{"history":[],"article":{"id":"02ae775f-477d-40f9-9ce5-55d006c9a843","title":"Old French","slug":"old-french","content":":::summary\n**Name:** Old French \n**Altname:** Ancien Français \n**Nativename:** Franceis, François, Romanz \n**Pronunciation:** , , \n**Region:** Northern [France](https://bliptext.com/articles/france-in-the-middle-ages), parts of [Belgium](https://bliptext.com/articles/belgium) ([Wallonia](https://bliptext.com/articles/wallonia)), [Scotland](https://bliptext.com/articles/languages-of-scotland), [England](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-england), [Ireland](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-ireland), [Kingdom of Jerusalem](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-jerusalem), [Principality of Antioch](https://bliptext.com/articles/principality-of-antioch), [County of Edessa](https://bliptext.com/articles/county-of-edessa), [Kingdom of Cyprus](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-cyprus) \n**Era:** Evolved into [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) by the mid-14th century \n**Familycolor:** Indo-European \n**Fam 2:** [Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/italic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [Latino-Faliscan](https://bliptext.com/articles/latino-faliscan-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) \n**Fam 5:** [Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) \n**Fam 6:** [Italo-Western](https://bliptext.com/articles/italo-western-languages) \n**Fam 7:** [Western Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-romance-languages) \n**Fam 8:** Gallo-Iberian \n**Fam 9:** [Gallo-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/gallo-romance-languages) \n**Fam 1 0:** Gallo-Rhaetian? \n**Fam 1 1:** [Arpitan](https://bliptext.com/articles/franco-proven-al)–[Oïl](https://bliptext.com/articles/langues-d-o-l) \n**Fam 1 2:** [Oïl](https://bliptext.com/articles/langues-d-o-l) \n**Ancestor:** [Old Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-latin) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Proto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-romance-language) \n**Ancestor 4:** [Old Gallo-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-gallo-romance) \n**Iso 2:** fro \n**Iso 3:** fro \n**Glotto:** oldf1239 \n**Glottorefname:** Old French (842-ca. 1400) \n**Notice:** IPA \n:::\n\n# \n**Old French** (franceis, françois, romanz; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th and the mid-14th century.\nRather than a unified [language](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect), Old French was a [group](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect-cluster) of [Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) [dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect), [mutually intelligible](https://bliptext.com/articles/mutual-intelligibility) yet [diverse](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect-continuum).\nThese dialects came to be collectively known as the langues d'oïl, contrasting with the langues d'oc, the emerging [Occitano-Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/occitano-romance-languages) of [Occitania](https://bliptext.com/articles/occitania), now the south of France.\nThe mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french), the language of the [French Renaissance](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-renaissance) in the [Île-de-France](https://bliptext.com/articles/le-de-france) region; this dialect was a predecessor to [Modern French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language).\nOther dialects of Old French evolved themselves into modern forms ([Poitevin-Saintongeais](https://bliptext.com/articles/poitevin-saintongeais), [Gallo](https://bliptext.com/articles/gallo-language), [Norman](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-language), [Picard](https://bliptext.com/articles/picard-language), [Walloon](https://bliptext.com/articles/walloon-language), etc.), each with its linguistic features and history.\nThe region where Old French was spoken natively roughly extended to the northern half of the [Kingdom of France](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-france) and its vassals (including parts of the [Angevin Empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/angevin-empire)), and the duchies of [Upper](https://bliptext.com/articles/upper-lorraine) and [Lower Lorraine](https://bliptext.com/articles/lower-lorraine) to the east (corresponding to modern north-eastern [France](https://bliptext.com/articles/france) and Belgian [Wallonia](https://bliptext.com/articles/wallonia)), but the influence of Old French was much wider, as it was carried to [England](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-england) and the [Crusader states](https://bliptext.com/articles/crusader-states) as the language of a feudal elite and commerce.\n\n# Areal and dialectal divisions\nThe [area](https://bliptext.com/articles/areal-linguistics) of Old French in contemporary terms corresponded to the northern parts of the [Kingdom of France](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-france) (including [Anjou](https://bliptext.com/articles/county-of-anjou) and [Normandy](https://bliptext.com/articles/duchy-of-normandy), which in the 12th century were ruled by the [Plantagenet kings of England](https://bliptext.com/articles/angevin-empire)), [Upper Burgundy](https://bliptext.com/articles/upper-burgundy) and the [Duchy of Lorraine](https://bliptext.com/articles/duchy-of-lorraine).\nThe [Norman dialect](https://bliptext.com/articles/anglo-norman-language) was also spread to [England](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-england) and [Ireland](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-ireland), and during the [Crusades](https://bliptext.com/articles/crusades), Old French was also spoken in the [Kingdom of Sicily](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-sicily), and in the [Principality of Antioch](https://bliptext.com/articles/principality-of-antioch) and the [Kingdom of Jerusalem](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-jerusalem) in the [Levant](https://bliptext.com/articles/outremer).\nAs part of the emerging [Gallo-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/gallo-romance-languages) dialect continuum, the langues d'oïl were contrasted with the langues d'oc, at the time also called \"Provençal\", adjacent to the Old French area in the southwest, and with the [Gallo-Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/gallo-italic-languages) group to the southeast.\nThe [Franco-Provençal](https://bliptext.com/articles/franco-proven-al-language) group developed in Upper Burgundy, sharing features with both French and Provençal; it may have begun to diverge from the langue d'oïl as early as the [9th century](https://bliptext.com/articles/9th-century) and is attested as a distinct Gallo-Romance variety by the 12th century.\nDialects or variants of Old French include:\nSome modern languages are derived from Old French dialects other than Classical French, which is based on the Île-de-France dialect.\nThey include [Angevin](https://bliptext.com/articles/angevin-language), [Berrichon](https://bliptext.com/articles/berrichon), [Bourguignon-Morvandiau](https://bliptext.com/articles/burgundian-language-o-l), [Champenois](https://bliptext.com/articles/champenois), [Franc-Comtois](https://bliptext.com/articles/frainc-comtou-dialect), Gallo, Lorrain, [Norman](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-language), Picard, [Poitevin](https://bliptext.com/articles/poitevin-language), [Saintongeais](https://bliptext.com/articles/saintongeais), and Walloon.\n# [Map of France in 1180, at the height of the feudal system.\nThe crown lands of France are in light blue, vassals to the French king in green, Angevin possessions in red. Shown in white is the Holy Roman Empire to the east, the western fringes of which, including Upper Burgundy and Lorraine, were also part of the Old French area. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Map///France///1180-fr.svg]\n\n# History\n\n## Evolution and separation from Vulgar Latin\nBeginning with [Plautus](https://bliptext.com/articles/plautus)' time (254–184 ), one can see phonological changes between [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-latin) and what is called [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin), the common spoken language of the [Western Roman Empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-roman-empire).\nVulgar Latin differed from Classical Latin in [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology) and [morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphology-linguistics) as well as exhibiting lexical differences; however, they were mutually intelligible until the 7th century when Classical Latin 'died' as a daily spoken language, and had to be learned as a second language (though it was long thought of as the formal version of the spoken language).\nVulgar Latin was the ancestor of the [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), including Old French.\nBy the late 8th century, when the [Carolingian Renaissance](https://bliptext.com/articles/carolingian-renaissance) began, native speakers of Romance idioms continued to use Romance [orthoepy](https://bliptext.com/articles/orthoepy) rules while speaking and reading Latin.\nWhen the most prominent scholar of Western Europe at the time, English deacon [Alcuin](https://bliptext.com/articles/alcuin), was tasked by [Charlemagne](https://bliptext.com/articles/charlemagne) with improving the standards of Latin writing in France, not being a native Romance speaker himself, he prescribed a pronunciation based on a fairly literal interpretation of Latin spelling.\nFor example, in a radical break from the traditional system, a word such as ⟨viridiarium⟩ '[orchard](https://bliptext.com/articles/orchard)' now had to be read aloud precisely as it was spelled rather than */verdʒjær/ (later spelled as OF 'vergier').\nSuch a radical change had the effect of rendering Latin [sermons](https://bliptext.com/articles/sermon) completely unintelligible to the general Romance-speaking public, which prompted officials a few years later, at the [Third Council of Tours](https://bliptext.com/articles/third-council-of-tours), to instruct priests to read [sermons](https://bliptext.com/articles/sermon) aloud in the old way, in rusticam romanam linguam or 'plain Roman[ce] speech'.\nAs there was now no unambiguous way to indicate whether a given text was to be read aloud as Latin or Romance, various attempts were made in France to devise a new orthography for the latter; among the earliest examples are parts of the [Oaths of Strasbourg](https://bliptext.com/articles/oaths-of-strasbourg) and the [Sequence of Saint Eulalia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sequence-of-saint-eulalia).\n\n## Non-Latin influences\n\n### Gaulish\nSome [Gaulish](https://bliptext.com/articles/gaulish-language) words influenced Vulgar Latin and, through this, other Romance languages.