A Brief History of the French Language
Summary
TLDRThis video script traces the evolution of the French language from a regional dialect to a global language of prestige. It discusses how Latin and Gaulish merged under Roman rule, the influence of the Franks, and how Old French emerged. The script highlights the historical rivalry with Latin, the rise of French during the 12th-18th centuries, its peak as a diplomatic language, and its spread through colonization. It also addresses the modern influence of English on French and the ongoing efforts to preserve its cultural significance.
Takeaways
- 🌐 The French language has evolved significantly from a regional dialect to a global language of prestige.
- 🏰 Before the 12th century, French was not the dominant language in France and was considered less prestigious than Latin.
- 📚 The French language originated from the mixing of Gaulish and Latin, influenced by the Roman Empire.
- 💪 The Franks' invasion in the 5th century introduced Germanic influences, further differentiating the language from Latin.
- 🗽 French became distinct from Latin by the late 8th century, known as Old French, and started to emerge as a unique language.
- 🏛 The Parisian dialect, or Francien, became the standard French due to Paris's central role in power and culture.
- 🔥 The Albigensian Crusade in the 13th century helped Northern French to spread and dominate over Southern languages like Occitan.
- 📜 Latin was the language of academia and diplomacy until the 16th century when French started to replace it in formal contexts.
- 🌟 The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539 established French as the official language of France.
- 🌍 By the 18th century, French became the language of diplomacy, science, and culture, spreading across Europe and the world.
- 🇫🇷 French colonialism expanded the language globally, especially in Africa, the Americas, and parts of Asia.
Q & A
How did the French language originate?
-The French language originated from the mixing of Gaulish and Latin during the Roman rule in Gaul. Latin became the language of power and urban centers, while Gaulish was pushed to the countryside. Over time, Latin absorbed many Gaulish words, leading to the emergence of a distinct French language.
What role did the Franks play in the development of the French language?
-The Franks, who invaded Gaul in the 5th century, significantly influenced the development of the French language by introducing Germanic stress patterns and vocabulary. They also brought linguistic concepts and contributed words for colors and other terms, which further differentiated the language from Latin.
How did the French language become dominant in France over other regional languages?
-The French language, known as Francien, became dominant because it originated from the Paris region, which had significant influence. After the Albigensian Crusade, the French crown took control of the south, and Francien started to be used as the language of official business across France.
Why did Latin lose its status as the main language of France to French?
-Latin was seen as a fixed and pure language, but it could not adapt to the changing times as French could. French was more suited to the evolving society, and by the 16th century, a series of debates and the advocacy of writers led to French being accepted in formal contexts. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539 established French as the official language of France.
How did French become the universal language of the elites?
-French became the universal language of the elites due to a combination of factors including its successful export of literature, the size and strength of France, the creation of the Académie française to standardize the language, and its recognition as the language of diplomacy by the 18th century.
What impact did the French Enlightenment have on the status of the French language?
-The French Enlightenment, with its influential philosophers, writers, and artists, contributed to the international prestige of the French language. It helped solidify French as a language of culture, diplomacy, and education across Europe and the world.
How did colonization contribute to the spread of the French language?
-The French Empire's colonization efforts across Africa, the Americas, and Asia led to French becoming the official language of government and education in its colonies. This served as a lingua franca among colonized people who did not necessarily speak the same language, leading to an explosion of French speakers in these regions.
What is the phenomenon of French adopting English terms called, and how has France responded to it?
-The phenomenon of French adopting English terms is called 'franglais'. France has responded with opposition to English influence and a fierce protection of the French language, as seen in works like René Etiemble's 'Parlez-vous franglais?', a critique of anglicisms.
How has the French language maintained its prestige despite the rise of English?
-The French language has maintained its prestige by not simply replacing French words with English ones but by adopting them in specific meanings or connotations. This adds nuance to the language. Additionally, French continues to be associated with prestige, luxury, and sophistication, which helps preserve its status.
