History of the French language

[Loaf Warden]

I know a great deal about the history of the English language. I know where it comes from, what phases it has gone through, and why it is still a Germanic language even though it looks so Latinate.

The history of a language like Italian is simple enough to guess. Obviously it's a direct descendant of Latin as it was spoken in the Italian peninsula, changing gradually over the years. It wouldn't be completely inaccurate to call Italian "Modern Latin", though of course nobody does.

But where the heck does French come from?

It's classified as a Romance language, and the Latinate elements are obvious even at a glance. So the answer should be, "It's a direct descendant of Latin as it was spoken in Gaul, changing gradually over the years. It's another dialect of 'Modern Latin'."

But the early history of France confuses the issue for me. As I understand it, the modern nation of France is a direct descendant of the Frankish Empire forged by Charlemagne.

But the Franks were a Germanic people. Germany itself is also a direct descendant of the Frankish Empire, through a different grandson of Charlemagne.

Obviously somebody in France was speaking a Latinate language called French by 1066, because that was the language imposed upon the Anglo-Saxons by the Norman invaders, and that's why English today looks so Latinate. (It would look more like Dutch and especially Frisian today if William had lost.)

So, what language did Charlemagne speak, two and a half centuries before William of Normandy? Did he speak Frankish? Or did he speak a Latinate ancestor of modern French? If he spoke a Latinate language, then when and why had the Franks abandoned their Germanic tongue? And if he did speak Frankish, then how and by what means did Frankish disappear from West Francia to be replaced by a descendant of Latin? Does modern French show signs of Frankish influence? Does Frankish survive today in any form in some small pocket of France the way certain Celtic languages survive in France and England? (I should point out before I get any violent flames that when I say 'England' here, I mean 'England'. It wasn't a sloppy way of saying 'Britain', because I'm not referring to Welsh or Scots Gaelic. I'm referring to Cornish.)

 

[Yago]

Well, that interested me too. But not about France. The answer I got so far, they don't know very exactly. Gallo-roman did in some places stay, while in others it did vanish. And this seems to be dependent from many factors. For one, if a majority of the people are germanic speakers, that does not mean, that they wouldn't adapt gallo-romanic. In some areas they still live mixed parallel, even if those mixes sometimes came too be in the high-middle-ages.

What mix lead to what language in the end is still mostly "dark" as far as I know.

 

[schmiddi]

The Franks coming did not mean the other people already living there would vanish. And these people were at least latinized and spoke some kind of latin. So west of the rhine there was a large population speaking a mixture of latin, frankish and some other languages. But East of the rhine, the roman empire did not have that much influence, so latin did not spread that much. So at the times of charlemagne (or Karl dem Großen) the germanic languages had a much stronger influence on the developing german. That is as far as my humble knowledge goes the reason of german and french faling apart.

Karl maybe spoke latin, the language of the educated.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Just a few remark about English. To me, English is a mix of Norse and French. The grammar is simplified german grammar and the vocabulary comes from the French. Which means by the way a "french" already existed at the time of William the Conqueror.

French is a kind of mix with strong latin roots and other influences. It's not because the Franks invaded the region that people who were there before had left. French is still today really close to Italian. Actually, today's French is mostly the language spoken in Paris during the Middle Age that has spread to the whole country (a bit like English is originally the language of London).

 

[CruddyLeper]

Hey Marla, you forget the old Celtic influences on English - which kind of help to explain how the "Franks" got so Gaulish (who also spoke something like the Ancient Brits, and similar to how Welsh and other Gaelics of today.

So, words like "my" and "me" are Celric, rather than German ("Ich" and "I").

Also remember that, rather than complete population migration, pockets of settlements built up and overlapped in differenct areas. So whereas "eggs" might be the word for the bird embryo's in one district, "Eiren" or "Oeuven" or even "Eifen" might be the word just a tiny distance away - say 20 miles or so for even medieval English.

Don't overlook the Celts.

 

[SeleucusNicator]

French belongs to the Italic branch of the Indo-European family. It descends from the Vulgar Latin spoken in Roman Gaul. When the Franks came, they, like most Germanic tribes who conquered Roman land, adopted the Roman language. Obviously Frankish words and names (not notably Charles, iirc) were added, and, over time, the phonology of the language changed radically. Nasalized vowels were added (Old French actually had far more than modern French does) and, eventually, the end of words ceased to be pronounced, but that took a while. Old French still pronounced the entire word.

