Old French Period - Les Carnets Français

          Old French is the result of the language contact between several languages representing different language groups across the geographical boundaries: Celtic (Gaulish), Italic (Latin), and Germanic (e.g. Frankish, the language of the Franks. During the middle Ages, contacts among people were local in nature and therefore "vertical". They lived and died in the region where they were born, and they communicated with others living in the same region independently of their social background. From the 12th century on, when pilgrimages, crusades, and universities came up and towns became more important, contact became "horizontal," cutting through geographical boundaries rather than social classes.

         At the beginning of the Old French period, the dialects of langue d’oïl spread across the North of France. As it was difficult for the speakers to understand the formal Latin of the Christian religion, a written codification of the Vulgar Latin was found necessary for legal and political use.

        Strasbourg Oaths, sworn by Charlemagne’s grandsons, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, in 842 AD, is one of the earliest documents written in a distincly "French" language.  "This 'French' was ... one of a number of different languages descended from Latin that were spoken in various parts of post-Roman Gaul.' (1)

        "The return of the French court to Paris – after its move to Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) under Charlemagne -- and the ultimate success of its armies against the Anglo-Norman occupiers of major parts of northern and southwestern France, led to a territorial consolidation that guaranteed the future position of “French” as the official language of a centralized monarchy (later nation-state)." (2)

        "The poetic fertility of medieval Provençal ... had far surpassed that of French in the so-called “Troubadour” period. This gave way to the literary productivity of the language of the central court and central institutions of justice and learning – the language of Paris and the surrounding Ile-de-France region." (3)

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