\nFor example, classical Latin equus was uniformly replaced in Vulgar Latin by caballus 'nag, work horse', derived from Gaulish caballos (cf. [Welsh](https://bliptext.com/articles/welsh-language) ceffyl, [Breton](https://bliptext.com/articles/breton-language) kefel), yielding ModF cheval, Occitan caval (chaval), Catalan cavall, Spanish caballo, Portuguese cavalo, Italian cavallo, Romanian cal, and, by extension, English [cavalry](https://bliptext.com/articles/cavalry) and [chivalry](https://bliptext.com/articles/chivalrie) (both via different forms of [Old] French: [Old Norman](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-norman) and [Francien](https://bliptext.com/articles/francien)).\nAn estimated 200 words of Gaulish etymology survive in Modern French, for example chêne, 'oak tree', and charrue, 'plough'.\nWithin historical phonology and studies of [language contact](https://bliptext.com/articles/language-contact), various phonological changes have been posited as caused by a Gaulish substrate, although there is some debate.\nOne of these is considered certain, because this fact is clearly attested in the Gaulish-language [epigraphy](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphy) on the pottery found at [la Graufesenque](https://bliptext.com/articles/la-graufesenque) (A.D. 1st century).\nThere, the Greek word paropsid-es (written in Latin) appears as paraxsid-i.\nThe consonant clusters /ps/ and /pt/ shifted to /xs/ and /xt/, e.g. Lat capsa > *kaxsa > caisse (≠ Italian cassa) or captīvus > *kaxtivus > OF chaitif (mod. chétif; cf. Irish cacht 'servant'; ≠ Italian cattiv-ità, Portuguese cativo, Spanish cautivo).\nThis phonetic evolution is common in its later stages with the shift of the Latin cluster /kt/ in Old French (Lat factum > fait, ≠ Italian fatto, Portuguese feito, Spanish hecho; or lactem* > lait, ≠ Italian latte, Portuguese leite, Spanish leche).\nThis means that both /pt/ and /kt/ must have first merged into /kt/ in the history of Old French, after which this /kt/ shifted to /xt/.\nIn parallel, /ps/ and /ks/ merged into /ks/ before shifting to /xs/, apparently under Gaulish influence.\nThe [Celtic](https://bliptext.com/articles/celtic-languages) [Gaulish language](https://bliptext.com/articles/gaulish-language) is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable cultural Romanization.\nCoexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and [calques](https://bliptext.com/articles/calque) (including oui, the word for \"yes\"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order.\nA computational study from 2003 suggests that early gender shifts may have been motivated by the gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish.\n\n### Frankish\nThe pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax of the Vulgar Latin spoken in [Roman Gaul](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-gaul) in [late antiquity](https://bliptext.com/articles/late-antiquity) were modified by the [Old Frankish language](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-frankish-language), spoken by the [Franks](https://bliptext.com/articles/franks) who settled in Gaul from the 5th century and conquered the future Old French-speaking area by the 530s.\nThe name français itself is derived from the name of the Franks.\nThe Old Frankish language had a definitive influence on the development of Old French, which partly explains why the earliest attested Old French documents are older than the earliest attestations in other Romance languages (e.g. [Strasbourg Oaths](https://bliptext.com/articles/strasbourg-oath), [Sequence of Saint Eulalia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sequence-of-saint-eulalia)).\nIt is the result of an earlier gap created between Classical Latin and its evolved forms, which slowly reduced and eventually severed the [mutual intelligibility](https://bliptext.com/articles/mutual-intelligibility) between the two.\nThe [Old Low Franconian](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-dutch) influence is also believed to be responsible for the differences between the langue d'oïl and the langue d'oc (Occitan), being that various parts of Northern France remained bilingual between Latin and Germanic for some time, and these areas correspond precisely to where the first documents in Old French were written.\nThis Germanic language shaped the popular Latin spoken here and gave it a very distinctive identity compared to the other future Romance languages.\nThe first noticeable influence is the substitution of the Latin melodic accent with a Germanic stress and its result was [diphthongization](https://bliptext.com/articles/diphthongization), differentiation between long and short vowels, the fall of the unaccented syllable and of the final vowels:\nAdditionally, two phonemes that had long since died out in Vulgar Latin were reintroduced: and (> OF g(u)-, ONF w- cf. [Picard](https://bliptext.com/articles/picard-language) w-):\nIn contrast, the Italian, Portuguese and Spanish words of Germanic origin borrowed from French or directly from Germanic retain ~, e.g. Italian, Spanish guerra 'war', alongside in French guerre). These examples show a clear consequence of bilingualism, that sometimes even changed the first syllable of the Latin words. One example of a Latin word influencing an OLF loan is framboise 'raspberry', from OF frambeise, from OLF *brāmbesi 'blackberry' (cf.\nDutch braambes, braambezie; akin to German Brombeere, English dial.\nbramberry) blended with LL fraga or OF fraie 'strawberry', which explains the replacement > and in turn the final -se of framboise added to OF fraie to make freise, modern fraise (≠ Wallon frève, Occitan fraga, Romanian fragă, Italian fragola, fravola 'strawberry').\n[Mildred Pope](https://bliptext.com/articles/mildred-pope) estimated that perhaps still 15% of the vocabulary of Modern French derives from Germanic sources.\nThis proportion was larger in Old French, because [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) borrowed heavily from Latin and Italian.\n\n## Earliest written Old French\nThe earliest documents said to be written in the Gallo-Romance that prefigures French – after the [Reichenau](https://bliptext.com/articles/reichenau-glosses) and [Kassel glosses](https://bliptext.com/articles/kassel-glosses) (8th and 9th centuries) – are the [Oaths of Strasbourg](https://bliptext.com/articles/oaths-of-strasbourg) (treaties and charters into which King [Charles the Bald](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-the-bald) entered in 842):\nPro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa ...\n(For the love of God and for the Christian people, and our common salvation, from this day forward, as God will give me the knowledge and the power, I will defend my brother Karlo with my help in everything ...)\nThe second-oldest document in Old French is the [Eulalia sequence](https://bliptext.com/articles/eulalia-sequence), which is important for linguistic reconstruction of Old French pronunciation due to its consistent spelling.\nThe royal [House of Capet](https://bliptext.com/articles/house-of-capet), founded by [Hugh Capet](https://bliptext.com/articles/hugh-capet) in 987, inaugurated the development of northern French culture in and around [Île-de-France](https://bliptext.com/articles/le-de-france), which slowly but firmly asserted its ascendency over the more southerly areas of [Aquitaine](https://bliptext.com/articles/aquitaine) and Tolosa ([Toulouse](https://bliptext.com/articles/toulouse)); however, the [Capetians](https://bliptext.com/articles/capetian-dynasty)' [langue d'oïl](https://bliptext.com/articles/langue-d-o-l), the forerunner of modern standard French, did not begin to become the common speech of all of France until after the [French Revolution](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-revolution).\n\n## Transition to Middle French\nIn the Late Middle Ages, the Old French dialects diverged into a number of distinct langues d'oïl, among which [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) proper was the dialect of the [Île-de-France](https://bliptext.com/articles/le-de-france) region.\nDuring the [Early Modern period](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-modern-france), French was established as the official language of the Kingdom of France throughout the realm, including the langue d'oc-speaking territories in the south.\nIt was only in the 17th to 18th centuries – with the development especially of popular literature of the [Bibliothèque bleue](https://bliptext.com/articles/biblioth-que-bleue) – that a standardized [Classical French](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-french) spread throughout France alongside the regional dialects.\n\n# Literature\nThe material and cultural conditions in [France and associated territories](https://bliptext.com/articles/territorial-evolution-of-france) around the year 1100 triggered what [Charles Homer Haskins](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-homer-haskins) termed the \"[Renaissance of the 12th century](https://bliptext.com/articles/renaissance-of-the-12th-century)\", resulting in a profusion of creative works in a variety of genres.\nOld French gave way to [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) in the mid-14th century, paving the way for early [French Renaissance literature](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-renaissance-literature) of the 15th century.\nThe earliest extant French literary texts date from the ninth century, but very few texts before the 11th century have survived.\nThe first literary works written in Old French were [saints' lives](https://bliptext.com/articles/hagiography).\nThe [Canticle of Saint Eulalie](https://bliptext.com/articles/sequence-of-saint-eulalia), written in the second half of the 9th century, is generally accepted as the first such text.\nAt the beginning of the 13th century, [Jean Bodel](https://bliptext.com/articles/jean-bodel), in his [Chanson de Saisnes](https://bliptext.com/articles/chanson-de-saisnes), divided medieval French narrative literature into three subject areas: the [Matter of France](https://bliptext.com/articles/matter-of-france) or Matter of [Charlemagne](https://bliptext.com/articles/charlemagne); the [Matter of Rome](https://bliptext.com/articles/matter-of-rome) ([romances](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-heroic-literature) in an ancient setting); and the [Matter of Britain](https://bliptext.com/articles/matter-of-britain) (Arthurian [romances](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-heroic-literature) and [Breton lais](https://bliptext.com/articles/breton-lai)).\nThe first of these is the subject area of the [chansons de geste](https://bliptext.com/articles/chanson-de-geste) (\"songs of exploits\" or \"songs of (heroic) deeds\"), [epic poems](https://bliptext.com/articles/epic-poem) typically composed in [ten-syllable](https://bliptext.com/articles/decasyllable) [assonanced](https://bliptext.com/articles/assonance) (occasionally [rhymed](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhyme)) [laisses](https://bliptext.com/articles/laisse).\nMore than one hundred chansons de geste have survived in around three hundred manuscripts.