Editing French language (section)

== History ==
{{Main|History of French}}
French is a [[Romance language]] (meaning that it is descended primarily from [[Vulgar Latin]]) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include [[Old French]] and [[Middle French]].

=== Vulgar Latin in Gaul ===
Due to Roman rule, Latin was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti.<ref name="Adams" /> This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as [[Franco-Provençal]].

The evolution of Latin in Gaul was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native [[Celtic languages|Celtic]] [[Gaulish language]], which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the [[fall of the Western Roman Empire]].<ref name="Helix">{{Cite book |last=Hélix |first=Laurence |title=Histoire de la langue française |publisher=Ellipses Edition Marketing S.A. |year=2011 |isbn=978-2-7298-6470-5 |page=7}}</ref> Because few Latin speakers settled in rural areas during Roman times, Latin there held little or no social value for the [[peasantry]]; as a result, 90% of the total population of Gaul remained indigenous in origin. The urban aristocracy, who used Latin for trade, education or official uses, would send their children to Roman schools and administered lands for Rome. In the fifth century, at the time of the [[collapse of the Western Roman Empire]], the vast majority of the (predominantly rural) population remained Gaulish speakers. They shifted to Latin as their native speech only one century after the [[Franks|Frankish]] conquest of Gaul, adopting the [[prestige language]] of their urban literate elite. This eventual spread of Latin can be attributed to the social migration from the focus of urban power to village-centred economies and legal [[serfdom]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lodge |first=R. Anthony |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hfanhTGi-z0C |title=French: From Dialect to Standard |date=1993 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-08071-2 |page=46 |access-date=28 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918104347/https://books.google.com/books?id=hfanhTGi-z0C |archive-date=18 September 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Cravens |first=Thomas D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XvODm8_Y6CgC&q=Braudel&pg=PA1 |title=Comparative Historical Dialectology: Italo-Romance Clues to Ibero-Romance Sound Change |date=2002 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |isbn=1-58811-313-2 |page=51 |access-date=11 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918104417/https://books.google.com/books?id=XvODm8_Y6CgC&q=Braudel&pg=PA1 |archive-date=18 September 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Mufwene">{{cite journal |last=Mufwene |first=Salikoko S. |author-link=Salikoko Mufwene |year=2004 |title=Language birth and death |journal=Annu. Rev. Anthropol. |volume=33 |pages=201–222 |doi=10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143852}}</ref>

The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable [[Romanization]].<ref name="Helix" /> Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the [[Vulgar Latin]] dialects that developed into French<ref name="Mufwene" /><ref name="Helix" /> contributing [[loanwords]] and [[calque]]s (including {{lang|fr|oui}},<ref>{{cite book |first=Peter |last=Schrijver |title=Studies in the History of Celtic Pronouns and Particles |location=Maynooth |isbn=9780901519597 |publisher=Department of Old Irish, National University of Ireland |year=1997 |page=15}}</ref> the word for "yes"),<ref name="Savignac" /> sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence,<ref name="PellegriniCeltic">{{cite book |last=Pellegrini |first=Giovanni Battista |year=2011 |chapter=Substrata |editor-last1=Posner |editor-last2=Green |title=Romance Comparative and Historical Linguistics |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |pages=43–74}} Celtic influences on French discussed in pages 64–67. Page 65:"In recent years the primary role of the substratum... has been disputed. Best documented is the CT- > ''it'' change which is found in all Western Romania... more reservations have been expressed about... ū > [y]..."; :"Summary on page 67: "There can be no doubt that the way French stands out from the other Western Romance languages (Vidos 1956: 363) is largely due to the intensity of its Celtic substratum, compared with lateral areas like Iberia and Venetia..."</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Henri |last=Guiter |chapter=Sur le substrat gaulois dans la Romania |title=Munus amicitae. Studia linguistica in honorem Witoldi Manczak septuagenarii |editor-first=Anna |editor-last=Bochnakowa |editor-first2=Stanislan |editor-last2=Widlak |location=Krakow |year=1995}}</ref>{{sfn|Roegiest|2006|p=83}} and influences in conjugation and word order.<ref name="Savignac">{{Cite book |last=Savignac |first=Jean-Paul |title=Dictionnaire Français-Gaulois |publisher=La Différence |year=2004 |location=Paris |page=26}}</ref><ref name="Matas">{{Cite conference |last=Matasovic |first=Ranko |year=2007 |title=Insular Celtic as a Language Area |book-title=The Celtic Languages in Contact: Papers from the Workshop Within the Framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies |page=106}}</ref><ref name="Adams">{{Cite book |last=Adams |first=J. N. |title=The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC – AD 600 |date=2007 |isbn=978-0-511-48297-7|pages=279–289 |chapter=Chapter V – Regionalisms in provincial texts: Gaul |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511482977}}</ref> Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by the gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Polinsky |first1=Maria |last2=Van Everbroeck |first2=Ezra |year=2003 |title=Development of Gender Classifications: Modeling the Historical Change from Latin to French |journal=Language |volume=79 |issue=2 |pages=356–390 |citeseerx=10.1.1.134.9933 |doi=10.1353/lan.2003.0131 |jstor=4489422 |s2cid=6797972| issn = 0097-8507}}</ref>

