The Oaths of Strasbourg and the emergence of Old French

¶ … Old French Before and After the Oaths of Strasbourg

The Historical Background of Old French

The evolution of Old French language began in 52 Before Christ when Julius Cesar held the power over the continents of the Gaul. According to Columbian Encyclopedia, Gaul was under the Roman Empire in the first and second century. With the strong influence it brought, Latin spoken by the Romans gradually replaced the Gaelic, a Celtic language as the Gaul's mother tongue, for a long time. Latin became the national language, spoken widely among people and became the root of recently spoken languages through Europe, including English (Le Tacon).

Marnette in her lecture notes gives hints, that during the occupation, a settlement of Germanic tribes was recorded in the border of Gaul in the first century. This would be an important step onto political action affecting the regions of the Roman Empire. As the immigration crisis arose in the third century, the Franks, one of the Germanic tribes, arrived in Gaul and became 'Foederati'. When crisis and poverty hit the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the great invasion of the Franks started and the Franks fully occupied the Gaul. Extraordinarily they adopted Latin for their everyday language, and left their own. During the Franks invasion, Paris was acknowledged as the capital, and the center of the cultural activities. They gave strong influence to the development of Latin.

Both cultures had given important influence to French structure and vocabulary. A lot of French vocabularies were derived from Latin, while the other parts of modern French inherited Celtic and Germanic words.

Vulgar Latin as the Source of Old French

Hall (qtd. in. Batzarov) shows, that French dialect developed under the strong influence of Vulgar Latin and Proto Gallo-Romance. Vulgar Latin was characterized by "simple, rational word order, a disregard of unnecessary distinctions, and a desire for greater regularity in word forms" (Carl).

Roman soldiers were the parts who introduced the Latin vernacular to the Gaul, and the language itself had influence important aspects of the Gaul's lifestyle, although they didn't speak the language exactly like the Roman. For the Gaul community, the language was there to develop into their own vocabulary.

The Gaul used Latin widely. The common people, spoke Vulgar Latin, or also known as Proto-Romance, showing exactly who spoke the language and what class show behind that. This Latin vernacular was quite different from the classical one used by the distinguished people from the higher class, noticing that Roman had advanced civilization with its language. However, Vulgar Latin was commonly used as the conversational language of the uneducated people and the lower class, which had underwent modification in the pronunciation and grammar.

Different Considerations on The Development of Old French

Along with the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Latin fundamental had followed different paths in development. The ex-regions of the Empire were split up into several provinces, which each of them improved Latin by each own cultural aspects and social use.

The Franks took over Visigoths in 507 and Burgundy in 536. With this possession they gave control to the Roman culture adopted by the Gaul. Until the end of the 5th century they acknowledged their educational customs and respected scholars and the intellectual as well. During the instability however, the educational system lost its aim. As the worsening condition of the government, there was a declining economic condition, resulting in financial difficulty to afford the educational system. The authority could not have the funds for expenses of rhetoric teacher's salary, and soon the schools were closed. The education system gradually changed. There were several aristocratic households used to continue literature study, but was not for a long time, because losing the universal system applied during the Roman empire and attaining a new one with different approaches in each minimal country is difficult. Finally, no formal system applied and schools were closed in the middle of the 7th century. The development of language ran slowly thereafter (Norberg).

Even after Roman authority disappeared, Latin still took part and spoken by the commoners in western Europe, but there were no records or script about the use of the language found from the remaining regions after the Roman empire. The political and education systems were disorganized as they lost uniformity with each other after the Roman Empire (Columbia Encyclopedia).

However, those last systems also brought "essentially grammatical and literary culture." It was a noteworthy influence on linguistic development. It existed to influence the religious school -- the only education system remained. Far more in every country they still need to find to sacred texts and spread them to religious teachings across.

Norberg sees that by analyzing certain linguistic phenomena, he found that the spoken language slipped into Latin texts so much, it was considered too many to be accidental. It was concluded that the Latin soon transformed into Old French and Provencal.

He shows an example; the form portas replaced the ancient nominative portae in Old French and Provencal, where the difference between the cases of subject and object in other declensions was kept.

Old French after 9th century came earliest in the period between 9th and 13th century. It was different from Latin language where it came from. Although spoken, but it is not until the Oaths of Strasbourg, as the oldest written manuscript containing Old French. Where there were many dialects spoken, but in the northern France, the Francien dialect was the most popular one. It was spoken in the north central, Paris, and its surrounding. Soon after, supported by the political and cultural importance of Paris, this dialect became the standard language (Columbia Encyclopedia).

Price gave a linguistic review on the use of Old French. The Vulgar Latin developed into Old French with "complex phonetic transformations and simplification of the Latin case system." In 842 (noted by the Oaths of Strasbourg) there were only subject case and oblique case in French. By the middle ages, the two-case system was no longer in use, and the system differed between regions.

Middle French that existed from 14th to 16th century showed how the development had reached a very large stage. A lot of adaptations were derived from the preceding source of the language, from Greek, Italian, and Latin. The language also borrowed words many words from them. As the example, some groups of French poets Pleiad produced their poems and here we can see that the French literatures were built.

In his work "Question of writing the oldest French texts. Global Latin vs. Local French," Kawaguchi discussed that Latin thrived into globalization starting in the Middle Ages. The language became international speech and used by many scholars and educated people in Europe. This stage is considered giving parts to French development too.

There was a later development in French in the