A seigneur ( French pronunciation: [sɛɲœʁ] ) or lord is an originally feudal title in France before the Revolution , in New France and British North America until 1854, and in the Channel Islands to this day. The seigneur owned a seigneurie , seigneury , or lordship—a form of title or land tenure —as a fief , with its associated obligations and rights over person and property. In this sense, a seigneur could be an individual—male or female, high or low-born—or a collective entity, typically a religious community such as a monastery , seminary , college , or parish . In the wake of the French Revolution , seigneurialism was repealed in France on 4 August 1789 and in the Province of Canada on 18 December 1854. Since then, the feudal title has only been applicable in the Channel Islands and for sovereign princes by their families.
31-517: The English seigneur is borrowed from the French seigneur , which descends from Middle French seigneur , from Old French seignor (oblique form of sire ), from Latin seniōrem , the accusative singular of senior ("elder"), the comparative form of senex ("old, elderly"). It is a doublet of the English words senior , sir , sire , seignior, sieur , and monsieur and shares
62-607: A single prestige variety in Modern Standard Arabic . In contrast, there is often significant intelligibility between different North Germanic languages . However, because there are various standard forms of the North Germanic languages, they are classified as separate languages. A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but
93-500: A word's spelling and pronunciation. Nevertheless, Middle French spelling was overall fairly close to the pronunciation; unlike Modern French, word-final consonants were still pronounced though they were optionally lost when they preceded another consonant that started the next word. The French wars in Italy and the presence of Italians in the French court brought the French into contact with Italian humanism . Many words dealing with
124-442: Is the case between Afrikaans and Dutch . It is generally easier for Dutch speakers to understand Afrikaans than for Afrikaans speakers to understand Dutch. (See Afrikaans § Mutual intelligibility with Dutch ). In a dialect continuum , neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but differences mount with distance, so that more widely separated varieties may not be mutually intelligible. Intelligibility can be partial, as
155-436: Is the case with Azerbaijani and Turkish , or significant, as is the case with Bulgarian and Macedonian . However, sign languages , such as American and British Sign Language , usually do not exhibit mutual intelligibility with each other. Asymmetric intelligibility refers to two languages that are considered partially mutually intelligible, but for various reasons, one group of speakers has more difficulty understanding
186-651: The Bailiwick of Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands that is a Crown Dependency . Guernsey still has feudal law and legal fiefs in existence today. Each fief has a Seigneur and/or Dame that owns the fief. The Guernsey fiefs and seigneurs have long existed before baronies and are part of Normandy . While nobility has been outlawed in France and Germany, noble fiefs still exist by law in Guernsey. The owners of
217-521: The French language that covers the period from the mid-14th to the early 17th centuries. It is a period of transition during which: It is the first version of French that is largely intelligible to Modern French, contrary to Old French . The most important change found in Middle French is the complete disappearance of the noun declension system, which had been underway for centuries. There
248-587: The Seigneur of Sark , the hereditary ruler of Sark , a jurisdiction of the Bailiwick of Guernsey . The Seigneur of Saint Ouen and the Seigneur of Samarès are titles in the Bailiwick of Jersey . According to the Feudal Dues Law of 1980 of Guernsey, the style of Dame or Seigneur is legally authorized for use by Seigneurs and Dames of Fiefs of the Crown Dependency of Guernsey. Guernsey or
279-630: The varieties of Chinese , and parts of the Romance , Germanic and Slavic families in Europe. Terms used in older literature include dialect area ( Leonard Bloomfield ) and L-complex ( Charles F. Hockett ). Northern Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia form a dialect continuum where the two furthermost dialects have almost no mutual intelligibility. As such, spoken Danish and Swedish normally have low mutual intelligibility, but Swedes in
310-576: The Öresund region (including Malmö and Helsingborg ), across the strait from the Danish capital Copenhagen , understand Danish somewhat better, largely due to the proximity of the region to Danish-speaking areas. While Norway was under Danish rule , the Bokmål written standard of Norwegian developed from Dano-Norwegian , a koiné language that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during
341-615: The Americas ( cacao , hamac , maïs ). The influence of the Anglo-Norman language on English had left words of French and Norman origin in England. Some words of Romance origin now found their way back into French as doublets through war and trade. Also, the meaning and usage of many words from Old French transformed. Spelling and punctuation were extremely variable. The introduction of printing in 1470 highlighted
SECTION 10
#1732772612944372-589: The French Language ) (1549) by the poet Joachim du Bellay , which maintained that French, like the Tuscan of Petrarch and Dante Alighieri , was a worthy language for literary expression and promulgated a program of linguistic production and purification, including the imitation of Latin genres. Mutual intelligibility In linguistics , mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of
403-428: The French seigneurial system. It is also frequently calqued as " lord ", the analogous term in the English feudal system. The term grand seigneur has survived in English and French. Today this usually means an elegant, urbane gentleman . Some even use it in a stricter sense to refer to a man whose manners and way of life reflect his noble ancestry and great wealth. In addition, Le Grand Seigneur had long been
434-422: The context of the communication. Classifications may also shift for reasons external to the languages themselves. As an example, in the case of a linear dialect continuum , the central varieties may become extinct , leaving only the varieties at both ends. Consequently, these end varieties may be reclassified as two languages, even though no significant linguistic change has occurred within the two extremes during
465-578: The continued unification of French, the suppression of certain forms, and the prescription of rules, leading to Classical French. Middle French is the language found in the writings of Charles, Duke of Orléans , François Villon , Clément Marot , François Rabelais , Michel de Montaigne , Pierre de Ronsard , and the poets of La Pléiade . The affirmation and glorification of French finds its greatest manifestation in La Défense et illustration de la langue française ( The Defense and Illustration of