What is the importance of learning the culture behind the French language?
-Learning the culture behind the French language is crucial because the language's development, prestige, and global impact are deeply intertwined with French history and society. Understanding this cultural context enriches one's knowledge of the language and its nuances.
Outlines
🌐 The Evolution of French Language
The French language has transformed significantly over time. Once viewed as a mix of regional dialects, it has become a symbol of prestige and sophistication. Before the 12th century, French was not the primary language of France but evolved from a blend of Latin and Celtic languages. The Roman Empire's influence introduced Latin to Gaul, which mixed with the local Gaulish language. Over centuries, this 'Frankenstein' of languages developed into Old French, distinct from Latin by the late 8th century. Despite competition from other regional languages like Occitan and Alsatian, the Parisian dialect, or 'Francian,' rose to prominence due to Paris's centralization of power.
🏰 The Rise of Parisian French and the Decline of Latin
The Parisian dialect, or 'Francian,' emerged as the dominant language in France, partly due to Paris's role as a political, legal, and cultural center. The northern 'long doil' (oui) dialect spread, while the southern 'long duck' (oc) dialects, including Occitan, faced decline. The Albigensian Crusade in the 13th century further solidified the French crown's control over the south, leading to the spread of Francian. Despite Latin's historical prestige, French began to overshadow it as the language of science, theology, diplomacy, and education. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539 established French as the official language of France, marking a significant shift from Latin.
🌟 French as a Lingua Franca and Cultural Influence
By the 17th century, French had become the European lingua franca, taught to upper-class Europeans and spoken in royal courts. Its success abroad was evident as early as the 13th century, and by the 16th century, it held considerable soft power in Europe. The creation of the Académie Française in 1634 aimed to standardize the language, further cementing its status. The 18th century saw French becoming the official language of diplomacy, and its influence spread globally through colonization and cultural exports like literature and philosophy. However, the rise of English, especially post-World War II, began to challenge French's dominance.
🌍 The Modern Relevance of French Language
Despite facing competition from English, French has maintained its status as a language of prestige and luxury. It's used in marketing to convey sophistication. French's history is intertwined with its culture, making it essential to understand both when learning the language. Modern methods, such as learning through authentic content like videos and TV clips, help learners grasp the language's nuances and cultural significance. French continues to enrich the world, taking from English where appropriate but maintaining its unique character and contributions to global communication.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡French Language
💡Gaulish
💡Latin
💡Roman Empire
💡Franks
💡Old French
💡Occitan
💡Parisian Dialect
💡Albigensian Crusade
💡Academie Francaise
💡Lingua Franca
Highlights
French was not the main language of France before the 12th century.
Before the 16th century, French was not respected much and was seen as second to Latin.
By the 18th century, French became the dominant language of the world in diplomacy, culture, science, and education.
French originated from the mixing of Gaulish and Latin languages.
The Franks influenced French by introducing Germanic stress patterns and vocabulary.
Viking conquests and contact with England introduced seafaring and directional words into French.
Old French emerged as a distinct language by the late 8th century.
Francian, the dialect of Paris, played a crucial role in centralizing power and becoming the default French language.
The Albigensian Crusade led to the decline of Occitan and the rise of French in the south of France.
French overcame Latin as the language of science, theology, diplomacy, and education in the 16th century.
The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539 established French as the official language of France.
French became the universal language of the elites across Europe by the end of the 17th century.
The French Enlightenment and Napoleon helped spread the French language across Europe.
The French language's prestige and clarity were recognized, contrasting its earlier image as a messy language.
French colonization spread the language across Africa, the Americas, and Asia.
The rise of English began to challenge the status of French in the 19th century.
English loanwords started to be adopted into French, particularly in technical fields.
The French language has maintained its strength by selectively adopting English terms and adding nuance.
French is still seen as a language of prestige and luxury, enriching the world with its 'French touch'.
