Re: Old French

En réponse à julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...>:

> The older form of French (XIIth century), comes from Paris and from a
> form called Francique  by philologists.
Oops! Francique never referred to a Romance language. Your philologists'd
better go back to school! Francique was a Germanic language (the ancestor of
Flemish, Dutch and some Western German "dialects") which had some influence on
the Gallo-Roman dialects that became French.

And your definition of French is a bit too strict. Old French refers to all the
dialects of oïl, as opposed to the dialects of oc (provençal) and of si. As
such, it refers also to Anglo-Norman and Picard, and can be traced back until
the 11th century. You are only talking about the history of Modern French and
where it comes from. But Old French and Middle French are different things.

> So, the (most common) language spoken about the Xth was what is called
> Roman (this gave the word roman "novell" because books were written in
> this language ;)), but is not French. I read the Chanson de Rolland,
> but
> it was translated into French, I could have understood it otherwise.
>
Very true. But Old French is not French either, it's an umbrella name for all
the dialects of oïl after the XIth century.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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