Talk:Old French

Gaulish loanwords

In the article you state that 200 words have a Celtic origin and 15% comes from Germanic/Frankish. Are these figures accurate? I have read -- I admit in an linguistic book from the 1960s -- that only around 40 words still remain from Gaulish and 400 from Frankish. Also- how many words does 15% represent?

The 200 word claim is repeated in the secion on the French lexicon in "The Romance Languages", (Harris and Vincent, eds.), ISBN 0-19-520829-3. IIRC, the 15% claim (for the total lexicon of Old French) comes from Pope's "From Latin to Modern French," which I don't have in front of me. Smerdis of Tlön 14:09, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Some populist works put the number much higher, but reputable scholarly works give 150 or so. Delamarre lists 167 words in Old, Modern, and Dialectal French that come from Gaulish (each with a separate entry) with shorter lists for words that entered Provençal/Occitan, Italian, Catalan, Spanish and Romanch. So, I have edited '200' to '167' and given a reference. --Nantonos 16:40, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

References?

I was about to add the reference to Delamarre (see above) and then realised this would be the only reference in that article! I went ahead and did it anyay, but it highlights the lack of references in this otherwise promising article. --Nantonos 17:12, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps this reading list will be helpful - anyone have any of these works? http://users.ox.ac.uk/~fmml0059/TutorialF4.html --Nantonos 17:12, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Is caballus really from Gaulish? My Latin dictionary gives Greek: kaballe.

New article?

• I for one think that an article on French words of Gaulish origin and French words of Frankish origin are in order here. I might do it myself if I can track down the Pope book. As an amateur etymologist I would use this list my self, especially when those words made it into English in some form. And if arguments arise as to which language a word traces to, alternate theories with appropriate links (where applicable) could be noted in the interest of fairness/completeness.Hraefen 06:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposed move

It has been proposed that Languages of Oïl be renamed and moved to Langues d'Oïl. Comments and votes on Talk:Languages of Oïl, please, if you're interested. Man vyi 09:15, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Normans

It is important to distinguish however words which came from Germanic initially, via Frankish, and those that were introduced later, via the Normans in the 10th century.

This needs explanation. Why did words from the Normans not enter French before the 10th century? It is particularly confusing given the opening paragraph, which associates Old French with the area ‘roughly corresponding to the northern part of modern France’, which would seem to include Normandy. Widsith 14:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I've reworded that sentence. It seemed to want to say that more Germanic words arrived with the Norse invasions of Normandy. Smerdis of Tlön 15:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Much better. Widsith 18:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Classical Latin

Since when does Classical Latin have the diphthongs AE (pronounced as y in my) and OE (pronounced as oy in boy)? The both digraphs (that's how these are called, not diphthongs!) AE and OE were pronounced /e/, as in bed in the Classical period. In the Archaic period (Archaic Latin), yes, AE=/ai/ and OE=/oi/ but not in the Classical period! --85.206.191.128 10:51, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a reference for that? There seems to be controversy as to when the various sound shifts took place. AAR, it's probably an issue that more properly belongs at Vulgar Latin than here specifically. - Smerdis of Tlön 11:41, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

In every Latin book I have ever read, AE and OE are called diphthongs. 70.81.81.203 03:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

"derived languages"

Whether you accept Old French = Old Francien, or Old French = intermediary dialect, it is incorrect to state that all of the langues d'oïl derived from Old French; they all derived from the langue d'oïl, but that is not the same thing as Old French (though it is often misused in this sense). Norman, for example, derived from Old Norman, which was a distinctly different dialect than Old French. (If Old French is intended simply to mean langue d'oïl, then this article is redundant with langue d'oïl). The Jade Knight 18:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, this article currently attempts to cover both the ancestral langue d'oïl, and the specific ancestor of French. One solution might be to move the general content to Langue d'oïl and reserve Langues d'oïl for an overview of the modern languages of the family and this article for what is specifically Old French. Compare Old Russian language and some of the arguments at Talk:Old East Slavic. Man vyi 10:33, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Sentence

Can someone make this sentence below clearer so that the reader doesn't have to guess at the meaning?

A number of other Germanic peoples, including the Burgundians, were active in the territory at that time; the Germanic languages spoken by the Franks, Burgundians, and others were not written languages, and at this remove it is often difficult to identify from which specific Germanic source a given Germanic word in French is derived.

Were active? In what way? At this remove? Does that mean 'on this account', or 'for this reason'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RedRabbit1983 (talk • contribs) 12:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

errors in Vulgar Latin vowels

According to any reference book one might choose, Vulgar Latin had seven simple vowels, not nine as shown on the chart. There were three back vowels: lower and higher O, and U. Short Latin U (e.g. bucca) developed into the VL higher O, as did Latin long O. There were three front vowels: lower and higher E, and I. Short Latin I (e.g. fide) developed into the VL higher E, as did Latin long E.Jakob37 (talk) 05:45, 26 June 2008 (UTC)