{"id":68116,"date":"2020-06-29T15:16:20","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T22:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespanishgroup.org\/?p=68116"},"modified":"2022-01-19T01:18:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T09:18:58","slug":"a-brief-look-at-the-history-of-the-french-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespanishgroup.net\/blog\/history-of-the-french-language\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brief Look at the History of the French Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

The French language has made an amazing transformation over the last fifteen-hundred years from an off-shoot dialect of a dying empire into one of the most prominent languages on the planet. At the start of the 21st Century, nearly 30 countries regarded French as an official language.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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The story of the French language<\/a> spans centuries and continents, and the aspects that make it unique are difficult to summarize in a single article. We will, however, be taking a quick look at the history of French and some of the characteristics that set it apart from the other Romance languages. By the end, you should have a better understanding of how the language formulated and why it is still so unique today.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A Brief History of the French Language<\/b><\/h2>\n

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Even a brief history of the French language can extend well past the scope of a single article if one attempts to cover every possible facet of development. Instead, for our quick history of the French Language, we will look at a handful of critical events that arguably had the most significant impact on the development of the language as we know it today.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Roman Empire would incorporate the majority of the region we know of as France by 50 BCE at the close of the Gallic Wars. This province would be referred to as Gaul and would be a relatively civilized part of the Empire for the better part of five centuries. Latin would become a dominant language of trade as roads and aqueducts began to spring up across the countryside. In this period, the Celtic Gaulish language would be heavily mixed with common oral Latin referred to as Vulgar (from the Latin “vulgus,” which means “the people”). Some Gaulish words still exist in French, such as ch\u00eane (oak) and caillou (stone).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Once the Romans’ political structure had failed entirely in Western Europe (around the 5th Century), multiple petty kingdoms began to arise from the ashes. They started what we know of traditionally as the dark ages in Europe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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