Middle French

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Middle French

Middle French is an historical division of the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
which covers the period from (roughly) 1340 to 1611 . It is a period of transition during which:

History
The most important change found in Middle French is the complete disappearance of the noun declension

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as grammatical number , grammatical case , and grammatical gender....
system (already under way for centuries). There is no longer a distinction between nominative and accusative

Accusative case

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Encyclopedia

Middle French is an historical division of the French language

French language

the French language becomes clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages which are sometimes subsumed within the concept of Old French
Old French

Old French was the Romance languages dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300....
("l'ancien français");
the French language is imposed as the official language
Official language

An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other territory. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration....
of the kingdom of France in place of Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
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.

History

The most important change found in Middle French is the complete disappearance of the noun declension

Declension

Accusative case

The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions....
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).

Among the elites, Latin was still the language of education, administration and bureaucracy; this changed in 1539, with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts

Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts

The Ordinance of Villers-Cotter?ts is an extensive piece of reform legislation signed into law by Francis I of France of France on August 10, 1539 in the city of Villers-Cotter?ts....
in which François I

Francis I of France

Francis I , was crowned King of France in 1515 in the cathedral at Reims and reigned until 1547.Francis I is considered to be France's first Renaissance monarch....
made French alone the language for legal and juridical acts. Regional differences were still extremely pronounced throughout France: in the south of France, Occitan

Occitan language

Occitan , known also as Lenga d'?c or Langue d'oc is a Romance languages spoken in Occitania, that is, Southern France, the Occitan Valleys of Italy, Monaco and in the Aran Valley of Spain....
languages dominated; in east central France, Franco-Provençal

Franco-Provençal language

Franco-Proven?al or Arpitan is a Romance languages with several distinct dialects that form a linguistic sub-group separate from O?l languages and Occitan language....
languages were predominant; while in the north of France, Oïl languages other than Francien

Francien

Francien is nineteenth-century linguists' term applied to the particular langue d'o?l that was spoken in the ?le-de-France region before the establishment of the French language as a standard language....
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.

The fascination with classical texts led to numerous borrowings from Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
and Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
, sometimes to the detriment of Old French words. There were numerous neologism

Neologism

A neologism is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language . Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event....
s 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).

The French wars in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
and the presence of Italians in the French court brought the French into contact with Italian humanism

Humanism

Humanism is a broad category of ethics that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationalism, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts....
. 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. These tendencies would continue through Classical French.

There were also some borrowings from Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
(casque) and German

German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
(reître) and from the Americas (cacao, hamac, maïs).

The influence of the Anglo-Norman language

Anglo-Norman language

The Anglo-Norman language is a term traditionally used to refer to the variety of French used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles following the Norman conquest in 1066....
on English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
had left words of Norman

Norman language

Norman is a Romance languages and one of the Langues d'o?l. The northern Norman can be classified in the septentrional O?l languages with Picard language and Walloon language....
origin in England. Some words of Romance origin now found their way back into French through war and trading contacts.

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

Jacques Peletier du Mans

Jacques Peletier du Mans was a Humanism, poet and mathematician of the French Renaissance. Born into a bourgeois family, he studied at the Coll?ge de Navarre where his brother Jean was a professor of mathematics and philosophy....
who developed a phonetic-based spelling system and introduced new typographic signs (1550), but this spelling reform

Reforms of French orthography

The orthography of French language was already more or less fixed and, from a Phonology point of view, outdated when its lexicography developed in the late 17th century and the Acad?mie fran?aise was mandated to establish an "official" Prescription and description....
was not followed.

This period saw the first publication of French grammar books and the important publication, by Robert Estienne

Robert Estienne

Robert I Estienne , also known as Robert Stephens , was a 16th century printer in Paris. He was a former Roman Catholic who became an Evangelical late in his life and the first to print the Bible divided into standard numbered verses....
, of a French-Latin dictionary (1539).

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

François Villon

Fran?ois Villon was a France poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison....
, Marot

Clément Marot

Cl?ment Marot , was a French poet of the Renaissance period....
, Rabelais, Montaigne, Ronsard and the poets of the Pléiade

La Pléiade

The Pl?iade is the name given to a group of 16th-century French Renaissance poets whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Ba?f....
.

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

Joachim du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay was a France poet, critic, and a member of the La Pl?iade....
, which maintained that French (like the Tuscan of Petrarch

Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca , known in English language as Petrarch, was an Italy scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanism. Petrarch is often popularly called the "Father of Humanism"....
and Dante

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri , commonly known as Dante Alighieri, was a Florence poet of the Middle Ages. His Magnum opus, the Divine Comedy , is often considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature....
) was a worthy language for literary expression and which promulgated a program of linguistic production and purification (including the imitation of Latin genres).

External links

un dictionnaire en accès libre comportant plus de 60 000 entrées. Une réalisation de l' - CNRS & Nancy-Université.