151-508: French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that specifically is classified under the Gallo-Romance languages . The discussion of the history of a language is typically divided into "external history", describing the ethnic, political, social, technological, and other changes that affected the languages, and "internal history", describing the phonological and grammatical changes undergone by
302-640: A in a syllable preceding the stress, which (originally) became a schwa. The stressed syllable is underlined in the Latin examples: As noted above, stressed vowels developed quite differently depending on whether they occurred in an open syllable (followed by at most one consonant) or a closed syllable (followed by two or more consonants). In open syllables, the Vulgar Latin mid vowels /ɛ e ɔ o/ all diphthongized, becoming Old French ie oi ue eu respectively ( ue and eu later merged), while Vulgar Latin /a/
453-744: A French official to teachers in the department of Finistère , in western Brittany, included the following: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language". The prefect of Basses-Pyrénées in the French Basque Country wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to replace the Basque language with French..." Students were taught that their ancestral languages were inferior and they should be ashamed of them; this process
604-543: A certain locality over several generations (see List of political families in the United Kingdom ). Owning land was a prerequisite for suffrage (the civil right to vote) in county constituencies until the Reform Act 1832 ; until then, Parliament was largely in the hands of the landowning class. The gentry ranked above the agricultural sector's middle class: the larger tenant farmers , who rented land from
755-474: A clear result of bilingualism, which frequently altered the initial syllable of the Latin. There is also the converse example in which the Latin word influenced the Germanic word: framboise 'raspberry' from OLF *brambasi (cf. OHG brāmberi > Brombeere 'mulberry'; E brambleberry ; *basi 'berry' cf. Got. -basi , Dutch bes 'berry') conflated with LL fraga or OF fraie 'strawberry', which explains
906-431: A comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages". In the article, Weber ranked French as, after English, the second-most influential language of the world, ahead of Spanish. His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations,
1057-622: A determining influence on the birth of Old French, which partly explains that Old French is the earliest-attested Romance language, such as in the Oaths of Strasbourg and Sequence of Saint Eulalia . The new speech diverged so markedly from the Latin that it was no longer mutually intelligible. The Old Low Frankish influence is also primarily responsible for the differences between the langue d'oïl and langue d'oc ( Occitan ) since different parts of Northern France remained bilingual in Latin and Germanic for several centuries, which correspond exactly to
1208-555: A foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050. French is the fastest growing language on the continent (in terms of either official or foreign languages). French is increasingly being spoken as a native language in Francophone Africa, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and
1359-538: A linguistic unification of all the groups coming from France happened (either in France, on the ships, or in Canada) that many sources noted that all "Canadiens" spoke French ( King's French ) natively by the end of the 17th century, well before the unification was complete in France. Today, French is the language of about 10 million people (not counting French-based creoles, which are also spoken by about 10 million people) in
1510-685: A living language outside Europe is mixed: it is nearly extinct in some former French colonies ( Southeast Asia ), but the language has changed to creoles , dialects or pidgins in the French departments in the West Indies even though its people are educated in Standard French. On the other hand, many former French colonies have adopted French as an official language, and the total number of French speakers has increased, especially in Africa . In
1661-469: A pattern in many families that while the eldest son would inherit the estate and enter politics, the second son would join the army, the third son go into law, and the fourth son join the church. A newly rich man who wished his family to join the gentry (and they nearly all did so wish), was expected not only to buy a country house and estate, but often also to sever financial ties with the business which had made him wealthy in order to cleanse his family of
SECTION 10
#17327836650771812-599: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on
1963-519: A profound influence on the Latin spoken in their respective regions by altering both the pronunciation (especially the vowel system phonemes: e , eu , u , short o ) and the syntax . It also introduced a number of new words ( see List of French words of Germanic origin ). Sources disagree on how much of the vocabulary of modern French (excluding French dialects) comes from Germanic words and range from just 500 words (≈1%) (representing loans from ancient Germanic languages: Gothic and Frankish) to 15% of
2114-494: A relic of the old nominal case system of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated diphthongs such as -eau which would later be leveled to monophthongs. The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in
2265-587: A second language. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German ; in some institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union ). French is also the 16th most natively spoken language in the world, the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers , and
2416-526: A second language. However it has also become a native language in a number of urban areas, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and the Democratic Republic of the Congo . In some North African countries, though not having official status, it is also a first language among some upper classes of the population alongside indigenous languages, but only
2567-941: A second one among the general population. In 2015, approximately 40% of the Francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania. French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union . Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as
2718-469: A stress accent that is quite weak, with little difference between the pronunciation of stressed and unstressed vowels.) Vulgar Latin had five vowels in unstressed syllables: /a e i o u/ . When they occurred word-finally, all were lost in Old French except for /a/ , which turned into a schwa (written e ): A final schwa also developed when the loss of a final vowel produced a consonant cluster that
2869-547: A variant of Canadian French , is spoken in parts of New England . Missouri French was historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois (formerly known as Upper Louisiana ), but is nearly extinct today. French also survived in isolated pockets along the Gulf Coast of what was previously French Lower Louisiana , such as Mon Louis Island , Alabama and DeLisle, Mississippi (the latter only being discovered by linguists in
3020-430: A word indicating high birth, high status, or gentleness. The term gradually came to be used for the lower ranks of the aristocracy , which along with the peerage had previously been considered part of the nobility . In the 16th and 17th centuries, writers referred to the peerage as the nobilitas major ( Latin for "greater nobility") and the gentry as the nobilitas minor (Latin for "minor nobility"). Eventually,
3171-437: Is 95%, and in the French collectivity of Wallis and Futuna , it is 84%. In French Polynesia and to a lesser extent Wallis and Futuna, where oral and written knowledge of the French language has become almost universal (95% and 84% respectively), French increasingly tends to displace the native Polynesian languages as the language most spoken at home. In French Polynesia, the percentage of the population who reported that French