\nThe oldest and most celebrated of the chansons de geste is [The Song of Roland](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-song-of-roland) (earliest version composed in the late 11th century).\n[Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube](https://bliptext.com/articles/bertrand-de-bar-sur-aube) in his [Girart de Vienne](https://bliptext.com/articles/girart-de-vienne) set out a grouping of the chansons de geste into three [cycles](https://bliptext.com/articles/literature-cycle): the Geste du roi centering on Charlemagne, the [Geste de Garin de Monglane](https://bliptext.com/articles/geste-de-garin-de-monglane) (whose central character was [William of Orange](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-of-gellone)), and the Geste de [Doon de Mayence](https://bliptext.com/articles/doon-de-mayence) or the \"rebel vassal cycle\", the most famous characters of which were [Renaud de Montauban](https://bliptext.com/articles/renaud-de-montauban) and [Girart de Roussillon](https://bliptext.com/articles/girart-de-roussillon).\nA fourth grouping, not listed by Bertrand, is the [Crusade cycle](https://bliptext.com/articles/crusade-cycle), dealing with the [First Crusade](https://bliptext.com/articles/first-crusade) and its immediate aftermath.\n[Jean Bodel](https://bliptext.com/articles/jean-bodel)'s other two categories—the \"Matter of Rome\" and the \"Matter of Britain\"—concern the French [romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-heroic-literature) or roman.\nAround a hundred verse romances survive from the period 1150–1220.\nFrom around 1200 on, the tendency was increasingly to write the romances in prose (many of the earlier verse romances were adapted into prose versions), although new verse romances continued to be written to the end of the 14th century.\nThe most important romance of the 13th century is the [Romance of the Rose](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-of-the-rose), which breaks considerably from the conventions of the chivalric adventure story.\nMedieval French [lyric poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/lyric-poetry) was indebted to the poetic and cultural traditions in [Southern France](https://bliptext.com/articles/southern-france) and [Provence](https://bliptext.com/articles/provence)—including [Toulouse](https://bliptext.com/articles/toulouse) and the [Aquitaine](https://bliptext.com/articles/aquitaine) region—where langue d'oc was spoken ([Occitan language](https://bliptext.com/articles/occitan-language)); in their turn, the Provençal poets were greatly influenced by poetic traditions from the [Hispano-Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-spain).\nLyric poets in Old French are called [trouvères](https://bliptext.com/articles/trouv-res) – etymologically the same word as the [troubadours](https://bliptext.com/articles/troubadour) of [Provençal](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-occitan) or [langue d'oc](https://bliptext.com/articles/langue-d-oc) (from the verb trobar \"to find, to invent\").\nBy the late 13th century, the poetic tradition in France had begun to develop in ways that differed significantly from the troubadour poets, both in content and in the use of certain fixed forms.\nThe new poetic (as well as musical: some of the earliest medieval music has lyrics composed in Old French by the earliest composers known by name) tendencies are apparent in the [Roman de Fauvel](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-de-fauvel) in 1310 and 1314, a satire on abuses in the medieval church, filled with medieval [motets](https://bliptext.com/articles/motet), [lais](https://bliptext.com/articles/lai-poetic-form), [rondeaux](https://bliptext.com/articles/rondeau-music) and other new secular forms of poetry and music (mostly anonymous, but with several pieces by [Philippe de Vitry](https://bliptext.com/articles/philippe-de-vitry), who would coin the expression [ars nova](https://bliptext.com/articles/ars-nova) to distinguish the new musical practice from the music of the immediately preceding age).\nThe best-known poet and composer of ars nova secular music and chansons of the incipient [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) period was [Guillaume de Machaut](https://bliptext.com/articles/guillaume-de-machaut).\nDiscussions about the origins of non-religious theater (théâtre profane)—both drama and farce—in the Middle Ages remain controversial, but the idea of a continuous popular tradition stemming from Latin comedy and tragedy to the 9th century seems unlikely.\nMost historians place the origin of medieval drama in the church's liturgical dialogues and \"tropes\".\n[Mystery plays](https://bliptext.com/articles/mystery-play) were eventually transferred from the monastery church to the chapter house or refectory hall and finally to the open air, and the vernacular was substituted for Latin.\nIn the 12th century one finds the earliest extant passages in French appearing as refrains inserted into [liturgical dramas](https://bliptext.com/articles/liturgical-drama) in Latin, such as a [Saint Nicholas](https://bliptext.com/articles/saint-nicholas) (patron saint of the student clercs) play and a [Saint Stephen](https://bliptext.com/articles/saint-stephen) play.\nAn early French dramatic play is Le Jeu d'Adam (c. 1150) written in octosyllabic rhymed couplets with Latin stage directions (implying that it was written by Latin-speaking clerics for a lay public).\nA large body of [fables](https://bliptext.com/articles/fable) survive in Old French; these include (mostly anonymous) literature dealing with the recurring trickster character of [Reynard](https://bliptext.com/articles/reynard) the [Fox](https://bliptext.com/articles/fox).\nMarie de France was also active in this genre, producing the [Ysopet](https://bliptext.com/articles/ysopet) (Little [Aesop](https://bliptext.com/articles/aesop)) series of fables in verse.\nRelated to the fable was the more bawdy [fabliau](https://bliptext.com/articles/fabliau), which covered topics such as cuckolding and corrupt clergy.\nThese fabliaux would be an important source for [Chaucer](https://bliptext.com/articles/chaucer) and for the Renaissance short story (conte or nouvelle).\nAmong the earliest works of [rhetoric](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhetoric) and [logic](https://bliptext.com/articles/logic) to appear in Old French were the translations of [Rhetorica ad Herennium](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhetorica-ad-herennium) and [Boethius](https://bliptext.com/articles/boethius)' De topicis differentiis by [John of Antioch](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-of-antioch-translator) in 1282.\nIn northern Italy, authors developed [Franco-Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/franco-italian), a mixed language of Old French and [Venetian](https://bliptext.com/articles/venetian-language) or [Lombard](https://bliptext.com/articles/lombard-language) used in literary works in the 13th and 14th centuries.\n\n# Phonology\nOld French was constantly changing and evolving; however, the form in the late 12th century, as attested in a great deal of mostly poetic writings, can be considered standard.\nThe writing system at this time was more phonetic than that used in most subsequent centuries.\nIn particular, all written consonants (including final ones) were pronounced, except for s preceding non-[stop consonants](https://bliptext.com/articles/stop-consonant) and t in et, and final e was pronounced.\nThe phonological system can be summarised as follows:\n\n## Consonants\nNotes:\n\n## Vowels\nIn Old French, the nasal vowels were not separate phonemes but only [allophones](https://bliptext.com/articles/allophone) of the oral vowels before a nasal consonant.\nThe nasal consonant was fully pronounced; bon was pronounced (ModF ).\nNasal vowels were present even in [open syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/open-syllable) before nasals where Modern French has oral vowels, as in bone (ModF bonne ).\n\n## Monophthongs\nNotes:\n\n## Diphthongs and triphthongs\nNotes:\n\n## Hiatus\nIn addition to diphthongs, Old French had many instances of [hiatus](https://bliptext.com/articles/hiatus-linguistics) between adjacent vowels because of the loss of an intervening consonant.\nManuscripts generally do not distinguish hiatus from true diphthongs, but modern scholarly transcription indicates it with a [diaeresis](https://bliptext.com/articles/diaeresis-diacritic), as in Modern French:\n\n## Sample text\nPresented below is the first [laisse](https://bliptext.com/articles/laisse) of The Song of Roland along with a [broad transcription](https://bliptext.com/articles/broad-transcription) reflecting reconstructed pronunciation c. 1050.\n\n# Grammar\n\n## Nouns\nOld French maintained a two-case system, with a [nominative case](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative-case) and an [oblique case](https://bliptext.com/articles/oblique-case), for longer than some other Romance languages as [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) and [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) did.\nCase distinctions, at least in the masculine [gender](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-gender), were marked on both the [definite article](https://bliptext.com/articles/definite-article) and the noun itself.\nThus, the masculine noun li veisins 'the neighbour' was declined as follows:\nIn later Old French, the distinctions had become moribund.\nAs in most other Rom**a**nce l**a**ngu**a**ges, it w**a**s the oblique c**a**se form th**a**t usu**a**lly survived to become the Modern French form: l'enf**a**nt \"the child\" represents the old oblique (L**a**tin **a**ccus**a**tive īnf**a**ntem); the OF nomin**a**tive w**a**s li enfes (L**a**t īnfāns).\nThere are some cases with significant differences between nominative and oblique forms (derived from Latin nouns with a stress shift between the nominative and other cases) in which either it is the nominative form that survives or both forms survive with different meanings:\nIn a few cases in which the only distinction between forms was the nominative -s ending, the -s was preserved.\nAn example is [fils](https://bliptext.com/articles/fils) \"son\" (< Latin nominative f**ī**lius).\nIt is irregular that the -s in the word is still pronounced today; but this has to do with later developments — namely the [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) and Early Modern French system of [pausal](https://bliptext.com/articles/pausa) pronunciations.\nAs in Spanish and Italian, the neuter gender was eliminated, and most old neuter nouns became masculine.\nSome Latin neuter plurals, which ended in -a, were reanalysed as feminine singulars: Lat gaudium was more widely used in the plural form gaudia, which was taken for a singular in Vulgar Latin and ultimately led to ModF la joie, \"joy\" (feminine singular).\nNouns were declined in the following [declensions](https://bliptext.com/articles/declension):\nClass I is derived from the Latin [first declension](https://bliptext.com/articles/first-declension).\nClass Ia mostly comes from Latin feminine nouns in the [third declension](https://bliptext.com/articles/third-declension).