What language(s) were spoken in what is now France in the Dark Age period (400-1100)? I realize that the main languages in that area were Gallo-Romance languages but I haven’t been able to locate a map or other reference that points out exactly what Gallo dialects were spoken where and when. For some reason I had believed the Normans had spoken Occitan but that appears not to be the case. What language did the Normans (of the Dark Age period) speak?
The Normans would have spoken Old Norse at first (being from Scandinavia), but after being assimilated, they would have spoken what we’d call “Old French”. But there would still have been a quite a few Basque speakers and and also Franks, who would’ve spoken a Germanic language until they (mostly) assimilated to speak French.
Wikipedia (with maps!) on Langues d’oïl and Langue d’oc. (Langues d’oïl won, which is why the French say oui for “yes.”)
Ha. I’ve been hoping for a chance to plug a fascinating new book that I’ve been reading called The Story of French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow.
The mish-mosh of languages is complicated and that’s also a long time period. However, you can see a map of main languages along with regional dialects by going to Amazon, clicking on Search inside the book and searching on map 1. Click on the “front matter” hit.
Occitan is from southern France, not Normandy.
The Norse, who settled Normandy, picked up the Gallo-Roman “street” Latin that was a remnant of the Roman occupation, although Frankish kings spoke German in addition to Frankish until at least the 10th century. The Frankish language became what is known as French Romance in the 9th century.
The map shows two major Romance dialect regions, the langues d’oc in the north and the langues d’oil in the south, based on the different pronunciations of the word “yes.” However, all the border areas used languages connected to their border-mates and even the internal dialects were barely mutually intelligible.
The lingua franca (Frankish language) was a mixture of spoken langue d’oc with Italian, Spanish and Turkish. This was to be the language commonly used by the Crusaders and spread over Europe, but was not the ancestor of today’s French, which comes from the langue d’oc.
No. The langues d’oïl were spoken in the north and the langues d’oc (Occitan) were spoken in the south. A specific langue d’oïl, basically the one that was spoken in Paris, became the ancestor of French.
Great map - thanks. So would d’oil language speakers have understood one another? For instance were Normand and Champenois speakers close enough that these languages were considered dialects of a single language (d’oil)? The term Old French then refers to the group of d’oil languages spoken in the early middle ages? If one were to study Old French they would be studying the general language spoken in northern France in the early middle ages?