Celtic became Romanized after the Roman conquest in the first century of our era. The _lingua vulgaris_ used by the soldiers and traders sent to colonize the country gradually displaced native vernaculars. By the end of the fourth century Celtic as a language had practically disappeared from the entire country. The new Romance language had taken such strong root in the land that successful invaders of French soil were henceforth to adopt it and abandon their native tongue. Thus Visigoths, Burgundians and Franks who invaded Gaul in the fifth century forsook their own language and employed the speech of the people they had conquered. This was a result of the superior intellectual qualities of the conquered race. The Franks in particular, a Teutonic people, established themselves firmly enough in northern Gallo-Roman territory to confer the name of France to the whole region, although their endeavors to settle in southern France had been unsuccessful. It required fully six centuries for the language of the Roman colony of Gaul to become definitely differentiated from Latin. By the seventh century the idiom spoken in France was known as Romance or Romanic. TABLE I DISTRIBUTION OF LANGUAGES IN SWITZERLAND ACCORDING TO THE CENSUS OF 1910 CANTON German French Italian Romansh Others Aargau 222,571 1,532 6,197 72 389 Appenzell A/R 56,505 134 1,285 27 68 Appenzell I/R 14,469 32 97 4 6 Basel City 127,491 3,601 4,021 138 1,062 Basel 72,809 1,124 2,548 27 114 Berne 528,554 104,412 12,247 172 2,198 Fribourg 42,634 94,378 1,911 42 586 Geneva 17,456 120,413 12,641 196 5,058 Glarus 31,733 66 1,306 69 120 Graubünden 58,465 838 20,963 37,147 2,441 Lucerne 161,083 1,316 4,808 126 365 Neuchâtel 17,305 111,597 3,747 50 816 Nidwalden 13,329 31 319 5 6 Obwalden 16,738 66 330 28 23 St. Gall 282,722 1,099 17,584 456 967 Schaffhausen 43,795 379 1,712 18 193 Schwyz 56,311 258 1,612 64 60 Soleurne 111,373 2,818 2,570 21 179 Tessin 5,829 1,008 147,790 131 457 Thurgau 125,876 593 8,328 89 291 Uri 20,937 80 1,053 56 15 Valais 37,351 80,316 10,412 16 165 Vaud 34,422 264,222 16,694 220 8,194 Zug 26,406 217 1,454 26 71 Zürich 472,990 5,714 19,696 634 4,601 --------- ------- ------- ------ ------