French Dictionary Phrasebook

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The linguistic situation in what exactly is now France in early centuries of the Christian era is discussed under Gallo-Romance. Opinions differ about the period at which the language belonging to the northern a portion of the area can properly he termed 'French', but there arc good reasons for having reserving this term for the language of the period from with regards to the year 900. One brief document (127 words in all) has conclude us from a little before that date, so from what one might term the 'protoFrench period'. It consists of the text of two oaths sworn by way of a grandson of Charlemagne, Louis, as well as army of his brother Charles (the oaths sworn by Charles and by Louis's army have arrived at German) when they formed an alliance at Strasbourg in 842, against their brother Lothair. But the version of the 'Strasbourg Oaths' that we have can be found only inside a single manuscript, dating from with regards to the year 1000; it presents a number of problems of interpretation, and then we don't have a means of establishing how closely it matches as to the was actually spoken. The evidential the value of the oaths is therefore slight.
The early known text in what is indisputably French, and, indeed, the earliest literary text in any Romance language, can be a 29-line poem, in an extreme northern dialect of French, on the martyrdom of St Eulalia composed around 880 and preserved in a manuscript of not much later, now at the Bibliothque municipals at Valenciennes. From the 10th c. we have some notes for a sermon on Jonah, two more religious poems (756 lines in all) and then, in a number of 1 1 th-c. manuscripts, a poem of 625 lines on all the memories of St Alexis.
Periodization
This is a widely accepted periodization of the French language:
(1) Old French: up to c.1300
(2) Middle French: 14th and 15th centuries
(3) The Renaissance period: 16th c. (considered by some included in the Middle French period)
(4) Modern French: from the 17th c. for this day.
At all periods, French continues to be one of the main literary languages of Europe and, indeed, of the universe. .Among the hundreds of Old French texts exist several epic poems (foremost included in this the Song of Roland, extant in a 12th-c. version but certainly for the past a minimum of to the late llth c.), courtly romances (including those of Chrethien de Troyes, fl. 1160-85), the fables and lays of Marie de France (wife or husband belonging to the 12th c.), versions of the Tristan legend, the 13th-century. Romance belonging to the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, various saints' lives and other religious material, plays (both religious and secular), the verse tales of Reynard the Fox, and, in prose, the chronicle belonging to the Fourth Crusade by Villehardouin (c.1150-c1216) as well as the life of St Louis by Joinville (1225-after 1309).
Literature in Middle French is abundant but this may not one of the most brilliant periods of French literature; among texts that deserve to he mentioned, however, in even the briefest survey of writing in French would be the massive chronicle belonging to the Hundred Years' War by Froissart (1337-1404 or later), the lyric poems of Francois Villon (mid-I 5th c.), periodic 'mystery plays' by Arnoul Grban, also known as the Mystre de la Passion (first performed (-1450), as well as the Memoires of Commynes (1447-1511).
Post-medieval literature
Each and every period front the 16th c. onwards, France has produced writers who would figure in any survey of world literature. The list below could easily be multiplied:
16th c.: Rabelais (d. 1553), Ronsard (1524-85), Montaigne (1533-92);
17th c.: Descartes (1596-1650), Pierre Corneille (1606-84), La Fontaine (1621-95), Moliere (1622-73), Pascal (1623-62), Racine (1639-99);
18th c.: Montesquieu (1689-1755), Voltaire (1694-1778), Rousseau (1712-78), Beaumarchais (1732-99);
19th c.: Balzac (1799-1850), Hugo (1802-85), Baudelaire (1821-67), Flaubert (1821-80), Verlaine (1844-96);
20th c.: Gide (1869-1951), Proust (1871-1922), Valery (1871-1945), Sartre (1905-80), Anouilh (1910-87), Camus (1912-60).
