Talk:History of French

I am no specialist at all on this question, but some affirmations on the list of phonological changes supposedly attributed to the Gaulish influence appear to me highly dubious. For example,I've been told that the fronting from [u] to [y], attributed here to Gaulism, was rather a modification that resulted by the influence of the Franks misprononciation, and this fact explains why it is not present in Spanish or Italian. Moreover, the Old French page indicates that this fronting happened essentially in Medieval time, well after Gauls adopted Vulgar Latin. It is as though the contributor that attributed the fronting to [y] to the Gauls concluded this simply on the fact that Gauls had the [y] prononciation, but it could well be possible that the sound [y] was lost in France, but was later re-introduced.

This is one example, but many of the items in this list appear dubious as well, in part because they are not present in Spanish, which also resulting of a Celtic-speaking people switching to Latin. On the Spanish language page, only (1) the frication and deletion of voiced intervocalic consonants (g, d, b) and (2) the palatalization of jod [j] to [dj] to [ž]; ego > je are mentionned as changes in vulgar Latin influenced by the Celtic-speaking origin of the Spaniard. Moreover, on the Old French page, there is also a section called From Vulgar Latin to Old French, which summarize the linguistic changes that happened, and this list does not necessarily corresponds well to the one summarized here.

It would be cool if someone could make Wikipedia more coherent on this specific issue. Marcus wilby73 21:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have waiting for a full week, and I don't have any response, so I am making some changes myself, based on the few notions that I know. It makes no sense to leave this page contradict the Old French page. Don't hesitate to make corrections.Marcus wilby73 22:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I would like to point out that even the whole idea of Gaulish having this [y] pronunciation is purely speculative. I know of no single reason to assume that what was written in Gaulish with <u> was actually pronounced [y]. The true reason that this was speculated was the supposed close relationship of Gaulish with British Celtic, for British Celtic apparently changed [u:] to [y:] not just once, but a second time later in its early history. This does not prove anything for the pronunciation of Gaulish, however.

However, the explanation attributing the change to the Franks strikes me as equally baseless and unlikely, because all Germanic languages have long as well as short [u] in their phonemic system. It is true that almost all West Germanic and Scandinavian languages (Dutch seems to be an exception, perhaps due to Romance influence) developped an [y] phoneme contrasting with [u] in the course of the Early Middle Ages, as a result of palatal umlaut, but this in no way explains the French change as a "Germanic accent" as there was always a [u] in the native phonemic system of bilingual Germanic speakers to substitute the Romance [u] with. The French [y] is simply unexplained – as most sound changes are, in fact.

We do not even know exactly when the [y] appeared. All we know is that it (or at least a sound different from [u] and all the other vowels at the time; it could conceivably also have been [ʉ], for example) must have already existed in Old French ca. the 12th or 13th century when [o] closed to [u]. Sure enough, the fronting affected the early Germanic loans, so it would seem to postdate them; however, directly after the fronting of [u] to [y] (or whatever) and before the raising of [o], there was only a vowel [y] (or whatever) in the language, but no [u] to contrast with it, apparently not even allophonically, so it is equally possible that the fronting happened very early in the history of French (possibly even before the Frankish conquest), and sound substitution of foreign [u] with Old French (or even Proto-French) [y] is the reason for the change happening in loanwords, as well. So it is completely uncertain if the change is a late phenomenon of the classical Old French period or perhaps dates all the way back to Proto-French.

It is very difficult (though perhaps not impossible) to find plausible phonetical or morphological "Celticisms" in Romance, and the affrication and fricativisation phenomena mentioned above are dubious, as well. (Especially the former.) The main problem is that most people who try to find influences from Gaulish in French know too little about either language and its history. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

According to Pierre-Yves Lambert^[1] There is only one phonetical shift from Latin to Gaulish, that we can find in French. That is the way the Latin consonant groups /ps/ and /pt/ were assimilated to the groups /ks/ and /kt/, that is to say reduced to /Xs, Xt/, then to /i̠s, i̠t/. There are clearly attested in Gaulish inscriptions f.e. paropsides written paraxsidi (La Graufesenque). In French : capsa > *kaxsa > *CACSA > caisse, or captīuus > *kaxtivus > *CACTIVU > Old French chaitif (modern chétif), like FACTU > fait, LACTU > lait. Nortmannus (talk) 18:10, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Very interesting, thanks for pointing this out! I was not aware of this phenomenon; in which Romance varieties exactly is it found? Only in Central French?