Transcripts
the french language has gone on a pretty
wild ride
nowadays we see french as one singular
language with clear rules and solid
grammar on top of that we see french as
classy it's the language of
international prestige and the pride of
the french people but historically
speaking this attitude towards french is
actually pretty new before the 12th
century french was not seen as the main
language of france it was one of many
powerful regional languages including
bruton ocsitan and alsatian before the
16th century french was not respected
that much in france it was seen as
second string to the purity of latin as
french was a weird frankenstein in many
different languages but by the time you
get to the 18th century french was the
dominant language of the world the
language of diplomacy culture science
and education so this begs the question
how has french gotten to where it is
today the short answer is that french
has been in contact in competition and
in conflict with lots of different
languages and it's these interactions
that have pushed french to be where it
is today so here's a very brief history
of french adapted from this not very
brief history of french all broken into
five chapters from the origins of french
to its current standings in the 21st
century let's go
imagine for a second that you're a roman
soldier from the 2nd century bce you
look kind of like this you're brave you
wear sick armor you kind of smell
remember this is 2 000 years before axe
body spray and he just arrived in a new
part of the roman empire called gaul in
gaul the people speak gaulish duh a
celtic language but as a good roman
soldier you and your buddies all chat in
latin latin is the language of the
government the administration the
education but golish doesn't just die
out when latin arrives no instead golish
starts to mix with latin and your
children and grandchildren start
speaking aladdin that sounds different
from yours this is basically how the
french language started under roman rule
gaul had two big languages gaulish and
this vulgar latin latin came to be seen
as the language of power and urban
centers and even locals would start to
learn latin so they could get ahead and
get nice jobs with the administration
gaulish on the other hand was pushed
more to the countryside so it started to
get this connotation of being a bit of a
hick language by the 5th century a.d
golish had begun to die out but the
region's latin had already absorbed a
lot of gaulish like the words for sheep
cradle and mud as a result their latin
was starting to look less and less like
pure latin and this trend would only
become more and more pronounced over the
coming centuries
soon the roman empire fell and there was
a power vacuum in gaul lots of different
european powers came in and out of the
region bringing with them their own
changes to the language one of these
groups was the franks when the franks
invaded in the 5th century they changed
the language a lot vulgar latin started
to adopt all these germanic stress
patterns and vocabulary which explains
in part why french is so
special in comparison to the other
romance languages the franks also
brought with them a bunch of linguistic
concepts for instance in latin there
aren't very complex words for colors so
the franks introduced the words for blue
brown and blonde even the name of the
language francais comes from the franks
later though we see even more changes to
the language viking conquests in the
north of france introduced lots of
seafaring words like wave and deck and
contact with england gave words like
boat and the cardinal directions north
south east and west the result of all of
this is that this weird latin gaulish
combo got further and further away from
pure latin it was a frankenstein of
different languages and this is where a
distinct french language starts to
emerge
by the late 8th century this language
was completely distinct from latin now
it would be called old french and here's
where things start to get interesting
we gotta recognize though that this
french that we're talking about is not
the only unique language in france at
the time you also got a ton of other
languages some with radically different
roots in the south you've got oxitan
which is a completely different romance
language kind of like catalan in the
west you've got alsatian which is like a
funky mix of german and french and by
the pyrenees mountains you've got basque
which has completely different roots
from all of the other languages not even
being an indo-european language but when
we say the word french nowadays we're
only really referring to one language
the hohohan
baguette french historians now call this
language francia and it started out as
just one of these dozens of many
languages so how did this one specific
language become the default french
language
well francian didn't originate from just
anywhere it was the dialect of the paris
region and even back in the 12th century
paris still had a lot of influence paris
had everything you needed to centralize
power it was a permanent capital with a
royal court a law court a university and
a religious hub their version of french
and the family of similar languages in
the north started to be known as the
long doil oil being their primitive way
of saying yes
if the north was going strong with his
long doil the south was on a completely
different page speaking primarily the
long duck ok being their way of saying
yes think hawk from latin to generalize
