Middle French (French: le moyen français) is a historical division of the French language which covers the period from (roughly) 1340 to 1611 ^[1]. It is a period of transition during which: An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the Americas as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Italic subfamily is a member of the Centum branch of the Indo-European language family. ... The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... Italo-Western is the largest sub-group of Romance languages. ... Gallo-Romance languages Gallo-Italian languages Lombard Piedmontese Emilian-Romagnol Venetian Ligurian Gallo-Rhaetian languages Oïl languages(including French) Burgundian Champenois Franc-Comtois French Gallo Lorrain Norman Anglo-Norman Channel Island Norman Auregnais Dgèrnésiais Jèrriais Sercquiais Picard Poitevin-Saintongeais Walloon Rhaetian languages Friulian Ladin Romansh *Franco... The Gallo-Romance branch of Romance languages includes French, Oïl languages, Catalan, and Occitan, among other languages. ... The geographical spread of the Oïl languages (except French) can be seen in shades of green and yellow in this map Langues doïl is the linguistic and historical designation of the Gallo-Romance languages which originated in the northern territories of Roman Gaul now occupied by northern... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... Events Europe has about 74 million inhabitants. ... Events June 23 - Henry Hudsons crew maroons him, his son and 7 others in a boat November 1 - At Whitehall Palace in London, William Shakespeares romantic comedy The Tempest is presented for the first time. ...

• the French language becomes clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages which are sometimes subsumed within the concept of Old French ("l'ancien français");
• the French language is imposed as the official language of the kingdom of France in place of Latin and other Oïl and Occitan languages;
• the literary development of French prepares the vocabulary and grammar for the Classical French ("le français classique") spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The langue doïl language family in linguistics comprises Romance languages originating in territories now occupied by northern France, part of Belgium and the Channel Islands. ... Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories corresponding roughly to the northern half of modern France and parts of Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300 A.D. It was known at the time as the langue doïl to distinguish it from the langue... An official language is a language that is given a privileged legal status in a state, or other legally-defined territory. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Occitan, or langue doc is a Romance language characterized by its richness, variability, and by the intelligibility of its dialects. ...

History

The most important changes found in Middle French is the complete disappearance of the noun declension system (already under way for centuries). There is no longer a distinction between nominative and accusative forms of nouns, and plurals are indicated simply with an s. This transformation necessitates an increased reliance on the order of words in the sentence, which becomes more or less the syntax of modern French (although there is a continued reliance on the verb in the second position of a sentence, or "verb-second structure", until the 16th century). ^[2] In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun. ... The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ...

Among the elites, Latin was still the language of education, administration and bureaucracy; this changed in 1539, with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in which François I made French alone the language for legal and juridical acts. Regional differences were still extremely pronounced throughout France: in the south of France, Occitan languages dominated; in east central France, Franco-Provençal languages were predominant; while in the north of France, Oïl languages other than Francien continued to be spoken. The administrative language imposed in 1539 is generally thought by modern linguists to represent a generalised langue d'oïl shorn of distinctive dialectal features, rather than the triumph of one dialect (Francien) over the others. Events May 30 - In Florida, Hernando de Soto lands at Tampa Bay with 600 soldiers with the goal to find gold. ... The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts expanded the central control of the French state The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts is an extensive piece of reform legislation signed into law by François I of France on August 10, 1539 in the city of Villers-Cotterêts. ... Francis I (François Ier in French) (September 12, 1494 – March 31, 1547), called the Father and Restorer of Letters (le Père et Restaurateur des Lettres), was crowned King of France in 1515 in the cathedral at Reims and reigned until 1547. ... Occitan, known also as Lenga dòc or Langue doc (Occitan: occitan, lenga dòc) is a Romance language spoken in Occitania (i. ... Franco-Provençal (Francoprovençal) or Arpitan (in vernacular: patouès) (in Italian: francoprovenzale, provenzale alpina, arpitano, patois; French: francoprovençal, arpitan, patois) is a Romance language with several dialects in a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue dOïl and Langue dOc. ...