SECTION 20
#17327836650773322-727: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European family . Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . French evolved from Gallo-Romance , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl —languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien ) largely supplanted. French
3473-472: Is a widespread second language among the Lebanese people , and is taught in many schools along with Arabic and English. French is used on Lebanese pound banknotes, on road signs, on Lebanese license plates , and on official buildings (alongside Arabic). Today, French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon , with about 40% of the population being Francophone and 40% Anglophone. The use of English
3624-489: Is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian), Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic), and Médecins du Monde (used alongside English). Given
3775-430: Is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners as of 2017. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including
3926-462: Is an official language in 27 countries , as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. Most of these countries are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 54 member states which share
4077-652: Is enacted only in New Brunswick, where about one third of the population is Francophone. French is also an official language of all of the territories ( Northwest Territories , Nunavut , and Yukon ). Out of the three, Yukon has the most French speakers, making up just under 4% of the population. Furthermore, while French is not an official language in Ontario , the French Language Services Act ensures that provincial services are available in
4228-503: Is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One-third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English
4379-404: Is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects . The period is marked by a heavy superstrate influence from
4530-405: Is often considered to be a useful skill by business owners in the United Kingdom; a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most sought-after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%). MIT economist Albert Saiz calculated a 2.3% premium for those who have French as a foreign language in
4681-828: Is one of the official languages of such major international and regional courts, tribunals, and dispute-settlement bodies as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights , the Caribbean Court of Justice , the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States , the Inter-American Court of Human Rights , the International Court of Justice , the International Criminal Tribunal for
History of French - Misplaced Pages Continue
4832-423: Is one step down from the gentry, but above, say, a husbandman . So while yeoman farmers owned enough land to support a comfortable lifestyle, they nevertheless farmed it themselves and were excluded from the "landed gentry" because they worked for a living, and were thus "in trade" as it was termed. Apart from a few "honourable" professions connected with the governing elite (the clergy of the established church ,
4983-550: Is present in Welsh, e.g. * seχtan → saith "seven", * eχtamos → eithaf "extreme". For Romance, compare: Both changes sometimes had a cumulative effect in French: Latin capsa → * kaχsa → caisse (vs. Italian cassa , Spanish caja ) or captīvus → * kaχtivus → Occitan caitiu , OFr chaitif (mod. chétif "wretched, feeble", cf. Welsh caeth "bondman, slave", vs. Italian cattivo , Spanish cautivo ). In French and
5134-421: Is some debate in today's France about the preservation of the French language and the influence of English (see Franglais ), especially with regard to international business, the sciences and popular culture. There have been laws (see Toubon law ) enacted to require all print ads and billboards with foreign expressions to include a French translation and to require quotas of French-language songs (at least 40%) on
5285-485: Is synonymous with peer . However, this popular usage of nobility omits the distinction between titled and untitled nobility. The titled nobility in Britain are the peers of the realm, whereas the untitled nobility comprise those here described as gentry. David Cannadine wrote that the gentry's lack of titles "did not matter, for it was obvious to contemporaries that the landed gentry were all for practical purposes
5436-576: Is taught in universities around the world, and is one of the world's most influential languages because of its wide use in the worlds of journalism, jurisprudence , education, and diplomacy. In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the UN Secretariat 's only two working languages ), one of twenty official and three procedural languages of the European Union , an official language of NATO ,
5587-583: Is the language group in the south of France and northernmost Spain . The languages, such as Gascon and Provençal , have relatively little Frankish influence. The Middle Ages also saw the influence of other linguistic groups on the dialects of France. Modern French, which was derived mainly from the langue d'oïl , acquired the word si to contradict negative statements or respond to negative questions, from cognate forms of "yes" in Spanish and Catalan ( sí ), Portuguese ( sim ), and Italian ( sì ). From
5738-553: Is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value. French is an official language of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu , where 31% of the population was estimated to speak it in 2023. In the French special collectivity of New Caledonia , 97% of the population can speak, read and write French while in French Polynesia this figure
5889-483: Is the native language of about 23% of the Swiss population, and is spoken by 50% of the population. Along with Luxembourgish and German, French is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg , where it is generally the preferred language of business as well as of the different public administrations. It is also the official language of Monaco . At a regional level, French is acknowledged as an official language in
6040-492: Is the second-most spoken language (after English) in the states of Maine and New Hampshire . In Louisiana , it is tied with Spanish for second-most spoken if Louisiana French and all creoles such as Haitian are included. French is the third most spoken language (after English and Spanish) in the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New Hampshire . Louisiana is home to many distinct French dialects, collectively known as Louisiana French . New England French , essentially
6191-424: Is the sole official language in the province of Quebec , where some 80% of the population speak it as a native language and 95% are capable of conducting a conversation in it. Quebec is also home to the city of Montreal , which is the world's fourth-largest French-speaking city, by number of first language speakers. New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only officially bilingual provinces, though full bilingualism
History of French - Misplaced Pages Continue
6342-787: The chansons de geste that told tales of the paladins of Charlemagne and the heroes of the Crusades . The first notarized document in Modern French was redacted in Aosta in 1532, when in Paris Latin was still in use. The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, three years before France itself. By the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539 King Francis I made French
6493-704: The Aosta Valley region of Italy where it is the first language of approximately 50% of the population, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands . It is also spoken in Andorra and is the main language after Catalan in El Pas de la Casa . The language is taught as the primary second language in the German state of Saarland , with French being taught from pre-school and over 43% of citizens being able to speak French. The majority of