a little bit these long duck were
basically oxitan and a lot of different
dialects and these southerners were just
as proud of their language as the
northerners in fact oksitan was well
known for its poetry during the middle
ages and was the main language of the
troubadours so if oxyton also had this
really rich history why isn't ocsitan
the official french language
well the northern long doyle started to
take over not by peace but by force
you see in the 13th century the north
was strongly aligned with the catholic
church and they started to look down
south and notice that these darn
southerners were in tolerating this new
movement of christianity called
catharism and so the northerners were
all like no way stop doing that weird
new christianity
and remember this is during the time of
the crusades the church was not messing
around so when they looked down south
and they saw those filthy heretics they
felt that they needed to take action
thus started a 20-year attack on the
south called the albigensian crusade and
this albigensian crusade was honestly
brutal so brutal that the guy who coined
the word genocide called these crusades
quote one of the most conclusive cases
of genocide in religious history but the
thing is these crusades didn't even
really work to get rid of these heretics
the result was though that now the south
was under the rule of the french crown
and from this point onward these
northern long doyle would start to play
a bigger and bigger role in the south of
france soon francian would be the
language of official business all across
france of course languages like oxitan
didn't just disappear no they stayed in
these regions and were the everyday
languages for centuries to come in fact
even today there are people who speak
languages like basque alsatian and
occitan and these people are very proud
to protect their language and culture
however after the 13th century all these
languages would slowly lose their chance
of becoming the official language of the
french nation so the french language was
getting more and more powerful however
its biggest hurdle was still ahead of it
and it would spark a national debate
that would divide the french people
okay so i said that latin stopped being
the language that people spoke in their
day to day and that's true but that
doesn't mean that it disappeared
altogether actually quite the opposite
for centuries nearly everything was
written in latin because they thought
latin was objectively better than french
sure french was okay to speak in your
day to day and maybe to write some
literature in but latin was still the
big dog when it came to anything like
science theology diplomacy and education
so even if french beat out these other
dialects it still had a competitor in
latin after all latin had fixed rules it
was a quote-unquote pure organized
language and on top of that it had
tradition with roots that go all the way
back to an enormous empire french on the
other hand was seen as this kind of new
kid on the block a shapeless
bastardization of a bunch of different
languages so how did french beat latin
well latin's biggest strength was also
its biggest weakness you see people love
latin for its fixed grammar and rules
but it also meant that while french
society was progressing latin could not
change with it they could either have a
pure language or a modern one not both
this growing disconnect between the
latin language and the changing times
led to a series of controversial debates
over the course of the 16th century it
was latin versus french and a ton of
writers started to preach the crazy idea
that maybe french was okay to use in
more formal contexts the poet joachim
jubele argued that greek and latin
weren't always seen as these pure
dignified rule-driven languages and that
maybe french too could one day be seen
as prestigious humanists like bartel
miano and guillaume des hotel went even
further arguing that french did not need
to imitate other languages in the first
place to be legitimate they weren't
trashing latin but they were saying come
on let's at least give french a chance
because they knew that french was better
suited to the times and over the years
more and more people got convinced that
the world wouldn't end if you started
using french instead of latin so you
start seeing french being used in all
these scientific publications historical
documents and theological texts and this
all culminated in the 1539 ordinance of
viller coterre which established french
as the official language of france not
occitan not latin and not any other
languages but this was just the
beginning and soon french would grow to
be even larger than anybody had expected
within a few centuries french would come
to be recognized as the universal
language of the elites spreading all
across europe and the world it was
taught to upper-class europeans and
widely spoken in the royal courts how
did this happen how did french in
particular become the european lingua
franca by the end of the 17th century
well french had already had a good bit
of success abroad as early as the 13th
century french literature had begun to
export abroad with pretty great success
so much so that even in the year 1250
this norwegian book urged people to
learn latin and french quote because
they are the most widely known so this
gave french this like artsy and
practical appeal and by the 16th century
french already had considerable soft
power in europe but you've also got to
