# Old French



## dihydrogen monoxide

If French didn't become a Romance language and the French language would be the continuation of the old French of the Germanic branch. Could that mean that if French were to be
a Germanic language that it would be very close to Fränkish dialect in Germany. So maybe there would have been a chance where French and people who speak Fränkisch could understand each other.


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## symposium

Mmm, it's not like French was a non-Romance language and then it became Romance. Romance languages is the name given to those languages that developed from Latin: French developed from Latin, that's why it's called a Romance language. It is believed that the Franks that invaded France rapidly gave up the use of their own language and started to use that of the general population, just like it happened to the Vikings who settled in Normandy.


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## bearded

Hello
The Frankish language/dialect could not prevail in France for several reasons: the invading Franks were too few, the population already possessed a well estabilshed 'Romance' culture and tradition….: so the Franks adopted Romance/French, not vice-versa.
But yes, had Frankish prevailed, then today's French people would speak a language similar to the dialect in the German region Franken, or possibly similar to Dutch, which is derived from Low Frankish..
However, it's an unreal hypothesis - denied by history (some wise man said: history cannot be made with ''if'').


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## ahvalj

bearded said:


> Hello
> The Frankish language/dialect could not prevail in France for several reasons: the invading Franks were too few, the population already possessed a well estabilshed 'Romance' culture and tradition….: so the Franks adopted Romance/French, not vice-versa.


Yet, the Middle East speaks Arabic, Anatolia speaks Turkish and the north Balkans speak Slavic. All captured by overwhelmingly smaller numbers of invaders.


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## bearded

I appreciate your ironic statement, ahvalj. Can you suggest more convincing reasons?


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## ahvalj

No, I don't have any suggestions. As so often in history, it is governed by hardly generalizable combinations of reasons, much of which we can't analyze. It's like meteorological prophecies only much worse.


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## jmx

ahvalj said:


> As so often in history, it is governed by hardly generalizable combinations of reasons, much of which we can't analyze.


I think we can at least try to analyze them. An example for which we have more information than for those you mention in #4 is Spanish in Mexico. We know for example that when the Spanish arrived, there were a lot of languages in the area, very different among them, and that's still partly true today. That would make Spanish a "lingua franca", not only between the conquerors and the natives, but also among natives themselves. We also know that the link with Spain included regular arrival of Spaniards (civil servants, soldiers, etc.) who didn't know any local language, so Spanish couldn't just vanish. And so on.


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## ahvalj

That's true but this is one case with its own particular circumstances. If we were in 1519 we couldn't be that sure which language would win. After all, Philippines also had a multitude of languages and Spanish as lingua franca.

In the end of the 1st millennium entire Anatolia spoke Greek with pockets of Armenian. A millennium later it speaks Turkish with pockets of Kurdish. Overall, I'd say 95% of the territory the East Roman Empire occupied at its beginning in 395 is now speaking languages of newcomers that by most accounts were less developed and much less numerous than its core population used to be.


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## ahvalj

Concerning the potential fate of victorious Frankish in Gaul. I think we can be sure it would have had _u>y_ (compare Dutch on the Beniluxian and Celtic substrates) and I guess other traits of Celtic and Romance origin, such as lenition and assibilations and perhaps stronger reduction of endings than in actual Franconian, much like English has had. Thus, _**ʧæɪs_ "cheese", _**bru:r_ "brother", _**jev_ "to give" etc.


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## bearded

@ ahvalj
Wouldn't an analysis of_ real_ events make more sense than speculations concerning the features of a possible but _unreal _language, which never existed? On the one side you say we cannot analyze 'much of the historical reasons' for what really happened, and on the other side you start a virtual detailed linguistic analysis of something that never happened.. Don't you think you are being just a little inconsistent (no offense meant)?


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## ahvalj

Well, that was the topic question:


> maybe there would have been a chance where French and people who speak Fränkisch could understand each other



I think rather not, this language would have turned out more para-Germanic, like English vs. Frisian.

Unlike history, where, as we can see, opposite developments actually took place depending on chance, the linguistic evolution, assuming no external force was involved, was more consistent. For example, the change _u>y_ took place _everywhere_ in the region: in Brittonic, entire Gallo-Romance, Dutch and even northern Basque. Moreover, Breton had it twice: first in the pre-Roman period, e. g. _dūnom_>_*dün>_din, and then once again in Brittany, e. g. *rou̯dos>ruz (listen: Forvo).


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## bearded

I see your point, ahvalj, but I feel that most historians would not agree with you on the subject that any historical developments ''took place depending on _chance_''. Like most historians,  I (not being a historian) tend to think that all events have a cause - according to the cause-and-effect law, and that those causes can (and should) be investigated. If linguistic changes can be explained based on causes and tendencies that had their effects in time, why shouldn't there be analogue explanations concerning historical events? Circumstances and conditions were not the same in Turkey or the Middle East or France… if you see what I mean.