6644-462: The Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere. French is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 80 million are native speakers. According to the OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language" as of 2022, without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. In Francophone Africa, it is spoken mainly as
6795-539: The Democratic Republic of Congo . There is not a single African French , but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages . Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth. It is also where the language has evolved the most in recent years. Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries, but written forms of
6946-485: The European Union , French was the dominant language within all institutions until the 1990s. After several enlargements of the EU (1995, 2004), French significantly lost ground in favour of English, which is more widely spoken and taught in most EU countries. French currently remains one of the three working languages, or "procedural languages", of the EU, along with English and German. It is the second-most widely used language within EU institutions after English, but remains
7097-559: The Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. Robert Estienne published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar. Politically,
7248-728: The Germanic languages spoken by the Frankish invaders. From the time period of Clovis I , the Franks extended their rule over northern Gaul. Over time, the French language developed from either the Oïl language found around Paris and Île-de-France (the Francien theory) or from a standard administrative language based on common characteristics found in all Oïl languages (the lingua franca theory). Langue d'oc used oc or òc for "yes" and
7399-877: The International Olympic Committee , the Council of Europe , the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, Portuguese and English), the Eurovision Song Contest , one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency , World Trade Organization and the least used of the three official languages in the North American Free Trade Agreement countries. It
7550-575: The Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia , while Old French literature began to be produced in the eleventh century, with major early works often focusing on the lives of saints (such as the Vie de Saint Alexis ), or wars and royal courts, notably including the Chanson de Roland , epic cycles focused on King Arthur and his court , as well as a cycle focused on William of Orange . It
7701-1012: The United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , the World Trade Organization , the International Olympic Committee , the General Conference on Weights and Measures , and the International Committee of the Red Cross . French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French . Due to Roman rule, Latin
SECTION 50
#17327836650777852-473: The official language of administration and court proceedings in France, which ousted Latin , which had been used earlier. With the imposition of a standardised chancery dialect and the loss of the declension system, the dialect is referred to as Middle French ( moyen français ). The first grammatical description of French, the Tretté de la Grammaire française by Louis Maigret , was published in 1550. Many of
8003-468: The si languages – from Latin sic , "thus" – the Italian and Iberian Peninsulas . Modern linguists typically add a third group within France around Lyon , the "Arpitan" or " Franco-Provençal language ", whose modern word for "yes" is ouè . The Gallo-Romance group in the north of France, the langue d'oïl like Picard , Walloon and Francien , were influenced by
8154-422: The "Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage". As well as listing genealogical information, these books often also included details of the right of a given family to a coat of arms . They were comparable to the Almanach de Gotha in continental Europe. In the 1830s, one peerage publisher, John Burke , expanded his market and his readership by publishing a similar volume for people without titles, which
8305-413: The "taint of trade", depending somewhat on what that business was. However, during the 18th and 19th centuries, as the new rich of the Industrial Revolution became more and more numerous and politically powerful, this expectation was gradually relaxed. Persons who are closely related to peers are also more correctly described as gentry than as nobility, since the latter term, in the modern British Isles,
8456-632: The 1066 Norman conquest of England, the Normans' language developed into Anglo-Norman , which served as the language of the ruling classes and commerce in England until the Hundred Years' War , when the use of French-influenced English had spread throughout English society. Around then, many words from Arabic (or from Persian via Arabic) entered French, mainly indirectly through Medieval Latin , Italian and Spanish. There are words for luxury goods ( élixir, orange ), spices ( camphre, safran ), trade goods ( alcool, bougie, coton ), sciences ( alchimie, hasard ), and mathematics ( algèbre, algorithme ). It
8607-405: The 17th century, the gentry was divided into four ranks: In a historiographical survey, Peter Coss describes a number of approaches to deciding who was gentry. One is to view the gentry as those recognised legally as possessing gentility. However, Coss finds this method unsatisfactory because it "seems certain that gentility was widely felt and articulated within society long before legislation
8758-455: The 1990s) but these varieties are severely endangered or presumed extinct. French is one of two official languages in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole . It is the principal language of education, administration, business, and public signage and is spoken by all educated Haitians. It is also used for ceremonial events such as weddings, graduations, and church masses. The vast majority of the population speaks Haitian Creole as their first language;
8909-474: The 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War . Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language. During the Grand Siècle (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV , enjoyed
9060-459: The 3rd century, Western Europe started to be invaded by Germanic tribes from the north and the east, and some of the groups settled in Gaul . In the history of the French language, the most important groups are the Franks in northern France, the Alemanni in the modern German/French border area ( Alsace ), the Burgundians in the Rhône (and the Saone ) Valley and the Visigoths in the Aquitaine region and Spain. The Frankish language had
9211-471: The 4th to the 7th centuries, Brythonic -speaking peoples from Cornwall , Devon and Wales travelled across the English Channel for reasons of trade and of flight from the Anglo-Saxon invasions of England. They established themselves in Armorica , and their language became Breton in more recent centuries, which gave French bijou "jewel" (< Breton bizou from biz "finger") and menhir (< Breton maen "stone" and hir "long"). Attested since
SECTION 60
#17327836650779362-446: The 700 words of Modern French that originate from Italian were introduced in this period, including several denoting artistic concepts ( scenario , piano ), luxury items and food. The earliest history of the French language and its literature was also written in this period: the Recueil de l'origine de la langue et poesie françoise , by Claude Fauchet , published in 1581. Following a period of unification, regulation and purification,