496-518: The differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families around the world, when these languages did not spread recently. Some prominent examples include the Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of India , varieties of Arabic across north Africa and southwest Asia, the Turkic languages ,
527-406: The different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelligibility is sometimes used to distinguish languages from dialects , although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Intelligibility between varieties can be asymmetric; that is, speakers of one variety may be able to better understand another than vice versa. An example of this
558-540: The elites, Latin was still the language of education, administration, and bureaucracy. That changed in 1539, with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts , in which Francis I made French the sole language for legal acts. Regional differences were still extreme throughout the Kingdom of France : in the south of France, Occitan languages dominated; in east-central France, Franco-Provençal languages were predominant; and in
589-401: The extinction of the central varieties. Furthermore, political and social conventions often override considerations of mutual intelligibility. For example, the varieties of Chinese are often considered a single language, even though there is usually no mutual intelligibility between geographically separated varieties. This is similarly the case among the varieties of Arabic , which also share
620-400: The fief was seigneur justicier . The bearers of these titles, rights, and jurisdiction were generally but not exclusively male. A female seigneur was generally known as a seigneuresse or lady. The seigneur could be a noble or a roturier (commoner) as well as a corporation such as religious order, a monastery, a parish. In English, seigneur is used in historical scholarship to discuss
651-514: The fiefs actually convene each year at the Court of Chief Pleas under the supervision of His Majesty's Government. There are approximately 24 private fiefs in Guernsey that are registered directly with the Crown. Some Fief Seigneurs own more than one Fief or have several Fiefs within their Fief territory. Middle French Middle French ( French : moyen français ) is a historical division of
SECTION 20
#1732772612944682-801: The later years of the union. Additionally, Norwegian assimilated a considerable amount of Danish vocabulary as well as traditional Danish expressions. As a consequence, spoken mutual intelligibility is not reciprocal. Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the Romance languages are given. For example, in The Linguasphere register of the world's languages and speech communities , David Dalby lists 23 languages based on mutual intelligibility: The non-standard vernacular dialects of Serbo-Croatian ( Kajkavian , Chakavian and Torlakian ) diverge more significantly from all four normative varieties of Serbo-Croatian. Their mutual intelligibility varies greatly between
713-431: The military ( alarme , cavalier , espion , infanterie , camp , canon , soldat ) and artistic (especially architectural: arcade , architrave , balcon , corridor ; also literary: sonnet ) practices were borrowed from Italian. Those tendencies would continue through Classical French . There were also some borrowings from Spanish ( casque ) and German ( reître ) and from
744-815: The name given by the French to the Ottoman sultan . Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ is the French equivalent of the English Our Lord Jesus Christ . The English word seignorage is also derived from seigneur . The title is still used in the Channel Islands , self-governing territories in the English Channel which swear fealty to the British Crown as the successor to the Duke of Normandy . In particular, it refers to
775-475: The need for reform in spelling . One proposed reform came from Jacques Peletier du Mans , who developed a phonetic spelling system and introduced new typographic signs (1550), but his attempt at spelling reform was not followed. The period saw the publication of the first French grammars and of the French-Latin dictionary of Robert Estienne (1539). At the beginning of the 17th century, French would see
806-607: The non-hard-of-hearing people of the United Kingdom and the United States share the same spoken language. The grammar of sign languages does not usually resemble that of the spoken languages used in the same geographical area. To illustrate, in terms of syntax , ASL shares more in common with spoken Japanese than with English . Almost all linguists use mutual intelligibility as the primary linguistic criterion for determining whether two speech varieties represent
837-412: The north of France, Oïl languages other than Francien continued to be spoken. The fascination with classical texts led to numerous borrowings from Latin and Greek . Numerous neologisms based on Latin roots were introduced, and some scholars modified the spelling of French words to bring them into conformity with their Latin roots, sometimes erroneously. That often produced a radical difference between
868-749: The other language than the other way around. For example, if one language is related to another but has simplified its grammar , the speakers of the original language may understand the simplified language, but not vice versa. To illustrate, Dutch speakers tend to find it easier to understand Afrikaans as a result of Afrikaans's simplified grammar. Sign languages are not universal and usually not mutually intelligible, although there are also similarities among different sign languages. Sign languages are independent of spoken languages and follow their own linguistic development. For example, British Sign Language and American Sign Language (ASL) are quite different linguistically and mutually unintelligible, even though
899-476: The same or different languages. A primary challenge to this position is that speakers of closely related languages can often communicate with each other effectively if they choose to do so. In the case of transparently cognate languages recognized as distinct such as Spanish and Italian, mutual intelligibility is in principle and in practice not binary (simply yes or no), but occurs in varying degrees, subject to numerous variables specific to individual speakers in
930-462: The same provenance as the Italian signore , Portuguese senhor , and Spanish señor , which—like mister —referred to feudal lords before becoming general words of respectful address towards men. The noble title and land title of a seigneur is a seigneurie or lordship , the rights that the seigneur was entitled to is called seigneuriage , and the jurisdiction exercised over
961-410: Was no longer a distinction between nominative and oblique forms of nouns , and plurals became indicated by simply an s . The transformations necessitated an increased reliance on word order in the sentence, which becomes more or less the syntax of Modern but with a continued reliance on the verb in the second position of a sentence, or " verb-second structure ", until the 16th century. Among