\nClass II is derived from the Latin [second declension](https://bliptext.com/articles/second-declension).\nClass IIa generally stems from second-declension nouns ending in -er and from third-declension masculine nouns; in both cases, the Latin nominative singular did not end in -s, which is preserved in Old French.\nThe classes show various analogical developments: Class I nominative plural -es from the accusative instead of -∅ (-e after a consonant cluster) in Class I nominative plural (Lat -ae, although there is evidence to suggest [this analogy had already occurred in VL](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-plurals)), li pere instead of *li peres (Lat illi patres) in Class IIa nominative plural, modelled on Class II, etc.\nClass III nouns show a separate stem in the nominative singular that does not occur in any of the other forms:\nRegular feminine forms of masculine nouns are formed by adding an -e to the masculine stem unless the masculine stem already ends in -e.\nFor example, [bergier](https://bliptext.com/articles/bergier) (shepherd) becomes [bergier](https://bliptext.com/articles/bergier)e (ModF [berger](https://bliptext.com/articles/berger) and [bergère](https://bliptext.com/articles/berg-re)).\n\n## Adjectives\nAdjectives agree in terms of [number](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-number), gender and case with the noun that they are qualifying.\nThus, a feminine plural noun in the nominative case requires any qualifying adjectives to be feminine, plural and nominative.\nFor example, in femes [riche](https://bliptext.com/articles/riche)s, [riche](https://bliptext.com/articles/riche) has to be in the feminine plural form.\nAdjectives can be divided into three declensional classes:\nClass I adjectives have a feminine singular form (nominative and oblique) ending in -e.\nThey can be further subdivided into two subclasses, based on the masculine nominative singular form.\nClass Ia adjectives have a masculine nominative singular ending in -s:\n! ! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Masculine\n! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Feminine\n! Neuter\n! Case || Singular || Plural || Singular || Plural || Singular\n! Nominative\n! Oblique\nFor Class Ib adjectives, the masculine nominative singular ends in -e, like the feminine.\nThere are descendants of Latin second- and third-declension adjectives ending in -er in the nominative singular:\n! ! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Masculine\n! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Feminine\n! Neuter\n! Case || Singular || Plural || Singular || Plural || Singular\n! Nominative\n! Oblique\nFor Class II adjectives, the feminine singular is not marked by the ending -e:\n! ! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Masculine\n! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Feminine\n! Neuter\n! Case || Singular || Plural || Singular || Plural || Singular\n! Nominative\n! Oblique\nAn important subgroup of Class II adjectives is the present participial forms in -ant.\nClass III adjectives have a stem alternation, resulting from stress shift in the Latin third declension and a distinct neuter form:\n! ! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Masculine\n! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Feminine\n! Neuter\n! Case || Singular || Plural || Singular || Plural || Singular\n! Nominative\n! Oblique\nIn later Old French, Classes II and III tended to be moved across to Class I, which was complete by Middle French.\nModern French thus has only a single adjective declension, unlike most other Romance languages, which have two or more.\n\n## Verbs\nVerbs in Old French show the same extreme phonological deformations as other Old French words; however, morphologically, Old French verbs are extremely conservative in preserving intact most of the Latin alternations and irregularities that had been inherited in [Proto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-romance).\nOld French has much less analogical reformation than Modern French has and significantly less than the oldest stages of other languages (such as [Old Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-spanish)) despite that the various [phonological developments](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonological-development) in Gallo-Romance and Proto-French led to complex alternations in the majority of commonly-used verbs.\nFor ex************a************mple, the OF verb l************a************ver \"to w************a************sh\" (L************a************t l************a************v**ā**re) is conjug************a************ted je lef, tu leves, il leve in the present indic************a************tive ************a************nd je lef, tu les, il let in the [present subjunctive](https://bliptext.com/articles/present-subjunctive), in both c************a************ses regul************a************r phonologic************a************l developments from L************a************tin indic************a************tive l************a************vō, l************a************v**ā**s, l************a************v************a************t ************a************nd subjunctive l************a************vem, l************a************vēs, l************a************vet.\nThe following paradigm is typical in showing the phonologically regular but morphologically irregular alternations of most paradigms:\nModern French, on the other hand, has je lave, tu laves, il lave in both indicative and subjunctive, reflecting significant analogical developments: analogical borrowing of unstressed vowel /a/, analogical -e in the first singular (from verbs like j'entre, with a regular -e ) and wholesale replacement of the subjunctive with forms modelled on -ir/-oir/-re verbs.\nAll serve to eliminate the various alternations in the OF verb paradigm.\nEven modern \"irregular\" verbs are not immune from analogy: For example, OF je vif, tu vis, il vit (vivre \"to live\") has yielded to modern je vis, tu vis, il vit, eliminating the unpredictable -f in the first-person singular.\nThe [simple past](https://bliptext.com/articles/simple-past) also shows extensive analogical reformation and simplification in Modern French, as compared with Old French.\nThe Latin [pluperfect](https://bliptext.com/articles/pluperfect) was preserved in very early Old French as a past tense with a value similar to a [preterite](https://bliptext.com/articles/preterite) or [imperfect](https://bliptext.com/articles/imperfect).\nFor example, the [Sequence of Saint Eulalia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sequence-of-saint-eulalia) (878 AD) has past-tense forms such as avret (< Lat habuerat), voldret (< Lat voluerat), alternating with past-tense forms from the Latin perfect (continued as the modern \"simple past\").\n[Old Occitan](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-occitan) also preserved this tense, with a [conditional](https://bliptext.com/articles/conditional-mood) value; [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) still preserves this tense (the -ra imperfect subjunctive), as does [Portuguese](https://bliptext.com/articles/portuguese-language) (in its original value as a pluperfect indicative).\n\n### Verb alternations\nIn Latin, stress was determined automatically by the number of syllables in a word and the [weight](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllable-weight) (length) of the syllables.\nThat resulted in certain automatic stress shifts between related forms in a paradigm, depending on the nature of the suffixes added.\nFor **e**xampl**e**, in p**e**nsō \"I think\", th**e** first syllabl**e** was str**e**ss**e**d, but in p**e**ns**ā**mus \"w**e** think\", th**e** s**e**cond syllabl**e** was str**e**ss**e**d.\nIn many Romance languages, vowels diphthongized in stressed syllables under certain circumstances but not in unstressed syllables, resulting in alternations in verb paradigms: [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) pienso \"I think\" vs. pensamos \"we think\" (pensar \"to think\"), or cuento \"I tell\" vs. contamos \"we tell\" (contar \"to tell\").\nIn the development of French, at least five vowels diphthongized in stressed, [open syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/open-syllable).\nCombined with other stress-dependent developments, that yielded 15 or so types of alternations in so-called [strong verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/irregular-verb) in Old French.\nFor example, diphthongized to before [nasal stops](https://bliptext.com/articles/nasal-stop) in stressed, open syllables but not in unstressed syllables, yielding aim \"I love\" (Lat amō) but amons \"we love\" (Lat am**ā**mus).\nThe different types are as follows:\nIn Modern French, the verbs in the -er class have been systematically [levelled](https://bliptext.com/articles/level).\nGenerally, the \"weak\" (unstressed) form predominates, but there are some exceptions (such as modern aimer/nous aimons).\nThe only remaining alternations are in verbs like acheter/j'achète and jeter/je jette, with unstressed alternating with stressed and in (largely-learned) verbs like adhérer/j'adhère, with unstressed alternating with stressed.\nMany of the non-er verbs have become obsolete, and many of the remaining verbs have been levelled; however, a few alternations remain in what are now known as [irregular verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/irregular-verbs), such as je tiens, nous tenons; je dois, nous devons and je meurs, nous mourons.\nSome verbs had a more irregular alternation between different-length stems, with a longer, stressed stem alternating with a shorter, unstressed stem.\nThat was a regular development stemming from the loss of unstressed [intertonic vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), which remained when they were stressed:\nThe alternation of je desjun, disner is particularly complicated; it appears that:\nBoth stems have become full verbs in Modern French: déjeuner \"to have lunch\" and dîner \"to dine\".\nFurthermore, déjeuner does not derive directly from je desjun (< *disi(ēi)ūnō, with total loss of unstressed -ēi-).\nInstead, it comes from OF desjeüner, based on the alternative form je desjeün (< *disiē(i)ūnō, with loss of only -i-, likely influenced by jeûner \"to fast\" < OF jeüner < je jeün \"I fast\" < iē(i)ūnō: iē- is an initial rather than intertonic so the vowel -ē- does not disappear).\n\n### Example of regular -er verb: durer (to last)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: avoir\n\n### Example of regular -ir verb: fenir (to end)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: avoir\n\n### Example of regular -re verb: corre (to run)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: estre\n\n### Examples of auxiliary verbs\n\n#### avoir (to have)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: avoir\n\n#### estre (to be)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: avoir\n\n## Other parts of speech\nAdverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are generally invariable.\nPronouns are usually declinable.