9513-458: The Americas. Through the Académie, public education, centuries of official control and the media, a unified official French language has been forged, but there remains a great deal of diversity today in terms of regional accents and words. For some critics, the "best" pronunciation of the French language is considered to be the one used in Touraine (around Tours and the Loire Valley ), but such value judgments are fraught with problems, and with
9664-510: The Canadian capital, is also effectively bilingual, as it has a large population of federal government workers, who are required to offer services in both French and English, and is just across the river from the Quebecois city of Gatineau . According to the United States Census Bureau (2011), French is the fourth most spoken language in the United States after English, Spanish, and Chinese, when all forms of French are considered together and all dialects of Chinese are similarly combined. French
9815-417: The Canadian province of Quebec , different laws have promoted the use of French in administration, business and education since the 1970s. Bill 101 , for example, obliges most children whose parents did not attend an English-speaking school to be educated in French. Efforts are also made such as by the Office québécois de la langue française to reduce the variation of French spoken in Quebec and to preserve
9966-614: The Caribbean that are collectively referred to as the French West Indies , namely Guadeloupe , Saint Barthélemy , Saint Martin , and Martinique . French is the official language of both French Guiana on the South American continent, and of Saint Pierre and Miquelon , an archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland in North America. French was the official language of the colony of French Indochina , comprising modern-day Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia . It continues to be an administrative language in Laos and Cambodia, although its influence has waned in recent decades. In colonial Vietnam,
10117-408: The Empire, this local elite had been slowly abandoning Gaulish entirely, but the rural and lower class populations remained Gaulish speakers who could sometimes also speak Latin or Greek. The final language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin among rural and lower class populations occurred later, when both they and the incoming Frankish ruler/military class adopted the Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin speech of
10268-405: The French language. The group of 40 members is known as the Immortals, not, as some erroneously believe, because they are chosen to serve for the extent of their lives (which they are), but because of the inscription engraved on the official seal given to them by their founder Richelieu: "À l'immortalité" ("to [the] Immortality [of the French language]"). The foundation still exists and contributes to
10419-413: The French of the 17th and the 18th centuries is sometimes referred to as Classical French ( français classique ), but many linguists simply refer to French language from the 17th century to today as Modern French ( français moderne ). The foundation of the Académie française (French Academy) in 1634 by Cardinal Richelieu created an official body whose goal has been the purification and preservation of
10570-416: The Germanic Frankish language , which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of V2 word order , a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabulary ) including the impersonal singular pronoun on (a calque of Germanic man ), and the name of the language itself. Up until its later stages, Old French , alongside Old Occitan , maintained
10721-410: The North as in the South of France, almost nobody spoke French." Hobsbawm highlighted the role of conscription , invented by Napoleon, and of the 1880s public instruction laws, which allowed to mix the various groups of France into a nationalist mold, which created the French citizen and his consciousness of membership to a common nation, and the various " patois " were progressively eradicated. There
10872-458: The Romance languages into three groups by their respective words for "yes": Nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil , "For some say oc , others say si , others say oïl ". The oïl languages – from Latin hoc ille , "that is it" – occupied northern France, the oc languages – from Latin hoc , "that" – southern France, and
11023-623: The UK. The book series Burke's Landed Gentry records the names of members of this class. The designation landed gentry originally referred exclusively to members of the upper class who were both landlords and commoners (in the British sense)—that is, they did not hold peerages . But by the late 19th century, the term was also applied to peers, such as the Duke of Westminster , who lived on landed estates. The term gentry derives from gentrice ,
11174-487: The adjoining folk dialects and closely related languages, some 200 words of Gaulish origin have been retained, most of which pertaining to folk life. They include: Other Celtic words were not borrowed directly but brought in through Latin, some of which had become common in Latin, braies "knee-length pants", chainse "tunic", char "dray, wagon", daim "roe deer", étain "tin", glaive "broad sword", manteau "coat", vassal "serf, knave". Latin quickly took hold among
11325-479: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French Landed gentry The landed gentry , or the gentry (sometimes collectively known as the squirearchy ), is a largely historical British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income , or at least had a country estate . It is the British element of
11476-519: The demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in 2014 that French "could be the language of the future". However, some African countries such as Algeria intermittently attempted to eradicate the use of French, and as of 2024 it was removed as an official language in Mali and Burkina Faso . Significant as a judicial language, French
11627-512: The dialect of Occitan called Gascon . Its influence is seen in words like boulbène and cargaison . Vikings from Scandinavia invaded France from the 9th century onwards and established themselves mostly in what would be called Normandy . The Normans took up the langue d'oïl spoken there, but Norman French remained heavily influenced by Old Norse and its dialects. They also contributed many words to French related to sailing ( mouette , crique , hauban , hune etc.) and farming. After
11778-810: The distinctiveness of Quebec French . There has been French emigration to the United States, Australia and South America, but the descendants of those immigrants have been so assimilated that few of them still speak French. In the United States, efforts are ongoing in Louisiana ( see CODOFIL ) and parts of New England (particularly Maine ) to preserve French there. French has radically transformative sound changes , especially compared to other Romance languages such as Spanish , Portuguese , Italian and Romanian : The Vulgar Latin underlying French and most other Romance languages had seven vowels in stressed syllables ( /a ɛ e i ɔ o u/ , which are similar to
11929-415: The eastern Mediterranean coast and in the alpine areas, Greek colonials in places such as Marseille and Antibes , and Vascones and Aquitani (Proto- Basques ) in much of the southwest. The Gaulish-speaking population is held to have continued speaking Gaulish even as considerable Romanisation of the local material culture occurred, with Gaulish and Latin coexisting for centuries under Roman rule and
12080-448: The economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the linguistic prestige associated with the mastery of the language (Weber highlighted that French in particular enjoys considerable linguistic prestige). In a 2008 reassessment of his article, Weber concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged." Knowledge of French
