Old French

Old French
Ancien Français
Franceis, François, Romanz
Pronunciation[fɾãnˈt͡sɛjs], [fɾãnˈt͡sɔjs], [ruˈmãnt͡s]
RegionNorthern France, parts of Belgium (Wallonia), Scotland, England, Ireland, Kingdom of Jerusalem, Principality of Antioch, County of Edessa, Kingdom of Cyprus
EraEvolved into Middle French by the mid-14th century
Early forms
Language codes
ISO 639-2fro
ISO 639-3fro
Glottologoldf1239
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Old French (franceis, françois, romanz; French: ancien français) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th[2] and the mid-14th century. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a group of Romance dialects, mutually intelligible yet diverse. These dialects came to be collectively known as the langues d'oïl, contrasting with the langues d'oc, the emerging Occitano-Romance languages of Occitania, now the south of France.

The mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of Middle French, the language of the French Renaissance in the Île-de-France region; this dialect was a predecessor to Modern French. Other dialects of Old French evolved themselves into modern forms (Poitevin-Saintongeais, Gallo, Norman, Picard, Walloon, etc.), each with its linguistic features and history.

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]

  1. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2022-05-24). "Oil". Glottolog. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Archived from the original on 2022-10-08. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
  2. ^ Battye, Adrian; Hintze, Marie-Anne; Rowlett, Paul (2000). The French Language Today (2nd ed.). Routledge. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-136-90328-1. [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it was deemed no longer make to think of the varieties spoken in Gaul as Latin. Although a precise date can't be given, there is a general consensus (see Wright 1982, 1991, Lodge 1993) that an awareness of a vernacular, distinct from Latin, emerged at the end of the eighth century.]
  3. ^ Kinoshita 2006, p. 3.