\n\n# Explanatory notes\n\n# Citations\n\n## General sources","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-25T19:09:46.438Z","updated_at":"2025-01-25T19:09:46.438Z","search_vector":"'french':2 'old':1","search_content":" \n**Name:** Old French \n**Altname:** Ancien Français \n**Nativename:** Franceis, François, Romanz \n**Pronunciation:** , , \n**Region:** Northern [France](https://bliptext.com/articles/france-in-the-middle-ages), parts of [Belgium](https://bliptext.com/articles/belgium) ([Wallonia](https://bliptext.com/articles/wallonia)), [Scotland](https://bliptext.com/articles/languages-of-scotland), [England](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-england), [Ireland](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-ireland), [Kingdom of Jerusalem](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-jerusalem), [Principality of Antioch](https://bliptext.com/articles/principality-of-antioch), [County of Edessa](https://bliptext.com/articles/county-of-edessa), [Kingdom of Cyprus](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-cyprus) \n**Era:** Evolved into [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) by the mid-14th century \n**Familycolor:** Indo-European \n**Fam 2:** [Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/italic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [Latino-Faliscan](https://bliptext.com/articles/latino-faliscan-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) \n**Fam 5:** [Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) \n**Fam 6:** [Italo-Western](https://bliptext.com/articles/italo-western-languages) \n**Fam 7:** [Western Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-romance-languages) \n**Fam 8:** Gallo-Iberian \n**Fam 9:** [Gallo-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/gallo-romance-languages) \n**Fam 1 0:** Gallo-Rhaetian? \n**Fam 1 1:** [Arpitan](https://bliptext.com/articles/franco-proven-al)–[Oïl](https://bliptext.com/articles/langues-d-o-l) \n**Fam 1 2:** [Oïl](https://bliptext.com/articles/langues-d-o-l) \n**Ancestor:** [Old Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-latin) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Proto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-romance-language) \n**Ancestor 4:** [Old Gallo-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-gallo-romance) \n**Iso 2:** fro \n**Iso 3:** fro \n**Glotto:** oldf1239 \n**Glottorefname:** Old French (842-ca. 1400) \n**Notice:** IPA \n \n\n# \n**Old French** (franceis, françois, romanz; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th and the mid-14th century.\nRather than a unified [language](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect), Old French was a [group](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect-cluster) of [Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) [dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect), [mutually intelligible](https://bliptext.com/articles/mutual-intelligibility) yet [diverse](https://bliptext.com/articles/dialect-continuum).\nThese dialects came to be collectively known as the langues d'oïl, contrasting with the langues d'oc, the emerging [Occitano-Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/occitano-romance-languages) of [Occitania](https://bliptext.com/articles/occitania), now the south of France.\nThe mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french), the language of the [French Renaissance](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-renaissance) in the [Île-de-France](https://bliptext.com/articles/le-de-france) region; this dialect was a predecessor to [Modern French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language).\nOther dialects of Old French evolved themselves into modern forms ([Poitevin-Saintongeais](https://bliptext.com/articles/poitevin-saintongeais), [Gallo](https://bliptext.com/articles/gallo-language), [Norman](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-language), [Picard](https://bliptext.com/articles/picard-language), [Walloon](https://bliptext.com/articles/walloon-language), etc.), each with its linguistic features and history.\nThe region where Old French was spoken natively roughly extended to the northern half of the [Kingdom of [France](https://bliptext.com/articles/france)](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-france) and its vassals (including parts of the [Angevin Empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/angevin-empire)), and the duchies of [Upper](https://bliptext.com/articles/upper-lorraine) and [Lower Lorraine](https://bliptext.com/articles/lower-lorraine) to the east (corresponding to modern north-eastern [France](https://bliptext.com/articles/france) and Belgian [Wallonia](https://bliptext.com/articles/wallonia)), but the influence of Old French was much wider, as it was carried to [England](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-england) and the [Crusader states](https://bliptext.com/articles/crusader-states) as the language of a feudal elite and commerce.\n\n# Areal and dialectal divisions\nThe [area](https://bliptext.com/articles/areal-linguistics) of Old French in contemporary terms corresponded to the northern parts of the [Kingdom of France](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-france) (including [Anjou](https://bliptext.com/articles/county-of-anjou) and [Normandy](https://bliptext.com/articles/duchy-of-normandy), which in the 12th century were ruled by the [Plantagenet kings of England](https://bliptext.com/articles/angevin-empire)), [Upper Burgundy](https://bliptext.com/articles/upper-burgundy) and the [Duchy of Lorraine](https://bliptext.com/articles/duchy-of-lorraine).\nThe [Norman dialect](https://bliptext.com/articles/anglo-norman-language) was also spread to [England](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-england) and [Ireland](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-ireland), and during the [Crusades](https://bliptext.com/articles/crusades), Old French was also spoken in the [Kingdom of Sicily](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-sicily), and in the [Principality of Antioch](https://bliptext.com/articles/principality-of-antioch) and the [Kingdom of Jerusalem](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-jerusalem) in the [Levant](https://bliptext.com/articles/outremer).\nAs part of the emerging [Gallo-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/gallo-romance-languages) dialect continuum, the langues d'oïl were contrasted with the langues d'oc, at the time also called \"Provençal\", adjacent to the Old French area in the southwest, and with the [Gallo-Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/gallo-italic-languages) group to the southeast.\nThe [Franco-Provençal](https://bliptext.com/articles/franco-proven-al-language) group developed in Upper Burgundy, sharing features with both French and Provençal; it may have begun to diverge from the langue d'oïl as early as the [9th century](https://bliptext.com/articles/9th-century) and is attested as a distinct Gallo-Romance variety by the 12th century.\nDialects or variants of Old French include:\nSome modern languages are derived from Old French dialects other than Classical French, which is based on the Île-de-France dialect.\nThey include [Angevin](https://bliptext.com/articles/angevin-language), [Berrichon](https://bliptext.com/articles/berrichon), [Bourguignon-Morvandiau](https://bliptext.com/articles/burgundian-language-o-l), [Champenois](https://bliptext.com/articles/champenois), [Franc-Comtois](https://bliptext.com/articles/frainc-comtou-dialect), Gallo, Lorrain, [Norman](https://bliptext.com/articles/norman-language), Picard, [Poitevin](https://bliptext.com/articles/poitevin-language), [Saintongeais](https://bliptext.com/articles/saintongeais), and Walloon.\n# [Map of France in 1180, at the height of the feudal system.\nThe crown lands of France are in light blue, vassals to the French king in green, Angevin possessions in red. Shown in white is the Holy Roman Empire to the east, the western fringes of which, including Upper Burgundy and Lorraine, were also part of the Old French area. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Map///France///1180-fr.svg]\n\n# History\n\n## Evolution and separation from Vulgar Latin\nBeginning with [Plautus](https://bliptext.com/articles/plautus)' time (254–184 ), one can see phonological changes between [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-latin) and what is called [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin), the common spoken language of the [Western Roman Empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-roman-empire).\nVulgar Latin differed from Classical Latin in [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology) and [morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphology-linguistics) as well as exhibiting lexical differences; however, they were mutually intelligible until the 7th century when Classical Latin 'died' as a daily spoken language, and had to be learned as a second language (though it was long thought of as the formal version of the spoken language).\nVulgar Latin was the ancestor of the [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), including Old French.\nBy the late 8th century, when the [Carolingian Renaissance](https://bliptext.com/articles/carolingian-renaissance) began, native speakers of Romance idioms continued to use Romance [orthoepy](https://bliptext.com/articles/orthoepy) rules while speaking and reading Latin.\nWhen the most prominent scholar of Western Europe at the time, English deacon [Alcuin](https://bliptext.com/articles/alcuin), was tasked by [Charlemagne](https://bliptext.com/articles/charlemagne) with improving the standards of Latin writing in France, not being a native Romance speaker himself, he prescribed a pronunciation based on a fairly literal interpretation of Latin spelling.\nFor example, in a radical break from the traditional system, a word such as ⟨viridiarium⟩ '[orchard](https://bliptext.com/articles/orchard)' now had to be read aloud precisely as it was spelled rather than */verdʒjær/ (later spelled as OF 'vergier').\nSuch a radical change had the effect of rendering Latin [sermons](https://bliptext.com/articles/sermon) completely unintelligible to the general Romance-speaking public, which prompted officials a few years later, at the [Third Council of Tours](https://bliptext.com/articles/third-council-of-tours), to instruct priests to read [sermons](https://bliptext.com/articles/sermon) aloud in the old way, in rusticam romanam linguam or 'plain Roman[ce] speech'.\nAs there was now no unambiguous way to indicate whether a given text was to be read aloud as Latin or Romance, various attempts were made in France to devise a new orthography for the latter; among the earliest examples are parts of the [Oaths of Strasbourg](https://bliptext.com/articles/oaths-of-strasbourg) and the [Sequence of Saint Eulalia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sequence-of-saint-eulalia).\n\n## Non-Latin influences\n\n### Gaulish\nSome [Gaulish](https://bliptext.com/articles/gaulish-language) words influenced Vulgar Latin and, through this, other Romance languages.