Here's a family tree. French is actually closer to Spanish than it is to Italian, but not by much.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Originally posted by CruddyLeper
So, words like "my" and "me" are Celric, rather than German ("Ich" and "I").

It's funny cause "my" and "me" sounds a lot like "ma" and "mon" in french.

Well Seleucus Nicator, don't trust your tree. French is closer to Italian than to spanish. Without speaking neither Spanish nor Italian, I can easily read a text in italian (well maybe not machiavelli but a short text, I can). In spanish, I can't. There are other influences in spanish (maybe arabic) and as a result the spanish vocabulary is more different. I guess in grammar spanish is closer, but in vocabulary it's definitly italian.

Actually, if there are so many languages in Europe, it's mostly because "villages" were very isolated during the Middle Age. The direct effect of that is a Europe divided in many dialects and we had to wait for the 19th century to see the first language "unifications". English was the language of London, French was the language of Paris, Spanish was the language of Madrid. Spanish is actually a very funny country. As you know, the language is actually castillan (In Spain, no one speaks spanish, they speak "castellano"). During the Colonization of South America, many Castillans moved to South America and exported their language. As a result, Castilla is today the most empty region of the country (everyone has left ! it remains no one !).

 

[Yago]

My pen -> Mein stift -> mon stylo
you saw me -> Du hast mich gesehen -> tu m'as vu

to have -> haben -> (h)avoir

my -> mein -> mon
me -> mich -> moi

I'm pretty sure, that my and me have no celtic roots.

je -> ich -> I
tu -> du -> you

all three languages are close.

I think one/two/three/un/deux/troi/eins/zwei/drei are counted as indogerman even. But I may be mistaken.

German itself is a very "latin" language, I've heard. As I can't speak no latin, I can't verify that.

Actually, if there are so many languages in Europe, it's mostly because "villages" were very isolated during the Middle Age. The direct effect of that is a Europe divided in many dialects and we had to wait for the 19th century to see the first language "unifications".

That's actually why Swissgerman is so different from standard German. It remained and wasn't standardized. We just took their dictionaries to write.

 

[Vrylakas]

This is a point I always like to emphasize, that language development is often portrayed as a simple and direct affair with bold lines drawn on charts indicating relationships when in reality it is a long and messy affair, usually with many players and circumstances.

When Charlemagne's realm was divided between his three sons, Charles (west), Lothar (middle) and Louis (east), in the mid-9th century the stage was set for independent French and German (and an interesting middle interloper who would last until the death of Burgundy) linguistic development. And as Marla mentioned, there wasn't just one "French" or "German" language, at least not until the 19th century and its nationalist obsession with standardization. The other versions of a language suddenly became known as "dialects", and were usually discouraged or even suppressed, either through schools (universal education) or through the government.

For Spanish, a language that similar to French has Celtic and Germanic as well as Latin linguistic origins, I would bet the differences developed because after the 8th century conquest of Iberia by the Moslems the various component peoples that would come together to make modern Spaniards - Ibero-Celts, Roman Latins and Germanic Vandals - were isolated from the rest of Christendom. French and Italian peoples were able to trade and contact one another (in relative terms) while the peoples of Iberia had little such contact for centuries with their linguistic bretheren to the east. This is not to discouynt the possible impact and influence of Arabic or Berber on modern Spanish as Marla suggested - Sicilian for instance has just such an influence, not to mention Maltese - but I'm only saying one needn't lok even that far for the differences that separate Spanish from the other Latin-derived languages.

 

[Vrylakas]

My understanding of English philology is that the Celtic languages had minimal impact on the early Anglo-Saxon, that in fact almost all Celt-derived loan words in modern English came later when the English trampled through Wales, Scotland and Ireland and are almost exclusively related to artifacts. This means that these words derived from the most basic form of language borrowing; coming across a new and unknown artifact from another culture and simply adopting their word for it, like how the English word "walkman" has permeated most languages.

 

[SeleucusNicator]

I'm pretty sure, that my and me have no celtic roots.

Yeah, languages don't usually borrow "core" words like that, although English did take the word "the" from Norse.