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## ahvalj

I have been (moderately) interested in politics since 1988 and for these 30 years I have listened and read a zillion comments and predictions, domestic and foreign. Looking back, I think I can't recall a single time any commentator predicted correctly anything serious: in the few cases they hit, it was hardly more than a lucky guess. That's very easy to check now when archives are available on the web and one can re-read and re-listen the predictions and comments of 5, 10 or more years ago. So, I, sorry, don't believe in the ability of humans or other higher vertebrates to reliably analyze things outside experimental sciences. Myself being a non-experimental scientist (biologist) and writer of this linguistic forum.


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## bearded

I don't understand why you talk about predictions and guesses. Those concern the future. I rather refer to causes of past linguistic events, which can be investigated since they already took place. That is what historians and linguists do with the help of sources, documents… e.g. concerning the reasons why Frankish did not prevail in France. And in any case,  inability  to find the real causes  of a given phenomenon (or to make predicitions, for that matter) does not mean that those causes do not exist or that it all just happened by 'chance' - in my view at least.


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## ahvalj

We are able to find the factors, at least some of them, but we are unable to evaluate their interaction and predict the result, we can only suggest a number of scenarios. The historical explanations are examples of such scenarios: knowing how things developed, we have the advantage of choosing the right one, but even then we can't always tell which exact forces did what. If the East Roman Empire is too far, think of the lands north of Italy, that, too, were populated by Celts under the Roman administration, yet now they speak German, Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian.


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## Hulalessar

I think that ahvalj is right to the extent that you cannot easily formulate any rules which will tell you whether a conqueror adopts the language of the conquered or the conquered adopt the language of the conqueror.


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## symposium

In these specific two cases (Franks and Roman Gauls/ Turks and Byzantine Greeks) do you think that religion possibly played a key role? In both instances we see a "less civilized" people subjugate a "more civilized" people, yet the outcome is very different. Did the Turks impose their culture and language because primarily they wanted to impose their religion, and so no dangerous concessions were to be made to their new subjects, whereas the Franks weren't driven by any such desire (that of rejecting and erasing the conquered people's culture) and could be more easily felt attracted to, and eventually adopt, the more refined and illustrious culture of the people they conquered?


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## ahvalj

That's definitely beyond my competence. I'd just point to Muslim Iberia, which was halfway between your two opposites.


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## Zec

symposium said:


> In these specific two cases (Franks and Roman Gauls/ Turks and Byzantine Greeks) do you think that religion possibly played a key role? In both instances we see a "less civilized" people subjugate a "more civilized" people, yet the outcome is very different. Did the Turks impose their culture and language because primarily they wanted to impose their religion, and so no dangerous concessions were to be made to their new subjects, whereas the Franks weren't driven by any such desire (that of rejecting and erasing the conquered people's culture) and could be more easily felt attracted to, and eventually adopt, the more refined and illustrious culture of the people they conquered?



Precisely this factor is often cited (at least in the "History of French" books I've read) as why most Germanic invaders eventually lost their language. It's the difference between assimilating yourself into the conquered people's society/culture (as its social elite of course) and assimilating the conquered people into your society/culture. This sort of explains why Germanic replaced Latin in Brittain (where Roman society collapsed) but the opposite happened in Gaul (where Roman society endured). But then there's cases we have absolutely no idea how they happened, like Hungarian.

As for what you said about Turks, I've read a similar story about Arabs, that they originally kept Greek and Aramaic as official languages in conquered lands, but then switched to Arabic when they started to feel they were loosing their identity to the conquered peoples' one.


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## Swatters

There's serious chronology issues to assuming the fronting of /u/ in French was due a Celtic substrate and thus early, given that Norse placenames in Normandy were also affected (post 9th century) and that it was concurrent with high vowel nasalisation in the North East of the dialect continuum (13th or 14th century by most reckonings).


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## ahvalj

Swatters said:


> There's serious chronology issues to assuming the fronting of /u/ in French was due a Celtic substrate and thus early, given that Norse placenames in Normandy were also affected (post 9th century) and that it was concurrent with high vowel nasalisation in the North East of the dialect continuum (13th or 14th century by most reckonings).