\nFor example, classical Latin equus was uniformly replaced in Vulgar Latin by caballus 'nag, work horse', derived from Gaulish caballos (cf. [Welsh](https://bliptext.com/articles/welsh-language) ceffyl, [Breton](https://bliptext.com/articles/breton-language) kefel), yielding ModF cheval, Occitan caval (chaval), Catalan cavall, Spanish caballo, Portuguese cavalo, Italian cavallo, Romanian cal, and, by extension, English [cavalry](https://bliptext.com/articles/cavalry) and [chivalry](https://bliptext.com/articles/chivalrie) (both via different forms of [Old] French: [Old Norman](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-norman) and [Francien](https://bliptext.com/articles/francien)).\nAn estimated 200 words of Gaulish etymology survive in Modern French, for example chêne, 'oak tree', and charrue, 'plough'.\nWithin historical phonology and studies of [language contact](https://bliptext.com/articles/language-contact), various phonological changes have been posited as caused by a Gaulish substrate, although there is some debate.\nOne of these is considered certain, because this fact is clearly attested in the Gaulish-language [epigraphy](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphy) on the pottery found at [la Graufesenque](https://bliptext.com/articles/la-graufesenque) (A.D. 1st century).\nThere, the Greek word paropsid-es (written in Latin) appears as paraxsid-i.\nThe consonant clusters /ps/ and /pt/ shifted to /xs/ and /xt/, e.g. Lat capsa > *kaxsa > caisse (≠ Italian cassa) or captīvus > *kaxtivus > OF chaitif (mod. chétif; cf. Irish cacht 'servant'; ≠ Italian cattiv-ità, Portuguese cativo, Spanish cautivo).\nThis phonetic evolution is common in its later stages with the shift of the Latin cluster /kt/ in Old French (Lat factum > fait, ≠ Italian fatto, Portuguese feito, Spanish hecho; or lactem* > lait, ≠ Italian latte, Portuguese leite, Spanish leche).\nThis means that both /pt/ and /kt/ must have first merged into /kt/ in the history of Old French, after which this /kt/ shifted to /xt/.\nIn parallel, /ps/ and /ks/ merged into /ks/ before shifting to /xs/, apparently under Gaulish influence.\nThe [Celtic](https://bliptext.com/articles/celtic-languages) [Gaulish language](https://bliptext.com/articles/gaulish-language) is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable cultural Romanization.\nCoexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and [calques](https://bliptext.com/articles/calque) (including oui, the word for \"yes\"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order.\nA computational study from 2003 suggests that early gender shifts may have been motivated by the gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish.\n\n### Frankish\nThe pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax of the Vulgar Latin spoken in [Roman Gaul](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-gaul) in [late antiquity](https://bliptext.com/articles/late-antiquity) were modified by the [Old Frankish language](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-frankish-language), spoken by the [Franks](https://bliptext.com/articles/franks) who settled in Gaul from the 5th century and conquered the future Old French-speaking area by the 530s.\nThe name français itself is derived from the name of the Franks.\nThe Old Frankish language had a definitive influence on the development of Old French, which partly explains why the earliest attested Old French documents are older than the earliest attestations in other Romance languages (e.g. [Strasbourg Oaths](https://bliptext.com/articles/strasbourg-oath), [Sequence of Saint Eulalia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sequence-of-saint-eulalia)).\nIt is the result of an earlier gap created between Classical Latin and its evolved forms, which slowly reduced and eventually severed the [mutual intelligibility](https://bliptext.com/articles/mutual-intelligibility) between the two.\nThe [Old Low Franconian](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-dutch) influence is also believed to be responsible for the differences between the langue d'oïl and the langue d'oc (Occitan), being that various parts of Northern France remained bilingual between Latin and Germanic for some time, and these areas correspond precisely to where the first documents in Old French were written.\nThis Germanic language shaped the popular Latin spoken here and gave it a very distinctive identity compared to the other future Romance languages.\nThe first noticeable influence is the substitution of the Latin melodic accent with a Germanic stress and its result was [diphthongization](https://bliptext.com/articles/diphthongization), differentiation between long and short vowels, the fall of the unaccented syllable and of the final vowels:\nAdditionally, two phonemes that had long since died out in Vulgar Latin were reintroduced: and (> OF g(u)-, ONF w- cf. [Picard](https://bliptext.com/articles/picard-language) w-):\nIn contrast, the Italian, Portuguese and Spanish words of Germanic origin borrowed from French or directly from Germanic retain ~, e.g. Italian, Spanish guerra 'war', alongside in French guerre). These examples show a clear consequence of bilingualism, that sometimes even changed the first syllable of the Latin words. One example of a Latin word influencing an OLF loan is framboise 'raspberry', from OF frambeise, from OLF *brāmbesi 'blackberry' (cf.\nDutch braambes, braambezie; akin to German Brombeere, English dial.\nbramberry) blended with LL fraga or OF fraie 'strawberry', which explains the replacement > and in turn the final -se of framboise added to OF fraie to make freise, modern fraise (≠ Wallon frève, Occitan fraga, Romanian fragă, Italian fragola, fravola 'strawberry').\n[Mildred Pope](https://bliptext.com/articles/mildred-pope) estimated that perhaps still 15% of the vocabulary of Modern French derives from Germanic sources.\nThis proportion was larger in Old French, because [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) borrowed heavily from Latin and Italian.\n\n## Earliest written Old French\nThe earliest documents said to be written in the Gallo-Romance that prefigures French – after the [Reichenau](https://bliptext.com/articles/reichenau-glosses) and [Kassel glosses](https://bliptext.com/articles/kassel-glosses) (8th and 9th centuries) – are the [Oaths of Strasbourg](https://bliptext.com/articles/oaths-of-strasbourg) (treaties and charters into which King [Charles the Bald](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-the-bald) entered in 842):\nPro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa ...\n(For the love of God and for the Christian people, and our common salvation, from this day forward, as God will give me the knowledge and the power, I will defend my brother Karlo with my help in everything ...)\nThe second-oldest document in Old French is the [Eulalia sequence](https://bliptext.com/articles/eulalia-sequence), which is important for linguistic reconstruction of Old French pronunciation due to its consistent spelling.\nThe royal [House of Capet](https://bliptext.com/articles/house-of-capet), founded by [Hugh Capet](https://bliptext.com/articles/hugh-capet) in 987, inaugurated the development of northern French culture in and around [Île-de-France](https://bliptext.com/articles/le-de-france), which slowly but firmly asserted its ascendency over the more southerly areas of [Aquitaine](https://bliptext.com/articles/aquitaine) and Tolosa ([Toulouse](https://bliptext.com/articles/toulouse)); however, the [Capetians](https://bliptext.com/articles/capetian-dynasty)' [langue d'oïl](https://bliptext.com/articles/langue-d-o-l), the forerunner of modern standard French, did not begin to become the common speech of all of France until after the [French Revolution](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-revolution).\n\n## Transition to Middle French\nIn the Late Middle Ages, the Old French dialects diverged into a number of distinct langues d'oïl, among which [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) proper was the dialect of the [Île-de-France](https://bliptext.com/articles/le-de-france) region.\nDuring the [Early Modern period](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-modern-france), French was established as the official language of the Kingdom of France throughout the realm, including the langue d'oc-speaking territories in the south.\nIt was only in the 17th to 18th centuries – with the development especially of popular literature of the [Bibliothèque bleue](https://bliptext.com/articles/biblioth-que-bleue) – that a standardized [Classical French](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-french) spread throughout France alongside the regional dialects.\n\n# Literature\nThe material and cultural conditions in [France and associated territories](https://bliptext.com/articles/territorial-evolution-of-france) around the year 1100 triggered what [Charles Homer Haskins](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-homer-haskins) termed the \"[Renaissance of the 12th century](https://bliptext.com/articles/renaissance-of-the-12th-century)\", resulting in a profusion of creative works in a variety of genres.\nOld French gave way to [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) in the mid-14th century, paving the way for early [French Renaissance literature](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-renaissance-literature) of the 15th century.\nThe earliest extant French literary texts date from the ninth century, but very few texts before the 11th century have survived.\nThe first literary works written in Old French were [saints' lives](https://bliptext.com/articles/hagiography).\nThe [Canticle of Saint Eulalie](https://bliptext.com/articles/sequence-of-saint-eulalia), written in the second half of the 9th century, is generally accepted as the first such text.\nAt the beginning of the 13th century, [Jean Bodel](https://bliptext.com/articles/jean-bodel), in his [Chanson de Saisnes](https://bliptext.com/articles/chanson-de-saisnes), divided medieval French narrative literature into three subject areas: the [Matter of France](https://bliptext.com/articles/matter-of-france) or Matter of [Charlemagne](https://bliptext.com/articles/charlemagne); the [Matter of Rome](https://bliptext.com/articles/matter-of-rome) ([romances](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-heroic-literature) in an ancient setting); and the [Matter of Britain](https://bliptext.com/articles/matter-of-britain) (Arthurian [romances](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-heroic-literature) and [Breton lais](https://bliptext.com/articles/breton-lai)).\nThe first of these is the subject area of the [chansons de geste](https://bliptext.com/articles/chanson-de-geste) (\"songs of exploits\" or \"songs of (heroic) deeds\"), [epic poems](https://bliptext.com/articles/epic-poem) typically composed in [ten-syllable](https://bliptext.com/articles/decasyllable) [assonanced](https://bliptext.com/articles/assonance) (occasionally [rhymed](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhyme)) [laisses](https://bliptext.com/articles/laisse).\nMore than one hundred chansons de geste have survived in around three hundred manuscripts.