12231-594: The elites primarily spoke French, while many servants who worked in French households spoke a French pidgin known as " Tây Bồi " (now extinct). After French rule ended, South Vietnam continued to use French in administration, education, and trade. However, since the Fall of Saigon and the opening of a unified Vietnam's economy, French has gradually been effectively displaced as the first foreign language of choice by English in Vietnam. Nevertheless, it continues to be taught as
12382-433: The end of the 19th century, together with the introduction in the 20th century of increasingly heavy levels of taxation on inherited wealth, put an end to agricultural land as the primary source of wealth for the upper classes. Many estates were sold or broken up, and this trend was accelerated by the introduction of protection for agricultural tenancies, encouraging outright sales, from the mid-20th century. So devastating
12533-550: The equivalent of continental nobles, with their hereditary estates, their leisured lifestyle, their social pre-eminence, and their armorial bearings". British armigerous families who hold no title of nobility are represented, together with those who hold titles through the College of Arms , by the Commission and Association for Armigerous Families of Great Britain at CILANE . Through grants of arms, new families are admitted into
12684-419: The ever-increasing loss of lifelong attachments to a specific region and the growing importance of the national media, the future of specific "regional" accents is often difficult to predict. The French nation-state , which appeared after the 1789 French Revolution and Napoleon I 's empire, unified the French people in particular through the consolidation of the use of the French language. Hence, according to
12835-690: The expression Landed Gentry as a description of the untitled upper classes in England (although the book also included families in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, where, however, social structures were rather different). Burke's Landed Gentry continued to appear at regular intervals throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. A review of the 1952 edition in Time noted: Landed Gentry used to limit itself to owners of domains that could properly be called "stately" (i.e. more than 500 acres or 200 hectares). Now it has lowered
12986-460: The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, while the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) named French the language of law in the Kingdom of France . During the 17th century, French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations ( lingua franca ). It retained this role until approximately the middle of
13137-915: The former Yugoslavia , International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the International Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization Appellate Body . It is the sole internal working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union , and makes with English the European Court of Human Rights 's two working languages. In 1997, George Weber published, in Language Today ,
13288-829: The gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish. The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the Petit Robert , which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240. Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life ( chêne , bille , etc.), animals ( mouton , cheval , etc.), nature ( boue , etc.), domestic activities (ex. berceau ), farming and rural units of measure ( arpent , lieue , borne , boisseau ), weapons, and products traded regionally rather than further afield. This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being
13439-486: The gentry had three main characteristics: (1) landownership, (2) a nobility or gentility (shared with the peerage) that distinguished them from the rest of the population, and (3) a territorial-based collective identity and power over the larger population. From the late 16th-century, the gentry emerged as the class most closely involved in politics, the military and law. It provided the bulk of Members of Parliament , with many gentry families maintaining political control in
13590-407: The historian Eric Hobsbawm , "the French language has been essential to the concept of 'France', although in 1789 50% of the French people did not speak it at all, and only 12 to 13% spoke it 'fairly' – in fact, even in oïl language zones, out of a central region, it was not usually spoken except in cities, and, even there, not always in the faubourgs [approximatively translatable to "suburbs"]. In
13741-490: The landowners, and yeoman farmers, who were defined as "a person qualified by possessing free land of forty shillings annual [feudal] value, and who can serve on juries and vote for a Knight of the Shire . He is sometimes described as a small landowner, a farmer of the middle classes." Anthony Richard Wagner , Richmond Herald wrote that "a Yeoman would not normally have less than 100 acres" (40 hectares) and in social status
13892-454: The language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world. French is the second most commonly spoken language in Canada and one of two federal official languages alongside English. As of the 2021 Canadian census , it was the native language of 7.7 million people (21% of the population) and the second language of 2.9 million (8% of the population). French
14043-584: The language itself. Before the Roman conquest of what is now France by Julius Caesar (58–52 BC), much of present France was inhabited by Celtic-speaking people referred to by the Romans as Gauls and Belgae . Southern France was also home to a number of other remnant linguistic and ethnic groups including Iberians along the eastern part of the Pyrenees and western Mediterranean coast, the remnant Ligures on
14194-460: The language of the peasants. The spread of French to other European countries was also aided by emigration of persecuted Huguenots . In the 17th and the 18th centuries, French established itself permanently in the Americas . There is an academic debate about how fluent in French the colonists of New France were. Less than 15% of colonists (25% of the women – chiefly filles du roi – and 5% of
14345-470: The language was re-Latinised and partly Italianised by clerics and grammarians in the Middle Ages and later. Nevertheless, many such words like haïr "to hate" (≠ Latin odiare > Italian odiare , Spanish odiar , Occitan asirar ) and honte "shame" (≠ Latin vĕrēcundia > Occitan vergonha , Italian vergogna , Spanish vergüenza ) remain common. Urban T. Holmes Jr. estimated that German
14496-479: The language, although it has now given way to Tamil and English. A former French mandate , Lebanon designates Arabic as the sole official language, while a special law regulates cases when French can be publicly used. Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". The French language in Lebanon
14647-612: The language. The Act applies to areas of the province where there are significant Francophone communities, namely Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario . Elsewhere, sizable French-speaking minorities are found in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and the Port au Port Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the unique Newfoundland French dialect was historically spoken. Smaller pockets of French speakers exist in all other provinces. The Ontarian city of Ottawa ,
14798-520: The last attestation of Gaulish to be deemed credible having been written in the second half of the 6th century about the destruction of a pagan shrine in Auvergne . The Celtic population of Gaul had spoken Gaulish , which is moderately well attested and appears to have wide dialectal variation including one distinctive variety, Lepontic . The French language evolved from Vulgar Latin (a Latinised popular Italic dialect called sermo vulgaris ), but it
14949-479: The last to hold onto Gaulish. The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there. A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke langue d'oïl while the population in the south spoke langue d'oc . Langue d'oïl grew into what
