Language/French/History

The origins of the French language

In the first century AD, after 800 years of war, the Roman Empire stretched from Egypt to England, from Asia Minor to Spain and Germany to North Africa.

Latin was the official language and all the logistical and human resources were used to carry the Latin language deep into the empire. After a long period of bilingualism, the defeated nations adopted the Latin.

During the first century, the Latin spoken by the officials, the soldiers and the Roman colonists gradually changed. This new Latin with its regional colorations gradually became the most important language and was then used for writing official religious and civil documents. It defeated the classical Latin which was kept for the aristocracy and schools.

Over the centuries written Latin remained, while spoken languages which were about to become French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, etc... slowly developed. It is in this sense we talk about the Romance languages.

In Gaul ttwo dialects were found:

- The langues d’oil: dialects spoken at the north of the Loire River North of the Loire River, the langues d’oil

- the langues d’oc: dialects spoken at the south of the Loire River

Then those Romance languages became more and more distinct while retaining many common elements.

The French language did not exist before the ninth century. It was then called the "rustic language (or vulgar language, vulgus: meaning "people") at the Council of Tours in 813.

The Oaths of Strasbourg (842) telling the story of Louis le Germanique et Charles Le chauve is the birth of the French language because all written documents previously were written only in Latin. The Oaths had to be written in a language all soldiers could understand.

This document can be considered "French" although we find this name applied to the language only to the twelfth century.

For political reasons in the 10th century, Hugues Capet, King of France imposes its dialect French as a national language but the language of administration and religious remains Latin.

It was only in 1539 that François the 1st impose French as the legal and administrative language. Latin remains a religious language

In the 17th century, in 1634, Cardinal Richelieu will create the French Academy which will create the first dictionary of the French language as well as grammar books.