Peter Schrijver has circulated a list with other possible Celticisms in Romance, actually, one of which was the conversion of word-final /m/ to /n/ in monosyllabic forms (as in rien < rem), but at least this change would also seem quite early and typologically too trivial, in any case, to ascribe it to Celtic; it is very difficult to find clear, compelling examples, as I explained above. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:33, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

The 'Modern french' section is stolen almost entirely from http://www.french-language-guide.com/french/history.asp 81.158.238.224 20:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it is that site which has taken its material from the Wikipedia article. - NYArtsnWords (talk) 16:57, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm rather surprised that the Franks had, apparently, such a small influence on French. When they moved into "Gaul," did they adopt the Vulgar Latin spoken there as more than a lingua franca? RobertM525 (talk) 19:32, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I do not think this influence has to be neglected. The Langue d'oïl is the oldest romance language (± 200 years before the others). Northern France became the first place in the Romania, where it was necessary to write the local vulgar language, because nobody could understand Latin any more. The epithaph of Gregory V in 999 mentions that the pope was trilingual : usus francisca, vulgari and voce latina.^[1] There are numerous reasons, that explain the birth of the langue d'oïl and among them, the Germanic accent that turned the tonic vowel into a voiced one, that finally turned into a diphtong, and weaker the final vowel, that we do not hear any more.^[2] Nortmannus (talk) 19:19, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Much of this page is absolute, total garbage. For example, the whole set of sound and grammatical changes supposedly due to Celtic substratum influence is just junk. It looks to me like a lot of original research done by an amateur linguist, looking at similarities between Celtic and Old French and therefore concluding that there must be a connection. In reality, proving such connections is extremely hard, and most researchers in the field are doubtful of all such claims, especially for common sound changes, which many of these are. When I have a bit more time I'm going to delete all the junk. In any case a lot of info in Old French should go here instead. Benwing (talk) 03:00, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't apply any more since I've totally rewritten the article. Benwing (talk) 06:10, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

T. F. Hoad in English Etymology writes, that farm comes from Middle English ferme, borrowed itself from French. Where does this Old English form come from ?? The Anglo-Latin firma comes from Latin. The French verb fermer is already attested in a close meaning as a figurative meaning of French fermer : to close and ferme < firmus, stable, etc. How could have such a word as feorm [?] be latinized in firma ? and firma would have given in English *firm, not ferme or farm. Nortmannus (talk) 12:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I controlled it : the word feorm or fiorm existed in OE : food, supplies, advantage...and turned to farm in ME. It is clearly considered as a dead word. Nortmannus (talk) 12:27, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I think Julius Caesar's name is spelled incorrectly in section 1.1. Does someone beg to differ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.252.116.121 (talk) 23:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

It is perfectly acceptable to use the ligature æ in place of the digraph ae in Latin words, see here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:39, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

In case any anonymous editors want to explain why the unknown/undocumented language of the Belgae with zero relevance for the evolution of French deserves to be mentioned in this article… this is the place to do it. In the meantime, unmotivated additions to the article will continue to be removed. CapnPrep (talk) 00:59, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The ordering of the /e/ > /ɛ/ change is problematic in the (awesome) table of vowel outcomes. To wit, the word-final development of "Later Old French" /ɛ/ seems to be being sensitive to what its origin was: old /æ ie ai/ go one way, /ɛ e/ another. That shouldn't happen (unless this was some big spelling pronunciation phenomenon or the like -- surely not?). So there should be some /e/ or something else in the Later Old French column, at least finally. But where? 4pq1injbok (talk) 04:07, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

The table may be somewhat misleading here, but Proto-French /ai ɛ e/ never end up in word-final position in OF as far as I'm aware, so Benwing simply omitted the word-final development for these. OF /ɛ/ when in word-final position – in OF, that is – simply generally becomes /e/ in Modern French. Whenever you see Modern French /ɛ/ word-finally, there was a closing consonant in OF. The development which turned open /ɛ/ into closed /e/ in open syllables is mentioned in the section "To Late Old French, c. 1250–1300 AD".

Another point: The development of word-final Gallo-Romance *a is omitted both in the tables and the list of sound changes. It was very simple, however: Gallo-Romance *-a > OF [ə], obviously at some point after the palatalisation of velars before /a/, hence shortly before the earliest texts. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I see, thanks. I wonder if there's a slick nonmisleading way to put that in the table. Probably not. 4pq1injbok (talk) 22:49, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Adding a footnote, perhaps? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 08:56, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This article was becoming too long, and it had two preety differentiated sections, so I'm moving all the phonological changes to a new page, as it's been done in other languages. Thanks!--Fauban 11:42, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

There is a [citation needed] at the end of this section. Is it possible to track the writer and ask for one? Muleiolenimi (talk) 22:07, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

OMG, who is asleep at the switch??? French is N O T a Japanese Language derived from the Chinese spoken in Northern France. Ack!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C2:1300:F7C:409B:3ACF:C9C1:FB4D (talk) 00:41, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Heh. That was an amusing bit of vandalism. Sort of madlibish. I just now reverted it. — Eru·tuon 06:37, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Afaicr, most people in France did not speak any standardized variety of French before around the middle of the nineteenth century, and millions of people speaking languages like Occitan, Provencal, Breton, Gascon, Alsatian, Catalan, Basque, or others spoke no French so people from different parts of the country could not easily communicate. The primacy of French happened over time, of course, Unless there's another article about French in France, this article should be expanded to cover this important issue about the history of French in France. The article Language policy in France talks about it briefly, and so does France in the long nineteenth century but neither have a full treatment. Either this article, or one of those, should cover this important feature of the development of French in France. Mathglot (talk) 00:26, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:History of English which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:45, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:History of English which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 13:15, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

The loss of the neuter was beginning as early as Petronius. There are examples in the dialogues of the Cena, and there's more in the Latin of Apuleius. Fuficius Fango (talk) 16:10, 8 June 2021 (UTC)