Re: Old French

le ven 12-07-2002 à 06:59, Abrigon Gusiq a écrit :
> It seems some say that Old French dates from c.850ad or c.987ad. Though
> what different languages did the great-grandsons of Charlemagne/Karl die
> Gross speak? They spoke different languages, one German in nature
> (Frankish?), the other Gallo-Roman or Old French!?
Henriette Walter (a french linguist), as a joke, wrote that the great
paradox of French people is that they are frankish people who believe
they are gaulish, and who speak a Romance language.
I think it is really hard to say which  langugage our ancestors speak,
as they speak a lot!!! My grand'parents were spoken provençal by their
parents, they only spoke french because teachers didn't allow anything
but french at school. So There are several forms of French, several
hypotheses about French genesis, but first there are also a lot of
different languages (celtic as breizhoneg in Brittany, germanic or
german-influenced in the North East, romance in the South, Euskara in
the very South West...).
The older form of French (XIIth century), comes from Paris and from a
form called Francique  by philologists. It expanded whith the Kingdom
through Centre and Languedoc; then (XVth century) through Provence and
Aquitaine; during the XVII° century,  Navarre, Béarn, Pays Basque,
Roussillon, Cerdagne, Franche-Comté, a part of Alsace and french
Flandre. Then, during the XVIIIth, it was Lorraine , Corse and Comtat
Venaissin.
However, the "true birth" of French is certainly the Ordonnance de
Villers-Côterets, in 1539, by which François 1st  ordered that laws and
juridic stuff be only written "en langaige françois et non
autrement"("only in french language" ).
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.

Julien.

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