The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the ''[[Petit Robert]]'',<ref name="SchmittLex">{{Cite journal |first=Christian |last=Schmitt |year=1997 |title=Keltische im heutigen Französisch |journal=Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie |volume=49-50 |pages=814–829|doi=10.1515/zcph.1997.49-50.1.814 }}</ref> which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Müller |first=Bodo |title=Festschrift für Johannes Hubschmid zum 65. Geburtsag. Beiträge zur allgemeinen, indogermanischen und romanischen Sprachwissenschaft. |date=1982 |editor-last=Winkelmann |editor-first=Otto |pages=603–620 |chapter=Geostatistik der gallischen/keltischen Substratwörter in der Galloromania}}</ref> Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life (''chêne'', ''bille'', etc.), animals (''mouton'', ''cheval'', etc.), nature (''boue'', etc.), domestic activities (ex. ''berceau''), farming and rural units of measure (''arpent'', ''lieue'', ''borne'', ''boisseau''), weapons,<ref name=HolmesSchutz30>{{Cite book |first1=Urban |last1=Holmes |first2=Alexander |last2=Herman Schutz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jbjX4ebc2lsC&q=gAULISH&pg=PR5 |title=A History of the French Language |date=June 1938 |publisher=Biblo & Tannen Publishers |isbn=978-0-8196-0191-9 |page=30 |quote="...sixty-eight or more Celtic words in standard Latin; not all of these came down into Romance.... did not survive among the people. Vulgar speech in Gaul used many others... at least 361 words of Gaulish provenance in French and Provençal. These Celtic words fell into more homely types than... borrowings from Germanː agriculture... household effects... animals... food and drink... trees... body -- 17 (''dor'' < ''durnu''), dress... construction... birds... fish... insects... ''pièce'' < *''pettia'', and the remainder divided among weapons, religion, literature, music, persons, sickness and mineral. It is evident that the peasants were the last to hold to their Celtic. The count on the Celtic element was made by Leslie Moss at the University of North Carolina... based on unanimity of agreement among the best lexicographers... |access-date=10 June 2021 |archive-date=18 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918104350/https://books.google.com/books?id=jbjX4ebc2lsC&q=gAULISH&pg=PR5 |url-status=live }}</ref> and products traded regionally rather than further afield.{{sfn|Roegiest|2006|p=82}} This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being the last to hold onto Gaulish.{{sfn|Roegiest|2006|p=82}}<ref name=HolmesSchutz30 />