However, the me/I thing comes from Indo-European, and is evident in all of its daughter languages.

German itself is a very "latin" language, I've heard. As I can't speak no latin, I can't verify that.

German isn't a Latin language, but both German and Latin are Indo-European languages. You can consider Latin to be an Uncle of modern High German: they are not directly related but both have traits of an earlier common ancestor.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

IIRC Most modern languages (not just Romance) went through a period of "(re)latinization" during the 19th century.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Originally posted by schmiddi
The Franks coming did not mean the other people already living there would vanish.

No, but it's comparatively rare for invaders who conquer an existing people to adopt the language of the conquered and entirely lose their own. (People who conquer China tend to do that. But the usual world pattern is for the conquerer's language to become supreme.) When the Normans conquered England, they did eventually stop speaking French . . . but by then they had influenced the English language so much that any text written before the Conquest was no longer recognizable as English. They put such a large Latinate element into the language that English speakers today, without special training, can often guess the meanings of signs written in Spanish or French, while signs written in German or Dutch (languages much more closely related to English) that say the same thing are incomprehensible. Many English speakers even today believe that English is descended from Latin, even though it isn't.

By analogy, my prediction at the time might have been that Latin would survive in Gaul (Latin is remarkably tenacious), but at the expense of being filled with so many Frankish words that by this point in history a French person would find a Germanic language easier to grasp than a Romance language. But of course that didn't happen. French today is thoroughly Romance and, so far as I am aware, displays very little Germanic influence.

That is what surprised me. Charlemagne was the most powerful man in Europe, and his empire was so powerful and influential that not one, but two of Europe's most historically important countries are directly descended from it. Yet Frankish, which I can only assume was his native language, has vanished so completely that it doesn't even seem to have had any effect on French. One is left with the impression that French would pretty much be the same language today even if the Franks had been weak, and the modern nation had descended purely from Romano-Gauls. (Though of course it wouldn't be called 'French', 'français'. It would be something more like 'Gallic', 'gaulois'. The words 'France' and 'French' came from the word 'Frank'. But can that really have been all the influence Charlemagne's tongue had?)

Karl maybe spoke latin, the language of the educated.

He did, but it wasn't his native language. He learned it when he became educated, like everyone else by that point in history. I didn't really consider that as a possible origin of French, because up until quite recently, Latin was the language of the educated all across Europe, and that's had little, if any, effect on local languages.

Originally posted by Marla_Singer
Just a few remark about English. To me, English is a mix of Norse and French. The grammar is simplified german grammar and the vocabulary comes from the French. Which means by the way a "french" already existed at the time of William the Conqueror.

There's actually not all that much Norse influence in English. There is definitely some, and some of the words that came to us from Norse are words we couldn't do without (sky, knife, husband, they, window, dirt, law, and neck, to name a few). But the influence is mainly in vocabulary. The grammar is almost entirely our own.

All the most commonly used words in English, especially grammatical words, are native, but most of the longer substance words are from Latin or French.

Actually, as much as I complain about the Normans, it can be quite useful. We have a lot of Germanic words in our language with Latinate synonyms, and that allows us shades of meaning denied to other languages.

English ---> French ---> Latin
kingly ---> royal ---> regal

Or consider the phrase, 'cordial reception'. It's a Latinate way of rephrasing the native 'hearty welcome'. They mean exactly the same thing, but having both allows us to choose. When we wish to express warmth and intimacy, we can say 'hearty welcome'. When we wish to express kind but distant formality, we can say 'cordial reception'.

Originally posted by SeleucusNicator
Obviously Frankish words and names (not notably Charles, iirc) were added

A fact I had failed to observe. Earlier Frankish kings had Germanic names like 'Clovis' and 'Clothar'. But Charlemagne's name was Charles, which is indeed a Latin name (Carolus). That could simply signify that his father was educated and wanted his son to have a Latin name. But it could also mean that Gallic Latin, in whatever form it had taken by the eighth century, had already taken over as the language of the Franks. And even if it was simply the former, that could mean, by implication, that Latin was in the process of taking over and had become a prestige language among the Franks. (Just as the English, after the Conquest, stopped giving their children English names like Æthelbehrt and Rædwald in favor of Latin or French names like John and Geoffrey.) Perhaps the Frankish language did simply vanish, after all.