Standardization
Many old French texts arc written, if not in pure dialect, at least in a French heavily marked by dialectal features (see below, 'Dialects). However, the dialect of the Bede-France, to which the term francais originally applied but which is now recognized francien (sec below, `Dialects'), gradually came have fun in special prestige. Paris had been since the 10th c. the chief seat belonging to the monarchy, the principal educational establishments (as an example University, founded in 1253) and courts of law were there, as well as the Abbey of St Denis north of Paris was the ecclesiastical centre of the kingdom. Towards the end of the 13th c., the actual usage of in writing of dialects as apposed to francten had been largely (though not entirely) discontinued. What the problem is was settled in the end belonging to the 14th c., along with the coming of printing (the first press was placed in Paris in 1470 along with the first book in French published in 1476), which ensured that every one of
published work in French was in francien, merely reflected and consolidated an already existing state of affairs.
A few medieval treatises on the French language, designed in for English learners, are known but it was not through to the Renaissance that the French language became a physical object of serious study. The first grammar of French what food was in fact published in England, again for employing English-speaking learners of French and, despite its French title, is written in English. This was Palsgrave's Esclarcissement de la langue frantoyse ('Explanation belonging to the French Language'), London, 1530. The following year there appeared the first French grammar to be published in France (but written in Latin), namely the In linguam gallicam isagwge ('Introduction to the French Language') by Jacobus Sylvius (the Latinized version belonging to the author's real name, Jacques Dubois). Grammars written in French were to check out, the first being Louis Meigret's Trette de la grammere fiancoeze of 1550. The earliest dictionaries of French (other than some medieval FrenchLatin glossaries) date from in the same period. Robert Estienne published a LatinFrench dictionary, Dictionarium Latino-Gallicum, in 1538, as well as a reverse presentation of great importance and exactly the same material available a FrenchLatin dictionary, Dictionaire francoislatin, in 1540.

The Renaissance period also saw growing concern to widen the scope of writing in French and enable it to be with regard to purposes that had hitherto been largely or wholly the preserve of Latin. The first translations belonging to the Bible appeared (a Roman Catholic one by Lefevre d'Etaples, 1523-30, in addition to a Protestant one by Olivetan, 1535); the first theological work was Calvin's French translation (1541) of his Institution de la religion chretienne (first published in Latin in 1536). This has been potential followed by a surgical treatise by Ambroise Par in 1545 and, later while in the century, by works in French in such fields as, among others, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and geography. In 1549 I )u Bellay's Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse, that are regarded as the manifesto of' the school of poets called the Pliade (chief among them being Ronsard), urged the claims of French to be a medium for any of purposes. This burgeoning activity inevitably in order to the desire to supplement the vocabulary belonging to the French language by drawing on the resources belonging to the classical and other modern languages (see below 'Hitting the ground with other languages') and creating new words by composition and derivation. The word-stock belonging to the language was, in consequence, substantially enriched through the 16th c.
Linguistic activity in the 17th c. was characterized primarily by the desire to bring the by now perhaps over-exuberant vocabulary under control, by selection and careful definition of words, and then to codify the grammar. During the early part of the century, Francois de Malherbe, who occupied from 1605 the role of court poet, exercised considerable influence on the vocabulary, grammar and style of his contemporaries (particularly his younger contemporaries), taking the cloths line that the literary language ought not to admit words that would not be intelligible to all or any and proscribing the use in literature of archaisms, neologisms, learned borrowings, provincialisms and technical terms. He also pronounced on matters of morphology and syntax. Ntalherbe's activity, says the distinguished historian of the French Ian-
guage, Ferdinand Brunot, 'ouvre le rgne de la grammaire, rgne qui a te, en France, plus tyrannique et plus long qu'en aucun pays ('opens the reign of grammar, a reign that was, in France, more tyrannical and longer than in any [other] country'). Discussion of points of language and style would be to become a favourite activity at the literary salons that flourished in the court circles while in the mid-17th c. and from these salons and this activity emerged, to quote only two outstanding developments, the Acadmie francaise and Vaugelas. The Academy was founded in 1635 and, in its Statutes (1637), was charged with regulating and purifying the language and so that it is capable of dealing with 'the arts as well as the sciences'. It ended up being to can result in a dictionary and also a grammar (on these, see below), as well as works on poetics and rhetoric, neither of which has ever appeared. Vaugelas was significant founder members belonging to the Academy and worked on its dictionary. In 1647 he published his influential volume, Remarques sur /a langue francoise ('Observations on the French Language), a a list of commentaries on points of pronunciation, orthography, morphology and, first and foremost, vocabulary and syntax, about which stocks a particular uncertainty or debate in cultivated circles (the salons) or for writers. He saw his role not as laying down what the law states but as that associated with the observer and arbiter of 'good usage', which he defined as 'the manner in which of speaking of the soundest sections of the Court, in conformity along with the way with words of the most effective authors of the time'. In general, he avoids the excesses of artificiality or doctrinaire purism that characterized some of his contemporaries, and many of his recommendations on matters of vocabulary and syntax, which were much studied, discussed and the best kinds acted upon by writers of the time, constituted a significant contribution to the fixing of literary usage.