\nThe oldest and most celebrated of the chansons de geste is [The Song of Roland](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-song-of-roland) (earliest version composed in the late 11th century).\n[Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube](https://bliptext.com/articles/bertrand-de-bar-sur-aube) in his [Girart de Vienne](https://bliptext.com/articles/girart-de-vienne) set out a grouping of the chansons de geste into three [cycles](https://bliptext.com/articles/literature-cycle): the Geste du roi centering on Charlemagne, the [Geste de Garin de Monglane](https://bliptext.com/articles/geste-de-garin-de-monglane) (whose central character was [William of Orange](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-of-gellone)), and the Geste de [Doon de Mayence](https://bliptext.com/articles/doon-de-mayence) or the \"rebel vassal cycle\", the most famous characters of which were [Renaud de Montauban](https://bliptext.com/articles/renaud-de-montauban) and [Girart de Roussillon](https://bliptext.com/articles/girart-de-roussillon).\nA fourth grouping, not listed by Bertrand, is the [Crusade cycle](https://bliptext.com/articles/crusade-cycle), dealing with the [First Crusade](https://bliptext.com/articles/first-crusade) and its immediate aftermath.\n[Jean Bodel](https://bliptext.com/articles/jean-bodel)'s other two categories—the \"Matter of Rome\" and the \"Matter of Britain\"—concern the French [romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-heroic-literature) or roman.\nAround a hundred verse romances survive from the period 1150–1220.\nFrom around 1200 on, the tendency was increasingly to write the romances in prose (many of the earlier verse romances were adapted into prose versions), although new verse romances continued to be written to the end of the 14th century.\nThe most important romance of the 13th century is the [Romance of the Rose](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-of-the-rose), which breaks considerably from the conventions of the chivalric adventure story.\nMedieval French [lyric poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/lyric-poetry) was indebted to the poetic and cultural traditions in [Southern France](https://bliptext.com/articles/southern-france) and [Provence](https://bliptext.com/articles/provence)—including [Toulouse](https://bliptext.com/articles/toulouse) and the [Aquitaine](https://bliptext.com/articles/aquitaine) region—where langue d'oc was spoken ([Occitan language](https://bliptext.com/articles/occitan-language)); in their turn, the Provençal poets were greatly influenced by poetic traditions from the [Hispano-Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-spain).\nLyric poets in Old French are called [trouvères](https://bliptext.com/articles/trouv-res) – etymologically the same word as the [troubadours](https://bliptext.com/articles/troubadour) of [Provençal](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-occitan) or [langue d'oc](https://bliptext.com/articles/langue-d-oc) (from the verb trobar \"to find, to invent\").\nBy the late 13th century, the poetic tradition in France had begun to develop in ways that differed significantly from the troubadour poets, both in content and in the use of certain fixed forms.\nThe new poetic (as well as musical: some of the earliest medieval music has lyrics composed in Old French by the earliest composers known by name) tendencies are apparent in the [Roman de Fauvel](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-de-fauvel) in 1310 and 1314, a satire on abuses in the medieval church, filled with medieval [motets](https://bliptext.com/articles/motet), [lais](https://bliptext.com/articles/lai-poetic-form), [rondeaux](https://bliptext.com/articles/rondeau-music) and other new secular forms of poetry and music (mostly anonymous, but with several pieces by [Philippe de Vitry](https://bliptext.com/articles/philippe-de-vitry), who would coin the expression [ars nova](https://bliptext.com/articles/ars-nova) to distinguish the new musical practice from the music of the immediately preceding age).\nThe best-known poet and composer of ars nova secular music and chansons of the incipient [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) period was [Guillaume de Machaut](https://bliptext.com/articles/guillaume-de-machaut).\nDiscussions about the origins of non-religious theater (théâtre profane)—both drama and farce—in the Middle Ages remain controversial, but the idea of a continuous popular tradition stemming from Latin comedy and tragedy to the 9th century seems unlikely.\nMost historians place the origin of medieval drama in the church's liturgical dialogues and \"tropes\".\n[Mystery plays](https://bliptext.com/articles/mystery-play) were eventually transferred from the monastery church to the chapter house or refectory hall and finally to the open air, and the vernacular was substituted for Latin.\nIn the 12th century one finds the earliest extant passages in French appearing as refrains inserted into [liturgical dramas](https://bliptext.com/articles/liturgical-drama) in Latin, such as a [Saint Nicholas](https://bliptext.com/articles/saint-nicholas) (patron saint of the student clercs) play and a [Saint Stephen](https://bliptext.com/articles/saint-stephen) play.\nAn early French dramatic play is Le Jeu d'Adam (c. 1150) written in octosyllabic rhymed couplets with Latin stage directions (implying that it was written by Latin-speaking clerics for a lay public).\nA large body of [fables](https://bliptext.com/articles/fable) survive in Old French; these include (mostly anonymous) literature dealing with the recurring trickster character of [Reynard](https://bliptext.com/articles/reynard) the [Fox](https://bliptext.com/articles/fox).\nMarie de France was also active in this genre, producing the [Ysopet](https://bliptext.com/articles/ysopet) (Little [Aesop](https://bliptext.com/articles/aesop)) series of fables in verse.\nRelated to the fable was the more bawdy [fabliau](https://bliptext.com/articles/fabliau), which covered topics such as cuckolding and corrupt clergy.\nThese fabliaux would be an important source for [Chaucer](https://bliptext.com/articles/chaucer) and for the Renaissance short story (conte or nouvelle).\nAmong the earliest works of [rhetoric](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhetoric) and [logic](https://bliptext.com/articles/logic) to appear in Old French were the translations of [Rhetorica ad Herennium](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhetorica-ad-herennium) and [Boethius](https://bliptext.com/articles/boethius)' De topicis differentiis by [John of Antioch](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-of-antioch-translator) in 1282.\nIn northern Italy, authors developed [Franco-Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/franco-italian), a mixed language of Old French and [Venetian](https://bliptext.com/articles/venetian-language) or [Lombard](https://bliptext.com/articles/lombard-language) used in literary works in the 13th and 14th centuries.\n\n# Phonology\nOld French was constantly changing and evolving; however, the form in the late 12th century, as attested in a great deal of mostly poetic writings, can be considered standard.\nThe writing system at this time was more phonetic than that used in most subsequent centuries.\nIn particular, all written consonants (including final ones) were pronounced, except for s preceding non-[stop consonants](https://bliptext.com/articles/stop-consonant) and t in et, and final e was pronounced.\nThe phonological system can be summarised as follows:\n\n## Consonants\nNotes:\n\n## Vowels\nIn Old French, the nasal vowels were not separate phonemes but only [allophones](https://bliptext.com/articles/allophone) of the oral vowels before a nasal consonant.\nThe nasal consonant was fully pronounced; bon was pronounced (ModF ).\nNasal vowels were present even in [open syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/open-syllable) before nasals where Modern French has oral vowels, as in bone (ModF bonne ).\n\n## Monophthongs\nNotes:\n\n## Diphthongs and triphthongs\nNotes:\n\n## Hiatus\nIn addition to diphthongs, Old French had many instances of [hiatus](https://bliptext.com/articles/hiatus-linguistics) between adjacent vowels because of the loss of an intervening consonant.\nManuscripts generally do not distinguish hiatus from true diphthongs, but modern scholarly transcription indicates it with a [diaeresis](https://bliptext.com/articles/diaeresis-diacritic), as in Modern French:\n\n## Sample text\nPresented below is the first [laisse](https://bliptext.com/articles/laisse) of The Song of Roland along with a [broad transcription](https://bliptext.com/articles/broad-transcription) reflecting reconstructed pronunciation c. 1050.\n\n# Grammar\n\n## Nouns\nOld French maintained a two-case system, with a [nominative case](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative-case) and an [oblique case](https://bliptext.com/articles/oblique-case), for longer than some other Romance languages as [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) and [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) did.\nCase distinctions, at least in the masculine [gender](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-gender), were marked on both the [definite article](https://bliptext.com/articles/definite-article) and the noun itself.\nThus, the masculine noun li veisins 'the neighbour' was declined as follows:\nIn later Old French, the distinctions had become moribund.\nAs in most other Rom**a**nce l**a**ngu**a**ges, it w**a**s the oblique c**a**se form th**a**t usu**a**lly survived to become the Modern French form: l'enf**a**nt \"the child\" represents the old oblique (L**a**tin **a**ccus**a**tive īnf**a**ntem); the OF nomin**a**tive w**a**s li enfes (L**a**t īnfāns).\nThere are some cases with significant differences between nominative and oblique forms (derived from Latin nouns with a stress shift between the nominative and other cases) in which either it is the nominative form that survives or both forms survive with different meanings:\nIn a few cases in which the only distinction between forms was the nominative -s ending, the -s was preserved.\nAn example is [fils](https://bliptext.com/articles/fils) \"son\" (< Latin nominative f**ī**lius).\nIt is irregular that the -s in the word is still pronounced today; but this has to do with later developments — namely the [Middle French](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-french) and Early Modern French system of [pausal](https://bliptext.com/articles/pausa) pronunciations.\nAs in Spanish and Italian, the neuter gender was eliminated, and most old neuter nouns became masculine.\nSome Latin neuter plurals, which ended in -a, were reanalysed as feminine singulars: Lat gaudium was more widely used in the plural form gaudia, which was taken for a singular in Vulgar Latin and ultimately led to ModF la joie, \"joy\" (feminine singular).\nNouns were declined in the following [declensions](https://bliptext.com/articles/declension):\nClass I is derived from the Latin [first declension](https://bliptext.com/articles/first-declension).\nClass Ia mostly comes from Latin feminine nouns in the [third declension](https://bliptext.com/articles/third-declension).