A Short History of the French Language
The Gauls and the Romans
Before the Romans, the people of Gaul spoke a Celtic language. Their druides refused to write it down, so very little of it survives. It lives on mainly in a few words, such as mouton (sheep), and in river names like the Seine, the Loire and the Rhône. When Rome conquered Gaul in the 1st century BC, Latin spread across the region. Soldiers, traders and ordinary people turned it into a spoken “Vulgar Latin”, which gave French words like tête (head) and cheval (horse).
The Franks give France its name
From the 5th century, the Germanic Franks conquered northern Gaul. Their king Clovis made Paris his capital, and the Franks later gave their name to France itself. Their language, Frankish, did not replace Latin, but it changed it: Latin bellum gave way to a Germanic word that became French guerre (war). Latin remained the language of the Church and of Charlemagne’s court. Ordinary people no longer understood it, however, and in 813 a Church council ordered that sermons be given in the local “Romance” tongue.
The first French texts
The oldest surviving political text in an early form of French is the Oaths of Strasbourg from 842. In them, two grandsons of Charlemagne swore loyalty to each other in languages their soldiers could understand. Around 880 came the first literary text, the Sequence of Saint Eulalia, a short poem about a Christian martyr.
Langue d’oïl and langue d’oc
In the Middle Ages, France was split between two families of dialects, named after their word for “yes”. In the north people said oïl, and in the south oc. At first the south had more prestige, thanks to its troubadour poets. But as the kings in Paris expanded their power, the Parisian dialect, françois, became the language of the royal court. This Old French is the language of the poet Chrétien de Troyes.
French replaces Latin
From the 13th century, French was increasingly used for law and religion, and in 1297 the Bible was translated into French. Around 1330, the royal chancellery switched almost overnight from Latin to French for its records. The printing press helped spread the language, and the first book printed in French appeared in Lyon in the 1470s. In 1539, King Francis I’s Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made French the official language of law and administration. Curiously, the first grammar of French had been written a few years earlier by an Englishman, John Palsgrave.
After 1539
The Académie française, founded in 1635, became the guardian of the language. After the Revolution of 1789, French was promoted throughout France at the expense of regional languages such as Breton and Occitan. Colonial expansion carried French to Africa, the Caribbean and beyond. Today it is spoken by more than 300 million people on five continents.
Source
Jean-Clément Martin Borella, “Aux origines de la langue française”, Lumni Enseignement, published 22 October 2024.
https://enseignants.lumni.fr/parcours/1406/aux-origines-de-la-langue-francaise.html