The first edition belonging to the Academy's dictionary appeared in 1694, the eighth in 1932-5, as well as the first fascicle belonging to the ninth edition in 1986. These latest editions, however, have never enjoyed the prestige of various other dictionaries, in particular Emile Lim's Dictionnaire de la langue francaise, 1863-72, Paul Robert's Dictionnaire alphabetique et analogique de la langue francaise, 7 vols, 1951-70 (2nd edn, 9 vols, 1985-6), along with the Tresor de la langue francaise (first editor, Paul lmbs), 16 vols, 1971-94.
Numerous grammars, written from different theoretical standpoints and ofgreatly uneven value, have appeared through recent centuries. It is curious, however, given the great attention paid to the language not only in the French educational system but in cultured circles generally, that no acceptable officially sponsored grammar has lots of people written. Essentially the most authoritative and influential may well be Maurice Grevisse's Le Ron Usage, first published in Belgium in 1936 and now in its thirteenth edition (1993), substantially revised by Andr Goosse. Strategy tasks set the Academie francaise in its Statutes of 1637 had in fact been to compose a grammar, but this took nearly three centuries as well as the resulting Grammaire de l'Academie francaise (1932) attracted well-founded criticism from such sources as the foremost contemporary authority on the French language, Ferdinand Brunot, and it is not regarded what I mean in whatever way authoritative.
French has become written in the Latin alphabet. However, from the outset this proved inadequate in a way for a language that had developed sounds that had not existed in Latin. Furthermore, though pronunciation has changed very considerably ever since the Old French period, the orthography has evolved relatively little and still, people, reflects that of 7 or 8 hundred years in the past. The position is aggravated by because thousands of Latin along with other words have already been borrowed with little or no orthographic adaptation. In consequence, the mismatch between pronunciation and orthography is even greater in French than in English. Following having a long history (going back to the 16th c.) of attempted reforms, some (though few) of that happen to be adopted, proposals in the 20th c. (most recently in 1992) for the introduction of even modest and thoroughly sensible modifications have come across great resistance and now have failed.
Dialects
In French, like for example other languages, it is really not in general possible to establish clear geographical boundaries between dialects (see map 6). 'That major regional differences existed in the Middle Ages is beyond dispute but, on your platform, they tended to shade into a single another. In so far as the dialects have not disappeared facing a vastly common Paris-based spoken tongue, that is still the case.
For our an understanding of medieval dialects, we are right down to the evidence of texts written in these dialects, in other words, at no cost unlikely that any of our existing texts are written in pure dialect, texts whose language is coloured to a greater or lesser degree by the dialect belonging to the author and/or of the copyist of a particular manuscript. Examples of these are both literary texts as well as a considerable number of legal documents. By these, we are able to identify as the major dialectal areas while in the Old French period the Ile-de-France, i.e. the small area around Paris (see below), Normandy, Picardy, the Walloon area, Lorraine, along with the south-west of the longue d'oil area (Poitou, Saintonge, Anjou). These are definitely referred to through the adjective carried out on the areas (in most hut only a few cases, provinces) to which they broadly correspond, i.e. normand, picard, ;ration, Lorrain, champenois. 'The adjective corresponding to 'France', a term that originally related in order to the Lle-de-France, is of course francais, a lot of this has come to refer to the language as one, timber sheds longer appropriate with reference to the specific dialect belonging to the Be-de-France. Consequently, in works on French dialectology, the term francien, which dates only from morrison a pardon 19th c., has been adopted.

