domaites over a conquerored nation (i.e. the Franks in Gaul, Germanic
>Tribes in
>Italy and Spain, Mongols and Tartars in Russia) these invading cultures where
>just absorbed into the local culture.  People only adopt the language of
>invader as a primary tongue because lots of peoples of the invaders actually
>come to their homeland and make a statement like this <B>"adopt out language,
>we are here to stay!, if you do not like it go somewhere else"</B>. In the
>moments where invader languages replaced the languages of the conquered,
>Slavic
>over the various languages of Eastern Europe, Indo-European over the pre Indo
>european languages of Europe in the 4th to 3rd Millennium BC, Anglo-Saxons
>over
>the Welsh, Turks over the Greeks in Anatolia and the Indo-Aryans over the
>Dravidian speaking people's of Northern India. We have seen huge migrations of
>the invaders come to the lands they conquered, not just replacing the elite of
>the society, however huge sections of it. The main question is how much of
>invaded population would the Invaders have to make up to impose their language
>onto the invaded people's

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701