carpe diem

collection of what I make of my research on my nerdiest of interests !! all angels are welcome <3

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Summer Landscape (1875) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Timeline of the evolution of the French language from its birth to the modern era

→ Before 58 BC, Gaul had around 10 million inhabitants who mainly spoke the Gaulish language, made up of Celtic dialects.

→ From 58 to 50 BC, Gaul was invaded by Roman armies under Julius Caesar.

→ From the invasion to the 5th century, Gaulish dialects and Classical Latin, but above all Vulgar Latin, coexisted in Gaul, and the reality for most Gauls was bilingualism.

→ From the 5th to the 9th century, Gallo-Romance gradually emerged from the Vulgar Latin spoken in northern Gaul through successive linguistic changes. This very early form of French gave rise to the oldest known text attesting to the use of French: The Strasbourg Oaths, a military oath between Charles the Bald and Louis the German.

→ From the 9th to the 13th century, Old French (also called roman, romanz, or romance) spread across Europe and beyond, influencing—and being influenced by—many other languages and cultures such as English, Latin, Arabic, Scandinavian languages, Italian, etc.

→ From the 14th to the 15th century, there was a transitional language between Old and Modern French: Middle French. These centuries were marked by major upheavals. The 14th century was characterized by the Black Death (plague) and the Hundred Years’ War, which led to the disorganization of institutions.

→ From the 16th to the 18th century, the Renaissance gave rise to Classical French, which borrowed words from Greek, Italian, and Spanish. The authors of La Pléiade also created new word forms (for example through suffixation and prefixation).

→ In 1539, Francis I signed the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, whose Articles 110 and 111 imposed French as the language of law and administration.

Article 110: In order to prevent any doubt regarding the understanding of the rulings of our sovereign courts, we wish and order that they be made and written so clearly that there may be no ambiguity or uncertainty, nor any need for interpretation.

Article 111: We therefore wish that all rulings and all other legal proceedings be pronounced, recorded, and delivered to the parties in the French mother tongue and not otherwise.

This measure thus made French the language of the State, but it was not directed against local spoken varieties—only against Church Latin. At that time, French was spoken mainly in Paris and among the aristocratic classes of northern France.

→ That same year, the first French–Latin Dictionary, by Robert Estienne, was published. Thanks to the invention of the printing press, there arose a need to codify the language, and grammarians, lexicographers, language theorists, and linguists gained importance.

→ In 1631, Cardinal Richelieu commissioned Théophraste Renaudot (a French physician, philanthropist, and journalist) to create the first French-language written press in Paris: La Gazette.

→ In 1635, Richelieu noticed that nine writers regularly met in Paris to discuss matters of language. In order to support them—but also to supervise and control them—the cardinal founded the Académie française (the French Academy), a cultural institution whose mission is to “contribute, on a non-profit basis, to the improvement and influence of literature.”

→ In 1694, the first Dictionary of the French Language by the Académie française was published, having been commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu.

→ May 1st, 1789, marks the beginning of the French Revolution with the first Estates-General, which led the Third Estate (the common people) to revolt against the nobility.

→ The Revolution went beyond the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, as the Jacobins imposed French as the “universal language of the Enlightenment”, and therefore as the mandatory mother tongue for all. The use of patois and dialects then became synonymous with “social regression”, seen as remnants of the Ancien Régime, just like the use of Latin.

→ In 1794, Abbé Grégoire presided over a major investigation whose report, titled Report on the Necessity and the Means to Annihilate Patois and Universalize the Use of the French Language (or Grégoire Report), concluded in favor of eradicating patois in favor of French. Through this action, the abbé sought to unify the people and facilitate the spread of knowledge. From that point on, French was taught in schools, but patois did not disappear so easily.

→ November 9, 1799, marks the end of the French Revolution with Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état, which established the Consulate, an authoritarian regime under his control.

→ In the 19th century, the Romantics opposed Classical French. In order to enrich their works, they used both “noble” words and “low” or colloquial ones.

→ At the end of the 19th century, Realist writers adopted new vocabulary resulting from the Industrial Revolution(transportation terms such as tunnel, rail, wagon, tender, tramway, steamer; medical terms such as analgesic, hydrotherapy, homeopathy, etc.). 80% of people still spoke their local patois in everyday situations.

→ In the 20th century, the advent of new technologies (such as radio, airplanes, automobiles, and trams) led to a movement toward the standardization of French. People now wanted to understand one another from region to region. Patois came to be used mainly by older generations.

→ During the First World War, soldiers from France and its colonies were sent all over the world and brought together in military units. This mixing of populations completed the disappearance of patois in favor of the French language.

→ On January 7, 1972, the French government enacted Decree No. 72-9 on the enrichment of the French language, providing for the creation of ministerial terminology commissions to expand French vocabulary. This was a reaction to the growing use of English vocabulary due to globalization and the Internet (e.g., star, scooter, live, interviewer, click, etc.).

→ On August 4, 1994, following the 1972 law, the so-called Toubon Law was enacted, aiming to impose the use of French in many areas (signage, work, education, etc.), particularly in public services.

→ In 1990, the Académie française and Francophone institutions published the 1990 report on spelling reforms (e.g., removal of hyphens in certain words, removal of the circumflex accent on i and u except in certain cases, etc.). Although officially recommended, it was not until 2008 that these changes were clearly encouraged in education in France.

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This timeline was originally written in French and even though I tried my very best on the translation, there might still be some small errors or some things that are not comprehensible when translated into English. If you come across these difficulties when reading, please tell me so I can edit the post !!

I also want to clarify that this timeline is a very condensed version of the history and that obviously some details are missing, I only included what I thought was important and what I wanted to remember. Also keep in mind that what I, a 15 year old French student, and you think is important or interesting might differ, so you might want to look into it yourself if you want more detail and see more of the parallels between language and the political history of France.

My sources are Wikipedia, Alloprof, my own history and French textbooks and texts of law especially for the last section.

If, like me, you're interested in this topic feel free to talk to me about it, my comments and dms are always open for interesting conversations !