French for Children

French had come into use in legal documents (although Latin used to be to predominate for years and years to come) since the 13th c., and, whereas the first time such documents while in the provinces reflected at the least somewhat the language of their area, right at the end belonging to the century francien was widely used in areas other than the lle-de-France and soon came to predominate. The last major writer to show much influence of non-francien features in his French was Froissart, while in the 14th c., and that he too largely abandoned them as time went by.
The main dialects or dialectal groupings identifiable while in the modern period can be considered to always be the following (though other classifications are possible): (i) a central group including, plus the dialects of the Ile-de-France, the ones from Champagne to the north-cast along with the Orlanais to the south-west; (ii) Norman; (iii) Picard; (iv) Walloon; (v) Lorrain; (vi) a south-eastern group (i.e., south-eastern within the langue (doil area, not needless to say within France as being a whole) covering the Franche-Comt and northern Burgundy; (vii) a southern group covering the Bourbonnais and also the Berry; (viii) a western area covering Touraine, Maine, Anjou, western Normandy, as well as Gallo area, i.e. eastern (non-Breton-speaking) Brittany; and (ix) a south-western area, covering Poitou, Aunis, Saintonge and the Angoumois. Though the status of 'language' may well be claimed for some of these varieties, it's just *Walloon and perhaps *Picard to which it's applied with much plausibility.
Though all mainstream French literature the past 500 years has been written in the national language, a certain amount of writing in dialect (verse, plays, some prose) has been produced, particularly from the 18th c. onwards. Though a lot of this really is in totally non-standardized orthographies, widely accepted standardized orthographies have been devised for Walloon, Picard and Gallo and are used both for literary purposes and in scholarly works on the dialects in question.
As compared with the situation in England, the modern French dialects are well documented. We have, on the other hand, a considerable number of dialectal glossaries, dictionaries and monographs, of greatly varying quality (cover anything from serious and competent linguistic studies to amateurish and virtually worthless publications) and, on the other side, invaluable linguistic atlases. 'Die in order to these (and the world's first major linguistic atlas) was the Atlas linguistique de la France by J. Gilliron (the director belonging to the project) and E. Edmont (the field-worker, who cycled round France and contiguous French-speaking areas, finding informants and eliciting their responses to a detailed linguistic questionnaire). The exact result is a colleetion of 1,920 maps (several, however, covering only southern areas) plotting for 639 localities the renderings which Is Available From Edmont's informants for phrases designed as one example of lexical, phonetic, morphological and, in a really few cases, syntactical options that come with you will find dialect. The atlas covers the whole of Romance-speaking France and so includes data for the Occitan- and Franco provencal-speaking areas, along with the small Catalan-speaking area near Perpignan, so only approximately half belonging to the material relates specifically to French. Even so the information which Is Available From the atlas is now a century old (Edmont carried out his field-work while in the years 1897-1901), it's still a very important research tool, having been elaborated as it was provided time when the dialects were considerably more flourishing than they are today. It can be, therefore, supplemented rather than replaced by the regional linguistic and ethnographical atlases proceeding from an initiative launched by Albert Dauzat in 1939 and that were appearing since 1950 (many but am not they all are now complete by 50 percent or even more volumes). The Langue d'oil French area comes with those for the Be-de-France as well as Orlanais, Normandy, Picardy, Lorraine, Champagne and Brie, Franche-Comt, Burgundy, central France (le Centre), the West (Poitou, Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois), and Romance-speaking
Brittany, Anjou and Maine. The Walloon area is excluded associated with this series of atlases as it is often already covered by its own linguistic atlas, Jean Haust's Atlas linguistique de la Wallonie which started publication in 1953.
Hitting the ground with other languages
French retains a number of words (perhaps 50 or 60 while in the standard language but possibly three times as many when one counts the ones that survive only in dialects) borrowed from *Gaulish during the Gallo-Romance period. The great majority of these get along with agricultural and rural concepts, e.g. bout 'mud', claie 'hurdle', soc `ploughshare', which can be cognate with Welsh baw, clwyd, swch which all have the same meanings, and mouton 'sheep', pilc( 'piece, etc.', :rogue `(substandard for) face', related to welsh moth 'wether, pelh 'thing', trwyn 'nose'.