=== Old French ===
{{Main|Old French}}The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there.<ref name=":02">{{Cite web |title=HarvardKey – Login |url=https://www.pin1.harvard.edu/cas/login;jsessionid=BB951275000142B63AD17A43564E70A5?service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pin1.harvard.edu%2Fpin%2Fauthenticate%2FHUL_ACC_MGMT_SVC%3Bjsessionid%3DBB951275000142B63AD17A43564E70A5 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210813193930/https://www.pin1.harvard.edu/cas/login;jsessionid=BB951275000142B63AD17A43564E70A5?service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pin1.harvard.edu%2Fpin%2Fauthenticate%2FHUL_ACC_MGMT_SVC%3Bjsessionid%3DBB951275000142B63AD17A43564E70A5 |archive-date=13 August 2021 |access-date=16 May 2019 |website=pin1.harvard.edu}}</ref> A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke {{lang|fr|[[langue d'oïl]]}} while the population in the south spoke {{lang|fr|[[langue d'oc]]}}.<ref name=":02" /> Langue d'oïl grew into what is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the late 8th<ref name="French first attested">{{cite book |last1=Battye |first1=Adrian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RnUGCAAAQBAJ&dq=History+of+French+language&pg=PP1 |title=The French Language Today |last2=Hintze |first2=Marie-Anne |last3=Rowlett |first3=Paul |date=2000 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-90328-1 |edition=2nd |pages=12}} [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.]</ref> and mid-14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because [[Old French#Nouns|it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects]].<ref name="Lahousse_2012">{{Cite journal |last1=Lahousse |first1=Karen |last2=Lamiroy |first2=Béatrice |year=2012 |title=Word order in French, Spanish and Italian:A grammaticalization account |url=https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/329255 |url-status=live |journal=Folia Linguistica |language=en |volume=46 |issue=2 |doi=10.1515/flin.2012.014 |issn=1614-7308 |s2cid=146854174 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210427075923/https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/329255 |archive-date=27 April 2021 |access-date=7 January 2021|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The period is marked by a heavy [[superstrate]] influence from the Germanic [[Frankish language]], which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of [[V2 word order]],<ref>Rowlett, P. 2007. The Syntax of French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Page 4</ref> a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabulary<ref>Pope, Mildred K. (1934). From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman Phonology and Morphology. Manchester: Manchester University Press.</ref>) including the impersonal singular pronoun ''on'' (a calque of Germanic ''man''), and the name of the language itself.

Up until its later stages, [[Old French]], alongside [[Old Occitan]], maintained a relic of the old nominal [[case system]] of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated [[diphthong]]s such as ''-eau'' which would later be leveled to monophthongs.{{Citation needed|date=March 2021}}

The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in the [[Oaths of Strasbourg]] and the ''[[Sequence of Saint Eulalia]]'', while [[Medieval French literature|Old French literature]] began to be produced in the eleventh century, with major early works often focusing on the lives of saints (such as the ''Vie de Saint Alexis''), or wars and royal courts, notably including the ''[[Chanson de Roland]]'', [[Matter of Britain|epic cycles focused on King Arthur and his court]], as well as [[Geste de Garin de Monglane|a cycle focused]] on [[William of Gellone|William of Orange]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2021}}

During the period of the [[Crusades]] French became so dominant in the [[Mediterranean Sea]] that it became a ''[[lingua franca]]'' ("Frankish language"), and because of increased contact with the [[Arabs]] during the Crusades, who referred to them{{who?|date=March 2025}} as ''Franj'', numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as ''amiral'' (admiral), ''alcool'' (alcohol), ''coton'' (cotton) and ''sirop'' (syrop), as well as scientific terms such as ''algébre'' (algebra), ''alchimie'' (alchemy) and ''zéro'' (zero).<ref name="google.fr">{{Cite book |last1=Nadeau |first1=Jean-Benoit |author-link=Jean-Benoît Nadeau |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JYDOrzMpgGcC&pg=PT34 |title=The Story of French |last2=Barlow |first2=Julie |author-link2=Julie Barlow |publisher=St. Martin's Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-4299-3240-0 |pages=34ff |access-date=4 August 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240518175328/https://books.google.com/books?id=JYDOrzMpgGcC&pg=PT34#v=onepage&q&f=false |archive-date=18 May 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Middle French ===
{{Main|Middle French}}
Within Old French many dialects emerged but the [[Francien language|Francien]] dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries).<ref name=":02" /> Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect.<ref name=":02" /> Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. [[Robert Estienne]] published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Victor |first=Joseph M. |title=Charles de Bovelles, 1479–1553: An Intellectual Biography |publisher=Librairie Droz |year=1978 |page=28}}</ref> Politically, the first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the [[Aosta Valley]] in 1536, while the [[Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts]] (1539) named French the language of law in the [[Kingdom of France]].