15100-601: The legal rights of the feudal lordship of the manor , and the less formal name or title of squire , in Scotland laird . Generally lands passed by primogeniture , while the inheritances of daughters and younger sons were in cash or stocks, and relatively small. Typically the gentry farmed some of their land through employed managers, but leased most of it to tenant farmers . They also exploited timber and minerals (such as coal), and owned mills and other sources of income. Many heads of families also had careers in politics or
15251-506: The loss of the unaccentuated syllable and of final vowels: Latin decima > F dîme (> E dime . Italian decima ; Spanish diezmo ); Vulgar Latin dignitate > OF deintié (> E dainty . Occitan dinhitat ; Italian dignità ; Spanish dignidad ); VL catena > OF chaiene (> E chain . Occitan cadena ; Italian catena ; Spanish cadena ). On the other hand, a common word like Latin aqua > Occitan aigue became Old French ewe > F eau 'water' (and évier sink) and
15402-531: The men) were from the Paris region and presumably spoke French, but most of the rest came from north-western and western regions of France in which French was not the usual first language. It is not clearly known how many among those colonists understood French as a second language, and how many among them, nearly all of whom natively spoke an oïl language, could understand and be understood by those who spoke French because of interlinguistic similarity. In any case, such
15553-403: The military, and the younger sons of the gentry provided a high proportion of the clergy , military officers , and lawyers . Successful burghers often used their accumulated wealth to buy country estates, with the aim of establishing themselves as landed gentry. The decline of the gentry largely began with the 1870s agricultural depression ; however, there are still many hereditary gentry in
15704-405: The modern vocabulary (representing all Germanic loans up to modern times: Gothic, Frankish, Old Norse /Scandinavian, Dutch, German and English) to even higher if Germanic words coming from Latin and other Romance languages are taken into account. (Note that according to the Académie française , only 5% of French words come from English.) Changes in lexicon / morphology / syntax : Frankish had
15855-474: The most salient characteristic of French vowel history is the development of a strong stress accent , which is usually ascribed to the influence of the Germanic languages . It has led to the disappearance of most unstressed vowels and to pervasive differences in the pronunciation of stressed vowels in syllables that were open or closed syllables (a closed syllable is here a syllable that was followed by two or more consonants in Vulgar Latin, and an open syllable
16006-557: The nation and preserved as monuments to the lifestyles of their former owners (who sometimes remained in part of the house as lessees or tenants) by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty . The National Trust, which had originally concentrated on open landscapes rather than buildings, accelerated its country house acquisition programme during and after the Second World War , partly because of
16157-420: The necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". When public education was made compulsory , only French was taught and the use of any other ( patois ) language was punished. The goals of the public school system were made especially clear to the French-speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany . Instructions given by
16308-500: The officer corps of the British Armed Forces , the diplomatic and civil services , the bar or the judiciary ), such occupation was considered demeaning by the upper classes, particularly by the 19th century, when the earlier mercantile endeavours of younger sons were increasingly discontinued. Younger sons, who could not expect to inherit the family estate, were instead urged into professions of state service. It became
16459-589: The official use or teaching of French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick); Belgium ( Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region ); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the Romandy region); parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont); Monaco;
16610-534: The other main foreign language in the Vietnamese educational system and is regarded as a cultural language. All three countries are full members of La Francophonie (OIF). French was the official language of French India , consisting of the geographically separate enclaves referred to as Puducherry . It continued to be an official language of the territory even after its cession to India in 1956 until 1965. A small number of older locals still retain knowledge of
16761-458: The places in which the first documents in Old French were written. Frankish shaped the popular Latin spoken there and gave it a very distinctive character compared to the other future Romance languages. The very first noticeable influence is the substitution of a Germanic stress accent for the Latin melodic accent, which resulted in diphthongisation, distinction between long and short vowels and
16912-463: The policing of the language and to the adaptation of foreign words and expressions. Some recent modifications include the change from software to logiciel , packet-boat to paquebot , and riding-coat to redingote . The word ordinateur for computer , however was created not by the Académie but by a linguist appointed by IBM (see fr:ordinateur ). From the 17th to the 19th centuries, France
17063-471: The preferred language of certain institutions or administrations such as the Court of Justice of the European Union , where it is the sole internal working language, or the Directorate-General for Agriculture . Since 2016, Brexit has rekindled discussions on whether or not French should again hold greater role within the institutions of the European Union. A leading world language , French
17214-565: The property qualification to 200 acres (0.81 km ) for all British families whose pedigrees have been "notable" for three generations. Even so, almost half of the 5,000 families listed in the new volume are in there because their forefathers were: they themselves have no land left. Their estates are mere street addresses, like that of the Molineux-Montgomeries, formerly of Garboldisham Old Hall, now of No. 14 Malton Avenue, Haworth. The Great Depression of British Agriculture at
17365-440: The radio. There is also pressure, in differing degrees, from some regions as well as minority political or cultural groups for a measure of recognition and support for their regional languages . Once the key international language in Europe, being the language of diplomacy from the 17th to the mid-20th centuries, French lost most of its international significance to English in the 20th century, especially after World War II , with
17516-471: The rest largely speak French as a first language. As a French Creole language , Haitian Creole draws the large majority of its vocabulary from French, with influences from West African languages, as well as several European languages. It is closely related to Louisiana Creole and the creole from the Lesser Antilles . French is the sole official language of all the overseas territories of France in
17667-703: The rise of the United States as a dominant global superpower . A watershed was the Treaty of Versailles , which ended World War I and was written in both French and English. A small but increasing number of large multinational firms headquartered in France use English as their working language even in their French operations. Also, to gain international recognition, French scientists often publish their work in English. Those trends have met some resistance. In March 2006, President Jacques Chirac briefly walked out of an EU summit after Ernest-Antoine Seilliere began addressing
