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Encyclopedia > Old Frankish language
Old Frankish
Spoken in: formerly France, Germany, Low Countries
Language extinction: extinct
Language family: Indo-European
 Germanic
  West Germanic
   Old Frankish
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: gem
ISO/DIS 639-3: frk 

Old Frankish was the language of the Franks. Classified as a West Germanic language, it was spoken in areas covering modern France, Germany, and the Low Countries in Merovingian times, preceding the 7th century. The Franks originally inhabited the Netherlands and Flanders before they started to fight their way south. The language had a significant impact on Old French. It was replaced by French in the south, and evolved into Old Low Franconian in the north. Old Frankish is not directly attested and is reconstructed from loanwords in Old French, and from Old Low Franconian. The Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries (see Country) on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse (Maas) rivers. ... An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Indo-European languages are a group of several hundred languages and dialects (specifically 443 according to the SIL estimate), including most of the major language families of Europe, as well as many languages of Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ... West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as German, English and Dutch. ... 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. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... The Franks or the Frankish people were one of several west Germanic federations. ... West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German. ... The Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries (see Country) on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse (Maas) rivers. ... For other uses of the term Merovingian, see Merovingian (disambiguation). ... // Overview Events The Roman-Persian Wars end. ... Flanders (Flemish, Fleming) (Dutch: Vlaanderen (Vlaams, Vlaming)) has-diddley two-diddley main-diddley designations-diddley: a-diddley geographical-diddley region-diddley in-diddley-diddley-diddley the-diddley north-diddley of-diddley Belgium-diddley, corresponding-diddley to-diddley the-diddley Flemish Region, a-diddley consituent-diddley part-diddley of-diddley the... Old French is a term sometimes used to refer to the langue doïl, the continuum of varieties of Romance language spoken in territories corresponding roughly to the northern half of modern France and parts of Belgium and Switzerland during the period roughly from 1000 to 1300 A.D... Old Low Franconian is the language ancestral to the Low Franconian languages, including Dutch. ...


The impact of Old Frankish on modern French

Most French words of Germanic origin (most of the others are English loanwords, see Franglais) came from Frankish, often replacing the Latin word which would have been used. This can be shown with the examples in the table below. Franglais, a portmanteau made by mixing the words français (French) and anglais (English), is a slang term for types of speech, although the word has different overtones in the English and French languages. ... Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

Old Frankish Old French Modern French Latin Meaning
warding guardenc gardien custōs warden
skirmjan (verb) escarmouche (noun) escarmouche (noun) leve proelium (noun) skirmish (verb or noun)
bera biere bière cervīsia beer

Frankish also had an influence on Latin itself; Latin words with Frankish roots include sacire, meaning "seize" (from Frankish sekjan, related to English "seek").


English also has many words with Frankish roots, usually through Old French eg. "random", "standard", "grape", "stale", "shock", among others.


Most Germanic words (especially ones from Frankish) with the phoneme w, changed it to gu when entering French and other Romance languages. Perhaps the best known example is the Frankish werra "war" which entered modern French as guerre (which subsequently became guerra in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese). The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages or New Latin languages, are a subset of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Latin dialects spoken by the common people in what is known as Latin Europe (Italian/Portuguese/Spanish Europa latina, Catalan Europa llatina, French Europe latine, Romanian Europa...


  Results from FactBites:
 
Old Frankish language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (280 words)
Old Frankish was the language of the Franks.
Classified as a West Germanic language, it was spoken in areas covering modern France, Germany, and the Low Countries in Merovingian times, preceding the 7th century.
Old Frankish is not directly attested and is reconstructed from loanwords in Old French, and from Old Low Franconian.
  More results at FactBites »

 

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