The fascination with classical texts led to numerous borrowings from Latin and Greek, sometimes to the detriment of Old French words. There were numerous neologisms based on Latin roots and some scholars modified the spelling of French words to bring them into conformity with their Latin roots (unfortunately, this produced a radical difference between a word's spelling and the way it was pronounced). ^[3] Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... A neologism (from Greek νεολογισμός νέος [neos] = new; λόγος [logos] = word) is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (coined) — often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. ...

The French wars in Italy and the presence of Italians in the French court brought the French into contact with Italian humanism. Many words dealing with military (alarme, cavalier, espion, infanterie, camp, canon, soldat) and artistic (especially architectural: arcade, architrave, balcon, corridor; also literary: sonnet) practices were borrowed from the Italian. ^[4] These tendencies would continue through Classical French. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

There were also some borrowings from Spanish (casque) and German (reître) and from the Americas (cacao, hamac, maïs). ^[5]

The influence of the Anglo-Norman language on English had left words of Norman origin in England. Some words of Romance origin now found their way back into French through war and trading contacts. The Anglo-Norman language is the name given to the variety of Norman spoken by the Anglo-Normans, the descendants of the Normans who ruled England following the conquest by William of Normandy in 1066. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. ...

Finally, the meaning and usage of many words from Old French were transformed.

Spelling and punctuation in this period are extremely erratic. The introduction of printing in 1470 eventually provoked the need for reform in spelling. One proposed reform came from Jacques Peletier du Mans who developed a phonetic-based spelling system and introduced new typographic signs (1550), but this spelling reform was not followed. Events May 15 - Charles VIII of Sweden who had served three terms as King of Sweden dies. ... Jacques Peletier du Mans (1517 Le Mans – 1582 Paris) was a humanist, poet and mathematician of the French Renaissance. ... The orthography of French was already more or less fixed, and from a phonological point of view outdated, when its lexicography developed in the late 17th century and the Académie française was mandated to establish an official prescriptive norm. ...

This period saw the first publication of French grammar books and the important publication, by Robert Estienne, of a French-Latin dictionary (1539). Robert I Estienne (Paris 1503 – Geneva September 7, 1559), also known as Robert Stephens (Latin: Stephanus), was a 16th century printer in Paris. ...

At the beginning of the 17th century, French would see the continued unification of French, the suppression of certain forms, and the prescription of rules, leading to Classical French.

Literature

Middle French is the language found in the writings of Villon, Marot, Rabelais, Montaigne, Ronsard and the poets of the Pléiade. François Villon (ca. ... Clément Marot (1496-1544), was a French poet of the Renaissance period. ... François Rabelais (ca. ... Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (February 28, 1533 - September 13, 1592) was an influential French Renaissance writer, generally considered to be the inventor of the personal essay. ... Pierre de Ronsard, commonly referred to as Ronsard (September 11, 1524 - December, 1585), was a French poet and prince of poets (as his own generation in France called him). ... The Pléiade was a group of 16th-century French poets whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf. ...

The affirmation and glorification of French finds its greatest manifestation in the "Defense and Illustration of the French Language" (1549) by the poet Joachim du Bellay, which maintained that French (like the Tuscan of Petrarch and Dante) was a worthy language for literary expression and which promulgated a program of linguistic production and purification (including the imitation of Latin genres). Joachim du Bellay (c. ... From the c. ... Dante in a fresco series of famous men by Andrea del Castagno, ca. ...

References

• Larousse dictionnaire du moyen français. Paris: Larousse, 1992.
• H. Bonnard. Notions de style, de versificiation et d'histoire de la langue française. Paris: SUDEL, 1953.
• W. von Wartburg. Évolution et structure de la langue française. Berne (Switzerland): Francke A.G., 1946.

Notes