Originally posted by Vrylakas
My understanding of English philology is that the Celtic languages had minimal impact on the early Anglo-Saxon

That's correct. The Celtic languages had surprisingly little influence on English, and what influence they had is basically non-essential.

At any rate, 'me' and 'my' are not Celtic. They are native to English.

 

[Yago]

Originally posted by SeleucusNicator


Yeah, languages don't usually borrow "core" words like that, although English did take the word "the" from Norse.

However, the me/I thing comes from Indo-European, and is evident in all of its daughter languages.

Yeah, I thought so. But I am confused in the meaninf of Indo-German/Indo-European. Mainly because of conflicting statements from people pretty sure about the meaning. My initial (school) concept of those: Synonymous. Yet I've stumbled over people, which said, that there is a difference between Indo-European/Indo-German. Which leaves to wonder, what it is.

To the norse part, as LW already stressed, English is not as close to the north-germanic languages as to Dutch and German, isch es nöt ? (is it not)

German isn't a Latin language, but both German and Latin are Indo-European languages. You can consider Latin to be an Uncle of modern High German: they are not directly related but both have traits of an earlier common ancestor. [/B]

Well, I've heard that German (and dutch) is something like in the middle of romanic and germanic languages. It's latin influx isn't as high as in the romanic languages, yet English has nearly no original latin influences. Nearly all came via French. Which means, that German (and Dutch) have some romanic grammar influxes. I'm not sure if that's true, yet I am inclined to belief that, as German grammar seems to be near to French grammar in some cases, while not to English.

 

[Yago]

Earlier Frankish kings had Germanic names like 'Clovis' and 'Clothar'. But Charlemagne's name was Charles, which is indeed a Latin name (Carolus).

"Charlemagne" is in many European languages remembered in their language, i.e. you will find many "charlemagne-squares" all over, in the language there spoken. I am inclined to belief, that the people knew them in the particular language they spoke.

Earlier Frankish kings had Germanic names like 'Clovis' and 'Clothar'. But Charlemagne's name was Charles, which is indeed a Latin name (Carolus).

It may be rare for invader, but not for immigrants. Where I live, you can clearly see layers of location names, changing from gallo-romanic to allemanic. The language-adoption process did take it's time, and actually, the allemanic did in the beginning adapt gallo-romanic. The constant influx of new immigrants made allemanic predominant in the end in some eras, not the "invasion" itself. And in some areas, alleminc would cease to exist in favour of gallo-romanic. I am inclined to belief, that new influx would have been needed in France to offset the seemingly quite succesful gallo-romanic.

 

[SeleucusNicator]

Originally posted by Yago

Yeah, I thought so. But I am confused in the meaninf of Indo-German/Indo-European. Mainly because of conflicting statements from people pretty sure about the meaning. My initial (school) concept of those: Synonymous. Yet I've stumbled over people, which said, that there is a difference between Indo-European/Indo-German. Which leaves to wonder, what it is.

To the norse part, as LW already stressed, English is not as close to the north-germanic languages as to Dutch and German, isch es nöt ? (is it not)

I've never heard Indo-German. Perhaps they mean Proto-Germanic?

You can think of Indo-European as being spoken among a group of people living somewhere in Anatolia or the Caucuses 8,000 to 15,000 years ago. Eventually, groups split off from the main "tribe". These were the Italics (Latin), the Indo-Aryans (Iranians and north Indians), the Slavs, the Baltic people (Latvia, Lithuania, Old Prussia, etc.), the Germanic people, the Anatolians (Hittites), the Tocharians (settled in eastern China and died out), the Celts, the Greeks, and the Armenians.

All of these people originally spoke Indo-European. The dialect of Indo-European they spoke when they broke off is called Proto-whatever (Proto-Germanic, Proto-Slavic, etc.). Eventually, the Proto-languages had important changes (Grimm's law for Germanic, most famously) and became quite different, often splitting into even more languages.

Dutch, German, and English are all "North Sea Germanic" languages. (I could draw and upload the family map for the Germanic languages, but it is by far the most complicated of the Indo-European family and I have finals tomorrow). I'm not sure if you could say any is closer to Norse than any other.