\nClass II is derived from the Latin [second declension](https://bliptext.com/articles/second-declension).\nClass IIa generally stems from second-declension nouns ending in -er and from third-declension masculine nouns; in both cases, the Latin nominative singular did not end in -s, which is preserved in Old French.\nThe classes show various analogical developments: Class I nominative plural -es from the accusative instead of -∅ (-e after a consonant cluster) in Class I nominative plural (Lat -ae, although there is evidence to suggest [this analogy had already occurred in VL](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-plurals)), li pere instead of *li peres (Lat illi patres) in Class IIa nominative plural, modelled on Class II, etc.\nClass III nouns show a separate stem in the nominative singular that does not occur in any of the other forms:\nRegular feminine forms of masculine nouns are formed by adding an -e to the masculine stem unless the masculine stem already ends in -e.\nFor example, [bergier](https://bliptext.com/articles/bergier) (shepherd) becomes [bergier](https://bliptext.com/articles/bergier)e (ModF [berger](https://bliptext.com/articles/berger) and [bergère](https://bliptext.com/articles/berg-re)).\n\n## Adjectives\nAdjectives agree in terms of [number](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-number), gender and case with the noun that they are qualifying.\nThus, a feminine plural noun in the nominative case requires any qualifying adjectives to be feminine, plural and nominative.\nFor example, in femes [riche](https://bliptext.com/articles/riche)s, [riche](https://bliptext.com/articles/riche) has to be in the feminine plural form.\nAdjectives can be divided into three declensional classes:\nClass I adjectives have a feminine singular form (nominative and oblique) ending in -e.\nThey can be further subdivided into two subclasses, based on the masculine nominative singular form.\nClass Ia adjectives have a masculine nominative singular ending in -s:\n! ! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Masculine\n! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Feminine\n! Neuter\n! Case || Singular || Plural || Singular || Plural || Singular\n! Nominative\n! Oblique\nFor Class Ib adjectives, the masculine nominative singular ends in -e, like the feminine.\nThere are descendants of Latin second- and third-declension adjectives ending in -er in the nominative singular:\n! ! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Masculine\n! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Feminine\n! Neuter\n! Case || Singular || Plural || Singular || Plural || Singular\n! Nominative\n! Oblique\nFor Class II adjectives, the feminine singular is not marked by the ending -e:\n! ! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Masculine\n! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Feminine\n! Neuter\n! Case || Singular || Plural || Singular || Plural || Singular\n! Nominative\n! Oblique\nAn important subgroup of Class II adjectives is the present participial forms in -ant.\nClass III adjectives have a stem alternation, resulting from stress shift in the Latin third declension and a distinct neuter form:\n! ! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Masculine\n! colspan=\"2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" | Feminine\n! Neuter\n! Case || Singular || Plural || Singular || Plural || Singular\n! Nominative\n! Oblique\nIn later Old French, Classes II and III tended to be moved across to Class I, which was complete by Middle French.\nModern French thus has only a single adjective declension, unlike most other Romance languages, which have two or more.\n\n## Verbs\nVerbs in Old French show the same extreme phonological deformations as other Old French words; however, morphologically, Old French verbs are extremely conservative in preserving intact most of the Latin alternations and irregularities that had been inherited in [Proto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-romance).\nOld French has much less analogical reformation than Modern French has and significantly less than the oldest stages of other languages (such as [Old Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-spanish)) despite that the various [phonological developments](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonological-development) in Gallo-Romance and Proto-French led to complex alternations in the majority of commonly-used verbs.\nFor ex************a************mple, the OF verb l************a************ver \"to w************a************sh\" (L************a************t l************a************v**ā**re) is conjug************a************ted je lef, tu leves, il leve in the present indic************a************tive ************a************nd je lef, tu les, il let in the [present subjunctive](https://bliptext.com/articles/present-subjunctive), in both c************a************ses regul************a************r phonologic************a************l developments from L************a************tin indic************a************tive l************a************vō, l************a************v**ā**s, l************a************v************a************t ************a************nd subjunctive l************a************vem, l************a************vēs, l************a************vet.\nThe following paradigm is typical in showing the phonologically regular but morphologically irregular alternations of most paradigms:\nModern French, on the other hand, has je lave, tu laves, il lave in both indicative and subjunctive, reflecting significant analogical developments: analogical borrowing of unstressed vowel /a/, analogical -e in the first singular (from verbs like j'entre, with a regular -e ) and wholesale replacement of the subjunctive with forms modelled on -ir/-oir/-re verbs.\nAll serve to eliminate the various alternations in the OF verb paradigm.\nEven modern \"irregular\" verbs are not immune from analogy: For example, OF je vif, tu vis, il vit (vivre \"to live\") has yielded to modern je vis, tu vis, il vit, eliminating the unpredictable -f in the first-person singular.\nThe [simple past](https://bliptext.com/articles/simple-past) also shows extensive analogical reformation and simplification in Modern French, as compared with Old French.\nThe Latin [pluperfect](https://bliptext.com/articles/pluperfect) was preserved in very early Old French as a past tense with a value similar to a [preterite](https://bliptext.com/articles/preterite) or [imperfect](https://bliptext.com/articles/imperfect).\nFor example, the [Sequence of Saint Eulalia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sequence-of-saint-eulalia) (878 AD) has past-tense forms such as avret (< Lat habuerat), voldret (< Lat voluerat), alternating with past-tense forms from the Latin perfect (continued as the modern \"simple past\").\n[Old Occitan](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-occitan) also preserved this tense, with a [conditional](https://bliptext.com/articles/conditional-mood) value; [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) still preserves this tense (the -ra imperfect subjunctive), as does [Portuguese](https://bliptext.com/articles/portuguese-language) (in its original value as a pluperfect indicative).\n\n### Verb alternations\nIn Latin, stress was determined automatically by the number of syllables in a word and the [weight](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllable-weight) (length) of the syllables.\nThat resulted in certain automatic stress shifts between related forms in a paradigm, depending on the nature of the suffixes added.\nFor **e**xampl**e**, in p**e**nsō \"I think\", th**e** first syllabl**e** was str**e**ss**e**d, but in p**e**ns**ā**mus \"w**e** think\", th**e** s**e**cond syllabl**e** was str**e**ss**e**d.\nIn many Romance languages, vowels diphthongized in stressed syllables under certain circumstances but not in unstressed syllables, resulting in alternations in verb paradigms: [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) pienso \"I think\" vs. pensamos \"we think\" (pensar \"to think\"), or cuento \"I tell\" vs. contamos \"we tell\" (contar \"to tell\").\nIn the development of French, at least five vowels diphthongized in stressed, [open syllables](https://bliptext.com/articles/open-syllable).\nCombined with other stress-dependent developments, that yielded 15 or so types of alternations in so-called [strong verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/irregular-verb) in Old French.\nFor example, diphthongized to before [nasal stops](https://bliptext.com/articles/nasal-stop) in stressed, open syllables but not in unstressed syllables, yielding aim \"I love\" (Lat amō) but amons \"we love\" (Lat am**ā**mus).\nThe different types are as follows:\nIn Modern French, the verbs in the -er class have been systematically [levelled](https://bliptext.com/articles/level).\nGenerally, the \"weak\" (unstressed) form predominates, but there are some exceptions (such as modern aimer/nous aimons).\nThe only remaining alternations are in verbs like acheter/j'achète and jeter/je jette, with unstressed alternating with stressed and in (largely-learned) verbs like adhérer/j'adhère, with unstressed alternating with stressed.\nMany of the non-er verbs have become obsolete, and many of the remaining verbs have been levelled; however, a few alternations remain in what are now known as [irregular verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/irregular-verbs), such as je tiens, nous tenons; je dois, nous devons and je meurs, nous mourons.\nSome verbs had a more irregular alternation between different-length stems, with a longer, stressed stem alternating with a shorter, unstressed stem.\nThat was a regular development stemming from the loss of unstressed [intertonic vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), which remained when they were stressed:\nThe alternation of je desjun, disner is particularly complicated; it appears that:\nBoth stems have become full verbs in Modern French: déjeuner \"to have lunch\" and dîner \"to dine\".\nFurthermore, déjeuner does not derive directly from je desjun (< *disi(ēi)ūnō, with total loss of unstressed -ēi-).\nInstead, it comes from OF desjeüner, based on the alternative form je desjeün (< *disiē(i)ūnō, with loss of only -i-, likely influenced by jeûner \"to fast\" < OF jeüner < je jeün \"I fast\" < iē(i)ūnō: iē- is an initial rather than intertonic so the vowel -ē- does not disappear).\n\n### Example of regular -er verb: durer (to last)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: avoir\n\n### Example of regular -ir verb: fenir (to end)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: avoir\n\n### Example of regular -re verb: corre (to run)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: estre\n\n### Examples of auxiliary verbs\n\n#### avoir (to have)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: avoir\n\n#### estre (to be)\nNon-finite forms:\nAuxiliary verb: avoir\n\n## Other parts of speech\nAdverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are generally invariable.\nPronouns are usually declinable.\n\n# Explanatory notes\n\n# Citations\n\n## General sources","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}