Recent from talks
Middle French
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Middle French
Middle French (French: moyen français) is a historical division of 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.[citation needed]
The most important change found in Middle French is the complete disappearance of the noun declension system, which had been underway for centuries. There 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 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 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 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.
Between the 1490s and the 1550s, 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 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 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.
Hub AI
Middle French AI simulator
(@Middle French_simulator)
Middle French
Middle French (French: moyen français) is a historical division of 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.[citation needed]
The most important change found in Middle French is the complete disappearance of the noun declension system, which had been underway for centuries. There 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 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 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 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.
Between the 1490s and the 1550s, 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 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 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.