The Frankish occupation of northern Gaul from the 5th c. onwards resulted while in the importation in to the Romance speech belonging to the area of a considerable number of Germanic words, countless to do with military or administrative matters (e.g., to give them in their modern form, blesser 'to wound', fourbir `to burnish', heaume `helmet', senechal seneschal, Dive 'truce), with agriculture along with the countryside (the Franks cant be found a nation of town-dwellers) (e.g. ble 'wheat', bois 'wood',gerbe 'sheaf', haie 'hedge', houx 'holly', misange 'tit', twine 'privet), with social customs, items of clothing, etc. (e.g. cruche 'jug', dancer `to dance', fauteuil 'armchair' (earlier 'folding stool'), feutre 'felt', gant 'glove', poche 'pocket', rotir `to roast') or with emotions or personal characteristics (e.g. hair `to hate', honte 'shame', laid 'ugly' (but earlier 'disagreeable'), orgueil 'pride', rang 'rank').
The incursions of another Germanic-speaking people, the Vikings or `Northmen' that began in or with regards to the early 9th c., led eventually to permanent settlement when, in 911, the French king Charles the Simple ceded to your list a tract of land around the estuary belonging to the Seine ended up being in due season to result in the creation of the Duchy of Normandy whose name derives from that of the new occupiers. Many place-names in the market (e.g. Caudebec 'cold stream') are patently of Norman origin as are a few words relating mainly, and not surprisingly, to seafaring matters, e.g. crique 'creek', etambot `sternpost, tillac 'deck', vague 'wave'.
Through the entire Old and Middle French periods, a steady trickle, but nothing more than a trickle, of words entered the language from living foreign languages such as English (e.g. names for points of the compass, nord, sud, est, ouest) and Arabic (e.g. coton 'cotton', gazelle, foe `skirt'). Without a doubt the main source of the latest acquisitions, however, was Latin, particularly while in the 14th and 15th centuries when the Latinisms borrowed (the great majority of which arc still while in the language) can be numbered in hundreds. To quote (in their modern spelling) only a click handful of examples, from the 13th c. we have austerite, excessif, politique, possibilite, and, from the Middle French period, absent, acte, applauder, assister, classe, delicat, divorce, famille, final, fragile, information, poeme, primitif, satisfaire. A number of of drawing on Latin for, in particular, abstract and technical terminology has continued through the entire centuries.
From the Renaissance onwards, French has borrowed words from many languages but the two principal such sources have been Italian and English. A series of military
campaigns in Italy between 1494 and 1525 brought France into hitting the ground with the Italian Renaissance and led to the arrival in France of Italian architects, painters, musicians and writers. Italian words (a number of which in fact had already come into French while in the 14th and 15th centuries, e.g. alarme, banque, banquet, brigand, camp, medallie) now flooded into the French language and, though many were only ephemeral borrowings, many have remained, particularly while in the fields of military and artistic terminology, e.g. alerte, appartement, architecte, attaquer, bataillon, none, infanterie, reussir, risque, arcade, ballet, balcon, concert, facade, grotesque, modle, sonnet, serenade, but also others, including artisan, butler, manquer, &coke, saucisson.
17th-c. borrowings from English include flanelle, pamphlet, paquebot 'liner' (from packet-boat), rhum 'rum'. Growing rise in popularity of later centuries in English customs and political institutions and practice as well as technological developments of the Industrial Revolution gave rise to further borrowings, e.g., while in the 18th c., budget, club, congres, jury, pudding, vote, and, while in the 19th, bifieck 'steak' (from beefsteak), cheque, football, rail, sandwich, sport, ticket. The influence of English while in the 20th c., and, particularly while in the wife or husband belonging to the century, of American English continues to be as great on French as on developed solid relationships other languages, hut, whereas other languages have often absorbed these recent Anglicisms (as indeed may possibly also have been the case with French), some intellectual circles in France have reacted with exaggerated fears for the future of the French language. This has led not just to the setting up of bodies to draw up lists of French terms to be utilized in technical, commercial, administrative as well as other fields but to the passing of laws (in particular the loi Bas-Lauriol, named as they are usual practice in France, after the members in charge of steering it through parliament, of 1975 and, most recently, the loi Toubon of 1994) designed inter alia to ban or restrict using foreign words (which, in practice, means Anglicisms) in contracts, advertising, etc.