Remember, there is a difference between being related to a language and being influenced by another language. English is just like German's strange cousin that decided to start dressing up like French. However, that doesn't change his genetic makeup.

 

[Vrylakas]

I've never heard Indo-German.

BTW, "Indo-German" is what Germans use for "Indo-European". Indogermanische; they apparently like how that sounds...

 

[Yago]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
I've never heard Indo-German.

BTW, "Indo-German" is what Germans use for "Indo-European". Indogermanische; they apparently like how that sounds...

And I think that's where my confusion stems from. Because I had to do some research for a project in history classes (co-incidently about Germany 1930ies), found that word, used that word, got told by my teacher that's a nah-nah-nah word, that's Indo-European. Later bumped into a colleague (studiying anglistic), talked... I used Indo-European. He said, what should that mean, that's Indo-Germanic and lectured me about it (he's a nice guy, yet a little bit blasé). Since then I am confused and wary about that terminology. Yet, I've seen many posters, particularly from the UK, using Indo-germanic.

And by the way, "germanic", gives me the creeps sometimes. It has a certain vibe to it, that makes one uneasy.

 

[gael]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
My understanding of English philology is that the Celtic languages had minimal impact on the early Anglo-Saxon, that in fact almost all Celt-derived loan words in modern English came later when the English trampled through Wales, Scotland and Ireland and are almost exclusively related to artifacts. This means that these words derived from the most basic form of language borrowing; coming across a new and unknown artifact from another culture and simply adopting their word for it, like how the English word "walkman" has permeated most languages.

I remember reading something about this too. The English language has only a handful of celtic lone words were as the French have hundreds...I think. Its been a while since i read it.

 

[MCdread]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
For Spanish, a language that similar to French has Celtic and Germanic as well as Latin linguistic origins, I would bet the differences developed because after the 8th century conquest of Iberia by the Moslems the various component peoples that would come together to make modern Spaniards - Ibero-Celts, Roman Latins and Germanic Vandals - were isolated from the rest of Christendom. French and Italian peoples were able to trade and contact one another (in relative terms) while the peoples of Iberia had little such contact for centuries with their linguistic bretheren to the east. This is not to discouynt the possible impact and influence of Arabic or Berber on modern Spanish as Marla suggested - Sicilian for instance has just such an influence, not to mention Maltese - but I'm only saying one needn't lok even that far for the differences that separate Spanish from the other Latin-derived languages.

I think your hypothesis is wrong, Spain was never really separated from the rest of Europe, particulary not linguistically. You can see that by comparing the southern french dialects (or former languages as you pointed out...) to catalan, which are very similar, and catalan is also very similar to castillian and portuguese. The cause of the difference is that modern french is the direct descendent of the francien, the language of Île de France in the middle age, which was quite different from the languages of the south. The territory of France was linguisticaly divided between the langues d'Oc in the south and the langues d'Oil in the north, which probably comes from a linguistic substrat that precedes roman domination. The southern langues d'Oc had a greater cultural prestige in the middle ages, particulary provençal, the language of poetry all across western Europe. It was the growing political proeminence of Paris that imposed its language over the other northern languages and later over the more prestigious southern languages. But in fact 200 years ago, only 1/3 of the french spoke french, it was only after the XIX century that two institutions, the school and the army, and the policy of centralization reversed the figures. OTOH, and unlike what someone said, italian is not the direct descendent of latin either. Italian is the dialect of Florence, the language in which Dante and Petrarca wrote. No other italian language reached this cultural prestige, so, the absence of a rival having the political favour (contrary to the french case) meant that the florentine dialect was the chosen one to be the standard italian language after the political unification in the XIX century.

@Loaf Warden: the reason why the franks adopted the language of the lands they ruled was because their language hadn't the prestige of latin. Contrarily to what you say, the norman case seems to me the exception actually. If you look closer, you'll see that Vandals, Suevs and Visigoths didn't change a thing in Iberia and Ostrogoths and Lombards also adopted the italian languages. The germanic peoples just wanted the same lifestyle of the south. Furthermorre, the only stable institution of the time was the Church, and the clergy was definitely made of the local people, and the high positions in the church continued to be occupied by the gallo-roman or hispano-roman aristocracy. Linguisticaly, the germanic invasions only moved the romance-germanic border a bit to the west, but not that much.