remember that france was massive at this
time 1 6 the total population of europe
on top of that france had a strong
military and economy plus it was
starting to become one of the most
standardized languages in europe after
all 1634 marked the creation of the
academy frances an organization with the
sole purpose of establishing the rules
of the french language once and for all
so it would make sense that this
language would cinch the status of
lingua franca it's during the 18th
century that french became the official
language of diplomacy putting another
nail in the coffin of latin and french
would only become more and more
internationally influential over the
next two centuries thanks to the french
enlightenment philosophers french
writers artists and a bit of
help from napoleon to spread french
language to the rest of the continent by
1782 the french language was so
widespread that the berlin academy held
an essay competition about the question
what has made the french language
universal the winning essay by antoine
de riverol describes french syntax as
incorruptable and writes quote that
which is not clear is not french so now
french was seen as the language of
prestige and clarity which is only just
a little bit ironic given that a few
centuries before it was seen as the
messy disorganized cousin of latin you
also can't talk about the global impact
of french without talking about its
history of colonization the french
empire reached across the world from
africa to the americas the colonized
people would rarely speak french to each
other in their day-to-day as many held
onto their mother tongues or spoke
french creole or patois but still french
became the official language of the
government in education in france's
colonies and would serve as a lingua
franca between colonized people who did
not necessarily speak the same language
although these people did not
particularly learn french by choice this
led to an explosion of french across
west and north africa as well as parts
of the americas and asia so french had
reached this peak of world power thanks
to a mix of military might and artistic
appeal if you want a deeper look into
the height of french influence i
recommend these videos about the super
influential writers victor hugo and
atuhambo or this french history of
oathkotu all of these videos are
available on fluentu along with
interactive subtitles so you can learn
french while learning history master
french while watching your favorite
videos by trying our free trial just by
clicking on the link in the description
below up until the 19th century french
looked impossible to beat that is until
something unexpected started to happen
that would shake the status of the long
universe
at the height of french's power we also
see the language adopting more and more
loan words from english this really
starts in the mid-1800s england was the
first country to go through the
industrial revolution meaning they
coined a bunch of technical terms that
would soon be adopted into french these
words include railway terms like ticket
tunnel and wagon as well as textile
terms like macintosh and jersey these
english loan words were limited to
technical terms for a while but by the
time you get to world war ii the us had
already started to emerge as a cultural
superpower flooding the rest of the
world with its media movies and music by
the 1950s french had picked up a lot of
english words from automobile to weekend
so many words in fact that the french
coined a term for the phenomenon fonglai
a combination of francais and anglais
and we all know what happened next
english would soon become the
international standard the go-to foreign
language to learn with french adopting
more and more english terms this has
been a pretty controversial process in
france with heavy opposition to english
and a fierce protection of the french
language as in renee tom's sa parlez a
scathing critique of anglicisms
published in 1964. despite this
perceived threat the french language has
held on strong in part because it
doesn't just adopt english terms
willy-nilly when french takes a word
from english it's only in a very
specific meaning or connotation le
puzzle for example only means a jigsaw
puzzle not any other kind of puzzle and
leger only refers to a show girl or
choir girl instead of replacing french
words altogether these words complement
the language and add nuance to specific
terms and for as much as french has
taken from english the french language
continues to enrich the world after all
as any marketing team is aware of the
french language is language of prestige
and luxury and this french touch is used
to show an air of class and
sophistication so while french started
out as this off-brand latin it has grown
to become a force to be reckoned with
and if you look at this very general
history of french you realize you can't
learn the language without learning the
culture behind it at fluentu we realize
this so we teach french and other
languages through authentic content like
youtube videos movie scenes and tv clips
so if you want to learn real world
material make sure to click that link in
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also if you want an outline of
everything that i've gone over in this
video we have a free pdf which you can
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keep learning with us here at fluentu
check out the video that's on this
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