Official status
France. As we have seen, through the 16th c. French gradually took more than a great deal of functions from Latin. Having French as an alternative to Latin for a variety of purposes was specified in three royal edicts of 1490, 1510 and 1535, but these all clearly allowed the regional languages. Finally, in an ordinance issued in 1539 (usually referred to as Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterets), King Francois I decreed that, thenceforward, all records of legal proceedings and judgements while in the courts in the least levels you simply provide contracts, wills, as well as other legal instruments deriving therefrom may be in French. Even if this principal purpose is so that the use of French as opposed to Latin for the purposes specified, it isn't clear whether or not the intention was now as well as to proscribe having regional languages and dialects, but also in practice, from a very early stage, French alone was used. Curiously, however, it was not until 1992 that a clause was introduced into the constitution of the French Republic specifying that the official language belonging to the Republic is French.
Elsewhere in Europe. In Belgium, French may be the official language in the southern aspect of the country (Wallonia), consisting mainly of the provinces of I lainaut, Namur,
Luxembourg, Lige, and the southern a part of Brabant, while the main town, Brussels, is officially bilingual (French and Dutch). While in the Luxembourg, where *Luxemburgish is officially designated as the 'national language', French is (together with German) an official language and is the language of legislation. In Switzerland, French is truly four official languages (the others being German, Italian and 'Romansh). Oahu is the official language belonging to the Monaco. While in the Channel Islands, French still enjoys marginal official status but, in practice, its use is strictly limited (see *Channel Islands French).
Outside Europe. French is surely an official language in all French-governed territories (i.e. French Guyana and numerous islands while in the Western Hemisphere, the Indian Ocean and also the Pacific), whatever their precise constitutional relationship to France. In Canada, French has been an official language throughout the federation since 1969; in the Province of Quebec it is actually (with the exception of federal matters) the only official language. French is also an open public language in Haiti (where the vernacular is often a French creole), Mauritius (with English), Madagascar (with Malagasy), the Comoros, the Seychelles (with Creole and English), and, in Africa, in Benin, Burkina, Burundi (with Kirundi), Cameroon (with English), Central Africa, Chad (with Arabic), Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasha), Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Rwanda (with Kinyarwanda), Senegal, and Togo.
International organizations. French is definitely an official language belonging to the United Nations, belonging to the European Union, as well as the Organization of African Unity.
Numbers of speakers
While no linguistic data are made Available From official censuses of France, it could actually safely be assumed that French is spoken (in most cases as a first language) by virtually the total population of well over 57 million. It will be the first language of some 4 million (40% belonging to the total population) in Belgium and about 1.3 million (19%) in Switzerland. French can also be spoken by some 80,000 in the Val d'Aosta in Italy and by probably over 20,000 while in the Monaco (people in this country, 27,000). We have, therefore, a total of over 62 million speakers in Europe, to which one can also add almost all belonging to the native population of Luxembourg (some 275,000), where French is universally understood and used though the first language is set in most all cases Luxemburgish.
The main population of native-speakers of French outside Europe is located in Canada (over 6 million, of whom over 5 million are resident in Quebec). You can get substantial numbers of French-speakers in Louisiana as well as in French-administered territories scattered internationally, though in the two caser accurate figures people speak French as distinct from a French-based creole (see below) usually are not available. There arc also significant numbers of French-speakers (for a lot of of whom, however, could second language) in those African republics where it really is an official language, while in the Maghreb states (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), as well as in Madagascar. When one is aware of these as well as of those Europeans as well as others for whom studying a native
language but who have a good command of French, a recent estimate (Rossillon 1995: 124) of nearly 90 million speakers of French may not an exaggeration.
French *creoles
French-based croaks are spoken in 3 main areas: (i) Louisiana; (ii) the Caribbean area (Haiti; the French 'overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique and, on the South American mainland, French Guyana; the former British colonies, now free, of Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia and Trinidad); (iii) while in the Indian Ocean islands of Runion (a French 'overseas department') and former British colonies, now independent, of Mauritius as well as the Seychelles (in the latter, Creole is an official language, as well as French and English).