What we have:

in Brittonic, the change _*ū>*y_ precedes the bulk of Latin loanwords, which are thus not affected
in Gaulish, there is no evidence of_ u>y _until the end
in Romance, the change has affected almost the entire former Gaulish-speaking area, including North Italy, and only it
in French, the palatalization _k>*kʲ(>ʧ)_ and _g>*gʲ(>ʤ) _before _a_ (_chat, chaud, choisir, manche, Charles, maréchal, jambe, jardin, charger_), as well as before _e_ and _i_ in Germanic loanwords (eschine), precedes the change _u>y_ as the velars are not affected before _y,_ which otherwise should be a more palatalizing sound than _a>*æ>a_.
It thus seems likely that the tendency towards fronting of _ū_ existed in Central Celtic (Goidelic and Celtiberian were unaffected, eastern Celtic has left no reliable traces) and was inherited by Gaulish Latin throughout all its territory, but the actual change in the continent to _y_ occurred in the last centuries of the 1st millennium, at least in France. At the time of this shift and some time after it French had no proper _u,_ so any loanwords could be rendered either via this _u>y_ or via _ọ_.

Update. Norman toponymy:
_Styrr~Styr>Sturvilla>Éturville
Styrkárr>Sturgarvilla>Turcaville _


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## fdb

Zec said:


> I've read a similar story about Arabs, that they originally kept Greek and Aramaic



you mean Greek and Middle Persian (and also Latin in North Africa)



Zec said:


> as official languages in conquered lands, but then switched to Arabic when they started to feel they were loosing their identity to the conquered peoples' one.



This has nothing to do with identity. It is simply that in early Islam the bureaucracy had not yet mastered Arabic and continued to write in the local languages.


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## berndf

bearded said:


> I appreciate your ironic statement, ahvalj. Can you suggest more convincing reasons?


I see nothing ironic with it. Those are valid counter examples to your argument. If the language of the invaders prevailes is not necessarily a question of numbers. Why didn't Frankish survive in France but Anglo-Saxon replaced the language(s) of the native population in Britain? We don't know.


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## berndf

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> Could that mean that if French were to be
> a Germanic language that it would be very close to Fränkish dialect in Germany.


The closest surviving relative of Old Frankish is Dutch. Had the language survived in France, its decendent would likely form a dialect continuum with Dutch. But of course both, Dutch and German, would look very different if a big relative like a hypothetical Frankish French had survived. The division of the Carolingian Empire might not have happened.


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## Perseas

ahvalj said:


> In the end of the 1st millennium entire Anatolia spoke Greek with pockets of Armenian. A millennium later it speaks Turkish with pockets of Kurdish. Overall, I'd say 95% of the territory the East Roman Empire occupied at its beginning in 395 is now speaking languages of newcomers that by most accounts were less developed and much less numerous than its core population used to be.


Speaking of Anatolia, it seems that nowadays the situation is linguistically as you describe it, but until 100 years ago or more there were many Greek speakers there. The same applies to main Greece, where until 100 years ago there were Turkish speakers. However, the rising of nationalism and the creation of the modern Greek and Turkish states (plus the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923) lead to the current situation.


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## Cenzontle

So, dihydrogen monoxide, did you get your question answered?  
As symposium  (#2) pointed out, French didn't "become" a Romance language; it was a Romance language from its beginning.  
Likewise, Old French was a Romance language; it was not "of the Germanic branch".  
Meanwhile, Frankish _was _a Germanic language.  
So, "if French were to be a Germanic language"—and if pigs could fly—anything could happen, 
including French-speakers and Frankish-speakers understanding one another.  
But in reality, since Old French and Frankish were of different language families, 
their speakers probably wouldn't be able to understand one another.


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## ahvalj

Cenzontle said:


> So, dihydrogen monoxide, did you get your question answered?
> As symposium  (#2) pointed out, French didn't "become" a Romance language; it was a Romance language from its beginning.
> Likewise, Old French was a Romance language; it was not "of the Germanic branch".
> Meanwhile, Frankish _was _a Germanic language.
> So, "if French were to be a Germanic language"—and if pigs could fly—anything could happen,
> including French-speakers and Frankish-speakers understanding one another.
> But in reality, since Old French and Frankish were of different language families,
> their speakers probably wouldn't be able to understand one another.


I think it was just ambiguous wording in the original post… There had been some people speaking their native languages, when Celts came and made that land speak Gaulish. Then there had been Celts speaking their language, when Caesar came with his legions. Then Attila came… Then Franks and others came… Then Normans came… Then Germans came again… So, the question is why some of these diversity bringers left the heritage in the form of their language becoming spoken between the Strait of Dover and the Mediterranean, while some didn't. Now Arabs have come and I wonder what will happen this time.


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## bearded

ahvalj said:


> Now Arabs have come and I wonder what will happen this time


I bet they will eventually all speak French.


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## Olaszinhok

ahvalj said:


> Now Arabs have come and I wonder what will happen this


What Arabs are you referring to?  Most Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, Lebanese can already speak fluent (at least some) French when they get to France.


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