=== Modern French ===
During the 17th century, French replaced [[Latin]] as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations ([[lingua franca]]). It retained this role until approximately the middle of the 20th century, when it was [[International English|replaced by English]] as the United States became the dominant global power following the [[Second World War]].<ref name="andaman.org">[http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm The World's 10 Most Influential Languages]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080312042140/http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm |date=12 March 2008 }}. ''Top Languages''. Retrieved 11 April 2011.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Battye |first1=Adrian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pya2KY8upAUC&pg=PA2 |title=The French Language Today: A Linguistic Introduction |last2=Hintze |first2=Marie-Anne |last3=Rowlett |first3=Paul |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-203-41796-6 |language=en |access-date=2 July 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918104351/https://books.google.com/books?id=pya2KY8upAUC&pg=PA2 |archive-date=18 September 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref> Stanley Meisler of the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' said that the fact that the [[Treaty of Versailles]] was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Meisler |first=Stanley |date=1 March 1986 |title=Seduction Still Works: French – a Language in Decline |work=Los Angeles Times |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-03-01-mn-13048-story.html |access-date=18 October 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150702203738/http://articles.latimes.com/1986-03-01/news/mn-13048_1_french-language/2 |archive-date=2 July 2015}}</ref>

During the [[Grand Siècle]] (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as [[Cardinal Richelieu]] and [[Louis XIV of France|Louis XIV]], enjoyed a period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]|italic=no}} to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France.

Near the beginning of the 19th century, the [[French government]] began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages (''[[patois]]'') spoken in France. This began in 1794 with [[Henri Grégoire]]'s "Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language".<ref>{{cite web |date=18 November 2003 |title=Rapport Grégoire an II |url=http://www.languefrancaise.net/dossiers/dossiers.php?id_dossier=66 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061123134600/http://www.languefrancaise.net/dossiers/dossiers.php?id_dossier=66 |archive-date=23 November 2006 |access-date=11 June 2007 |website=Languefrancaise.net |language=fr}}</ref> When public education was made [[Compulsory education|compulsory]], only French was taught and the use of any other (''patois'') language was punished. The goals of the [[Education in France|public school system]] were made especially clear to the French-speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as [[Occitania]] and [[Brittany]]. Instructions given by a French official to teachers in the [[Departments of France|department]] of [[Finistère]], in western Brittany, included the following: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language".<ref name="Labouysse_2007">{{Cite book |last=Labouysse |first=Georges |title=L'Imposture. Mensonges et manipulations de l'Histoire officielle |publisher=Institut d'études occitanes |year=2007 |isbn=978-2-85910-426-9 |location=France}}</ref> The prefect of [[Basses-Pyrénées]] in the [[Northern Basque Country|French Basque Country]] wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to replace the [[Basque language]] with French..."<ref name="Labouysse_2007" /> Students were taught that their ancestral languages were inferior and they should be ashamed of them; this process was known in the Occitan-speaking region as [[Vergonha]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Joubert |first=Aurélie |year=2010 |title=A Comparative Study of the Evolution of Prestige Formations and of Speakers' Attitudes in Occitan and Catalan |url=https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/54504513/FULL_TEXT.PDF |publisher=University of Manchester}}</ref>