Old French
The region where Old French was spoken natively roughly extended to the northern half of the Kingdom of France and its vassals (including parts of the Angevin Empire), and the duchies of Upper and Lower Lorraine to the east (corresponding to modern north-eastern France and Belgian Wallonia), but the influence of Old French was much wider, as it was carried to England and the Crusader states as the language of a feudal elite and commerce.
[3] The area of Old French in contemporary terms corresponded to the northern parts of the Kingdom of France (including Anjou and Normandy, which in the 12th century were ruled by the Plantagenet kings of England), Upper Burgundy and the Duchy of Lorraine.
They include Angevin, Berrichon, Bourguignon-Morvandiau, Champenois, Franc-Comtois, Gallo, Lorrain, Norman, Picard, Poitevin, Saintongeais, and Walloon.
[12] Such a radical change had the effect of rendering Latin sermons completely unintelligible to the general Romance-speaking public, which prompted officials a few years later, at the Third Council of Tours, to instruct priests to read sermons aloud in the old way, in rusticam romanam linguam or 'plain Roman[ce] speech'.
[13] As there was now no unambiguous way to indicate whether a given text was to be read aloud as Latin or Romance, various attempts were made in France to devise a new orthography for the latter; among the earliest examples are parts of the Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia.
Welsh ceffyl, Breton kefel),[14]: 96 yielding ModF cheval, Occitan caval (chaval), Catalan cavall, Spanish caballo, Portuguese cavalo, Italian cavallo, Romanian cal, and, by extension, English cavalry and chivalry (both via different forms of [Old] French: Old Norman and Francien).
An estimated 200 words of Gaulish etymology survive in Modern French, for example chêne 'oak tree' and charrue 'plough'.
[16] The consonant clusters /ps/ and /pt/ shifted to /xs/ and /xt/, e.g. Lat capsa > *kaxsa > caisse (≠ Italian cassa) or captīvus > *kaxtivus > OF chaitif[16] (mod.
[17] Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including oui,[18] the word for "yes"),[19] sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence,[20][21] and influences in conjugation and word order.
[25] It is the result of an earlier gap created between Classical Latin and its evolved forms, which slowly reduced and eventually severed the mutual intelligibility between the two.
The first noticeable influence is the substitution of the Latin melodic accent[clarification needed] with a Germanic stress[27] and its result was diphthongization, differentiation between long and short vowels, the fall of the unaccented syllable and of the final vowels: Additionally, two phonemes that had long since died out in Vulgar Latin were reintroduced: [h] and [w] (> OF g(u)-, ONF w- cf.
[29] The earliest documents said to be written in the Gallo-Romance that prefigures French – after the Reichenau and Kassel glosses (8th and 9th centuries) – are the Oaths of Strasbourg (treaties and charters into which King Charles the Bald entered in 842): Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa ...
During the Early Modern period, French was established as the official language of the Kingdom of France throughout the realm, including the langue d'oc–speaking territories in the south.
It was only in the 17th to 18th centuries – with the development especially of popular literature of the Bibliothèque bleue – that a standardized Classical French spread throughout France alongside the regional dialects.
The material and cultural conditions in France and associated territories around the year 1100 triggered what Charles Homer Haskins termed the "Renaissance of the 12th century", resulting in a profusion of creative works in a variety of genres.
[30] The oldest and most celebrated of the chansons de geste is The Song of Roland (earliest version composed in the late 11th century).
Inspired by the Provençal poets, lyric poetry spread to their Northern French counterparts, who instead spoke langues d'oïl and were known as trouvères.
[citation needed] By the late 13th century, the poetic tradition in France had begun to develop in ways that differed significantly from the troubadour poets, both in content and in the use of certain fixed forms.
The best-known poet and composer of ars nova secular music and chansons of the incipient Middle French period was Guillaume de Machaut.
Discussions about the origins of non-religious theater (théâtre profane)—both drama and farce—in the Middle Ages remain controversial, but the idea of a continuous popular tradition stemming from Latin comedy and tragedy to the 9th century seems unlikely.
Mystery plays were eventually transferred from the monastery church to the chapter house or refectory hall and finally to the open air, and the vernacular was substituted for Latin.
A large body of fables survive in Old French; these include (mostly anonymous) literature dealing with the recurring trickster character of Reynard the Fox.
Among the earliest works of rhetoric and logic to appear in Old French were the translations of Rhetorica ad Herennium and Boethius' De topicis differentiis by John of Antioch in 1282.
In northern Italy, authors developed Franco-Italian, a mixed language of Old French and Venetian or Lombard used in literary works in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Old French was constantly changing and evolving; however, the form in the late 12th century, as attested in a great deal of mostly poetic writings, can be considered standard.
[36] Charles li reis, nostre emperedre magnes, Set anz toz pleins at estét en Espaigne.
Murs ne citét n'i est remés a fraindre, Fors Sarragoce qu'est en une montaigne; Li reis Marsilies la tient, ki Deu nen aimet, Mahomet sert ed Apolin reclaimet: Ne·s poet guarder que mals ne l'i ataignet!
[37] ˈt͡ʃarləs li ˈre͜is, ˈnɔstr‿empəˈræðrə ˈmaɲəs ˈsɛt ˈant͡s ˈtot͡s ˈple͜ins ˈað esˈtæθ en esˈpaɲə ˈtræs k‿en la ˈmɛr konˈkist la ˈtɛr alˈta͜iɲə t͡ʃasˈtɛl ni ˈaθ ki dəˈvant ˈly͜i rəˈma͜iɲəθ ˈmyrs nə t͡siˈtæθ n‿i ˈɛst rəˈmæs a ˈfra͜indrə ˈfɔrs saraˈgot͡sə k‿ˈɛst en ˈynə monˈtaɲə li ˈre͜is marˈsiʎəs la ˈti͜ɛnt, ki ˈdɛ͜u nən ˈa͜iməθ mahoˈmɛt ˈsɛrt eð apoˈlin rəˈkla͜iməθ nə‿s ˈpu͜ɛt gwarˈdær kə ˈmals nə l‿i aˈta͜iɲəθ Charles the king, our great emperor, Has been in Spain for seven full years.
No wall or city is left to destroy, Other than Saragossa, which lies atop a mountain; King Marsilie is its master, he who loves not God, He serves Mohammed and worships Apollo: [Still] he cannot prevent harm from reaching him!
For example, the OF verb laver 'to wash' (Lat lavāre) is conjugated je lef, tu leves, il leve in the present indicative and je lef, tu les, il let in the present subjunctive, in both cases regular phonological developments from Latin indicative lavō, lavās, lavat and subjunctive lavem, lavēs, lavet.