17818-510: The semantic development of oui "yes", aveugle "blind". Some sound changes are attested: /ps/ → /xs/ and /pt/ → /xt/ appears in a pottery inscription from la Graufesenque (1st century) in which the word para xs idi is written for paro ps ides . Similarly, the development - cs - → /xs/ → /is/ and - ct - → /xt/ → /it/ , the latter being common to much of Western Romance languages , also appears in inscriptions: Divicta ~ Divixta , Rectugenus ~ Rextugenus ~ Reitugenus , and
17969-425: The shift to [f] from [b], and in turn the final -se of framboise turned fraie into fraise (≠ Occitan fragosta 'raspberry', Italian fragola 'strawberry'. Portuguese framboesa 'raspberry' and Spanish frambuesa are from French). Philologists such as Pope (1934) estimate that perhaps 15% of the vocabulary of Modern French still derives from Germanic sources, but the proportion was larger in Old French, as
18120-412: The summit in English. In February 2007, Forum Francophone International began organising protests against the "linguistic hegemony" of English in France and in support of the right of French workers to use French as their working language. French remains the second most-studied foreign language in the world, after English, and is a lingua franca in some regions, notably in Africa. The legacy of French as
18271-628: The terms nobility and gentry came to refer to completely separate classes. The gentry were aristocratic landowners who were not peers. According to historian G. E. Mingay , the gentry were landowners whose wealth "made possible a certain kind of education, a standard of comfort, and a degree of leisure and a common interest in ways of spending it". Leisure distinguished gentry from businessmen who gained their wealth through work. The gentry, did not enterprise or marketeer but were known most for working in management of estates; their income came largely from rents paid by tenant farmers living these estates. By
18422-674: The time of Julius Caesar , a non-Celtic people who spoke a Basque -related language inhabited the Novempopulania ( Aquitania Tertia ) in southwestern France, but the language gradually lost ground to the expanding Romance during a period spanning most of the Early Middle Ages. Proto-Basque influenced the emerging Latin-based language spoken in the area between the Garonne and the Pyrenees , which eventually resulted in
18573-466: The total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050, largely due to rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa . OIF estimates 700 million French speakers by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa. In a study published in March 2014 by Forbes , the investment bank Natixis said that French could become the world's most spoken language by 2050. In
18724-679: The two official languages—along with Dutch —of the Brussels-Capital Region , where it is spoken by the majority of the population (approx. 80%), often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian, and Romansh , and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy , of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions, and some cantons have bilingual status: for example, cities such as Biel/Bienne and cantons such as Valais , Fribourg and Bern . French
18875-417: The untitled nobility regularly, thus making the gentry a class that remains open both legally and practically. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the names and families of those with titles (specifically peers and baronets , less often including those with the non-hereditary title of knight ) were often listed in books or manuals known as "Peerages", "Baronetages", or combinations of these categories, such as
19026-475: The urban aristocracy for mercantile, official and educational reasons but did not prevail in the countryside until some four or five centuries later since Latin was of little or no social value to the landed gentry and peasantry. The eventual spread of Latin can be attributed to social factors in the Late Empire such as the movement from urban-focused power to village-centred economies and legal serfdom. In
19177-508: The urban intellectual elite. The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable Romanization . Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French contributing loanwords and calques (including oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by
19328-485: The use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. In Belgium, French is an official language at the federal level along with Dutch and German. At the regional level, French is the sole official language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons , which are German-speaking ) and one of
19479-481: The vowels of American English pat/pot pet pate peat caught coat coot respectively), and five in unstressed syllables ( /a e i o u/ ). Portuguese and Italian largely preserve that system, and Spanish has innovated only in converting /ɛ/ to /je/ and /ɔ/ to /we/ , which resulted in a simple five-vowel system /a e i o u/ . In French, however, numerous sound changes resulted in a system with 12–14 oral vowels and 3–4 nasal vowels (see French phonology ). Perhaps
19630-547: The wider European class of gentry . While part of the British aristocracy , and usually armigers , the gentry ranked below the British peerage (or "titled nobility" ) in social status. Nevertheless, their economic base in land was often similar, and some of the landed gentry were wealthier than some peers. Many gentry were close relatives of peers, and it was not uncommon for gentry to marry into peerage. With or without noble title, owning rural land estates often brought with it
19781-472: The widespread destruction of country houses in the 20th century by owners who could no longer afford to maintain them. Those who retained their property usually had to supplement their incomes from sources other than the land, sometimes by opening their properties to the public. In the 21st century, the term "landed gentry" is still used, as the landowning class still exists, but it increasingly refers more to historic than to current landed wealth or property in
19932-536: The workplace. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese . In English-speaking Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, French is the first foreign language taught and in number of pupils is far ahead of other languages. In the United States, French is the second-most commonly taught foreign language in schools and universities, although well behind Spanish. In some areas of
20083-402: The world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According to a 2023 estimate from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie , an estimated 167 million African people spread across 35 countries and territories can speak French as either a first or a second language . This number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as
20234-417: Was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic ) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire , there are numerous French-based creole languages , most notably Haitian Creole . A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French
20385-608: Was called A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, enjoying territorial possessions or high official rank , popularly known as Burke's Commoners . Burke's Commoners was published in four volumes from 1833 to 1838. Subsequent editions were re-titled A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry; or, Commons of Great Britain and Ireland or Burke's Landed Gentry. The popularity of Burke's Landed Gentry gave currency to
20536-705: Was during the period of the Crusades in which French became so dominant in the Mediterranean Sea that became a lingua franca ("Frankish language"), and because of increased contact with the Arabs during the Crusades who referred to them as Franj , numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as amiral (admiral), alcool (alcohol), coton (cotton) and sirop (syrop), as well as scientific terms such as algébre (algebra), alchimie (alchemy) and zéro (zero). Within Old French many dialects emerged but
20687-416: Was followed by at most one consonant). It is commonly thought that stressed vowels in open syllables were lengthened , and most of the long vowels were then turned into diphthongs . The loss of unstressed vowels, particularly those after the stressed syllable, ultimately produced the situation in Modern French in which the accent is uniformly found on the last syllable of a word. (Conversely, Modern French has
20838-400: Was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti. This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as Arpitan . The evolution of Latin in Gaul
20989-436: Was in place to tell us so". Other historians define gentry by land ownership and income level, but there is still the problem of whether this should include professionals and town dwellers. Rosemary Horrox argues that an urban gentry existed in the 15th century. For some historians of early modern England, the gentry included families with coats of arms , but Coss notes that not all gentry were armigerous . Coss proposes that
21140-642: Was influenced by Gaulish. Examples include sandhi phenomena ( liaison , resyllabification , lenition ), the loss of unstressed syllables and the vowel system (such as raising /u/ , /o/ → /y/ , /u/ , fronting stressed /a/ → /e/ , /ɔ/ → /ø/ or /œ/ ). Syntactic oddities attributable to Gaulish include the intensive prefix ro - ~ re - (cited in the Vienna glossary, 5th century) (cf. luire "to glimmer" vs. reluire "to shine"; related to Irish ro - and Welsh rhy - "very"), emphatic structures, prepositional periphrastic phrases to render verbal aspect and
21291-1884: Was integrated into the Crown lands of France , and many words were introduced into French from Norman of which about 150 words of Scandinavian origin are still in use. Most of the words are about the sea and seafaring: abraquer, alque, bagage, bitte, cingler, équiper (to equip), flotte, fringale, girouette, guichet, hauban, houle, hune, mare, marsouin, mouette, quille, raz, siller, touer, traquer, turbot, vague, varangue, varech . Others pertain to farming and daily life: accroupir, amadouer, bidon, bigot, brayer, brette, cottage, coterie, crochet, duvet, embraser, fi, flâner, guichet, haras, harfang, harnais, houspiller, marmonner, mièvre, nabot, nique, quenotte, raccrocher, ricaner, rincer, rogue . Likewise, most words borrowed from Dutch deal with trade or are nautical in nature: affaler , amarrer , anspect , bar (sea-bass), bastringuer , bière (beer), blouse (bump), botte , bouée , bouffer , boulevard , bouquin , cague , cahute , caqueter , choquer , diguer , drôle , dune , équiper (to set sail), frelater , fret , grouiller , hareng , hère , lamaneur , lège , manne , mannequin , maquiller , matelot , méringue , moquer , plaque , sénau , tribord , vacarme , as are words from Low German : bivouac , bouder , homard , vogue , yole , and English of this period: arlequin (from Italian arlecchino < Norman hellequin < OE * Herla cyning ), bateau , bébé , bol (sense 2 ≠ bol < Lt. bolus ), bouline , bousin , cambuse , cliver , chiffe/chiffon , drague , drain , est , groom , héler , lac , merlin , mouette , nord , ouest , potasse , rade , rhum , sonde , sud , turf , yacht . The medieval Italian poet Dante , in his Latin De vulgari eloquentia , classified
21442-652: Was known in the Occitan-speaking region as Vergonha . Spoken by 19.71% of the European Union's population, French is the third most widely spoken language in the EU, after English and German and the second-most-widely taught language after English. Under the Constitution of France , French has been the official language of the Republic since 1992, although the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made it mandatory for legal documents in 1539. France mandates
21593-982: Was likely influenced by the OS or OHG word pronunciation aha (PG * ahwo ). In addition, two new phonemes that no longer existed in Vulgar Latin returned: [h] and [w] (> OF g(u)- , ONF w- cf. Picard w- ), e.g. VL altu > OF halt 'high' (influenced by OLF *hauh ; ≠ Italian, Spanish alto ; Occitan naut ); VL vespa > F guêpe (ONF wespe ; Picard wespe ) 'wasp' (influenced by OLF *waspa ; ≠ Occitan vèspa ; Italian vespa ; Spanish avispa ); L viscus > F gui 'mistletoe' (influenced by OLF *wihsila 'morello', together with analogous fruits, when they are not ripe; ≠ Occitan vesc ; Italian vischio ); LL vulpiculu 'little fox' (from L vulpes 'fox') > OF g[o]upil (influenced by OLF *wulf 'wolf'; ≠ Italian volpe ). Italian and Spanish words of Germanic origin borrowed from French or directly from Germanic also retained [gw] and [g]: It, Sp. guerra 'war'. These examples show
21744-408: Was only after the 19th-century development of French colonies in North Africa that French borrowed words directly from Arabic ( toubib , chouia , mechoui ). For the period until around 1300, some linguists refer to the oïl languages collectively as Old French ( ancien français ). The earliest extant text in French is the Oaths of Strasbourg from 842; Old French became a literary language with
21895-556: Was raised to Old French e . In closed syllables, all Vulgar Latin vowels originally remained unchanged, but eventually, /e/ merged into /ɛ/ , /u/ became the front rounded vowel /y/ and /o/ was raised to /u/ . (The last two changes occurred unconditionally, in both open and closed and in both stressed and unstressed syllables.) This table shows the outcome of stressed vowels in open syllables: French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] )
22046-542: Was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language , which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The population remained 90% indigenous in origin; the Romanizing class were the local native elite (not Roman settlers), whose children learned Latin in Roman schools. At the time of the collapse of
22197-449: Was spoken as a second language by public officials in western Austrasia and Neustria as late as the 850s and that it had completely disappeared as a spoken language from those regions only in the 10th century, but some traces of Germanic elements still survive, especially in dialectal French ( Poitevin , Norman , Burgundian , Walloon , Picard etc.). In 1204 AD, the Duchy of Normandy
22348-570: Was the language they use the most at home rose from 67% at the 2007 census to 74% at the 2017 census. In Wallis and Futuna, the percentage of the population who reported that French was the language they use the most at home rose from 10% at the 2008 census to 13% at the 2018 census. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie ,
22499-575: Was the leading land power in Europe; together with the influence of the Enlightenment , French was therefore the lingua franca of educated Europe, especially with regards to the arts, literature and diplomacy . Monarchs like Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia spoke and wrote in excellent French. The Russian, German and Scandinavian courts spoke French as their main or official language and regarded their national languages as
22650-512: Was then unpronounceable word-finally, usually consisting of a consonant followed by l , r , m or n (VL = Vulgar Latin, OF = Old French): The final schwa was eventually lost as well but has left its mark in the spelling and in the pronunciation of final consonants, which normally remain pronounced if a schwa followed but are often lost otherwise: fait "done (masc.)" /fɛ/ vs. faite "done (fem.)" /fɛt/ . Intertonic vowels (unstressed vowels in interior syllables) were lost entirely except for
22801-464: Was this for the ranks formerly identified as being of the landed gentry that Burke's Landed Gentry began, in the 20th century, to include families historically in this category who had ceased to own their ancestral lands. The focus of those who remained in this class shifted from the lands or estates themselves, to the stately home or " family seat " which was in many cases retained without the surrounding lands. Many of these buildings were purchased for
#76923