Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/667

 LANGUAGE.] FRANCE 631 by Latin writers as beccus, leuca), but the number adopted from the language of the Teutonic conquerors of Gaul is large (guerre iverra; laid = laidh; choisir = kau.y an). The words were imported at different periods of the Teutonic supremacy, and consequently show chronological differences in their sounds (hair = hatan ; franco-is fraitkisk; ecrevisse = krebiz; echine = skina). Small separate importations of Teutonic words resulted from the Scandinavian settlement in France, and the commercial intercourse with the Low German nations on the North Sea (f riper = Norse hripa ; chaloupe = Dutch sloop; est Old English edst). In the meantime, as Latin (with considerable alterations in pronunciation, vocabulary, &c.) continued in literary, official, and ecclesias tical use, the popular language borrowed from time to time various more or less altered classical Latin words; and when the popular language came to be used in literature, especially in that of the church, these importations largely increased (virginitet Eulalia virg initdtem; imagena Alexis = imdginem the popular forms would probably have been vernedet, emain). At the Renaissance they became very abundant, and have continued since, stifling to some extent the developmental power of the language. Imported words, whether Teutonic, classical Latin, or other, often receive some modification at their importation, and always take part in all subsequent natural phonetic changes in the lan guage (Early Old French adversarie, Modern French adver- saire). Those French words which appear to contradict the phonetic laws were mostly introduced into the language after the taking place (in words already existing in the language) of the changes formulated by the laws in ques tion ; compare the late imported Idi/ine with the inherited lai, both from Latin laicum. In this and many other cases the language possesses two forms of the same Latin word, one descended from it, the other borrowed (meuble and mobile from mobttem). Some Oriental and other foreign words were brought in by the crusaders (amiral from amir] ; in the 16th century, wars, royal marriages, and literature caused a large number of Italian words (soldat = soldato ; brave = bravo ; caresser = carezzare) to be introduced, and many Spanish ones (alcove = alcoba ; Mbler = hablar). A few words have been furnished by Provengal (abeille, cadenas), and several have been adopted from other dia lects into the French of Paris (esquiver Norman or Picard for the Paris French eschiver). German has contri buted a few (blocus = blochm; choucroute = siirk)*ut) ; and recently a considerable number have been imported from England (drain, confortable, flirter}. In Old French, new words are freely formed by derivation, and to a less extent by composition; in Modern French, borrowing from Latin or other foreign languages is the more usual course. Of the French words now obsolete some have disappeared because the things they express are obsolete ; others have been replaced bywords of native formation, and many have been superseded by foreign words generally of literary origin ; of those which survive, many have undergone con siderable alterations in meaning. A large number of Old French words and meanings, now extinct in the language i &amp;gt;f Paris, were introduced into English after the Norman Conquest ; and though some have perished, many have survived strife from Old French estrif (Teutonic strlt); jtinint from cointe (cognitum); remember from remembrer (rememordre) ; chaplet (garland) from cliapelet (Modern French &quot; chaplet of beads&quot;) ; appointment (rendezvous) from i ppointement (now &quot; salary&quot;). Many also survive in other French dialects. (b) Dialects. The history of the French language from he period of its earliest extant literary memorials is that &amp;gt;f the dialects composing it. But as the popular notion of i dialect as the speech of a definite area, possessing certain peculiarities confined to and extending throughout that area, is far from correct, it will bo advisable to drop the mislead ing divisions into &quot; Norman dialect,&quot; &quot; Picard dialect,&quot; and the like, and take instead each important feature in the chronological order (as far as can be ascertained) of its development, pointing out roughly the area in which it ex ists, and its present state. The local terms used are inten tionally vague, and it does not, for instance, at all follow that because &quot; Eastern&quot; and &quot; Western&quot; are used to denote the localities of more than one dialectal feature, the boundary line between the two divisions is the same in each case. It is, indeed, because dialectal differences as they arise do not follow the same boundary lines (much less the political divisions of provinces), but cross one another to any extent, that to speak of the dialect of a large area as an individual whole, unless that area is cut off by physical or alien linguistic boundaries, creates only confusion. Thus the Central French of Paris, the ancestor of classical Modern French, belongs to the South in having is, not tsh, for Latin k (c) before i and e; tsh, not k, for k (c) before a; and gu, not w, for Teutonic 10; while it belongs to the East in having oifor earlier ei; and to the West in having e, not ei, for Latin a; and i, not ei, from Latin e + i. It may be well to note that Southern French does not correspond to southern France, whose native language is Provengal. &quot; Modern French&quot; means ordinary educated Parisian French. (c) Phonology. The history of the sounds of a language is, to a considerable extent, that of its inflexions, which, no less than the body of a word, are composed of sounds. This fact, and the fact that unconscious changes are much more reducible to law than conscious ones, render the phono logy of a language by far the surest and widest foundation for its dialectology, the importance of the sound-changes in this respect depending, not on their prominence, but on the earliness of their date. For several centuries after the divergence between spoken and written Latin, the history of these changes has to be determined mainly by reasoning, aided by a little direct evidence in the misspellings of in scriptions, the semi-popular forms in glossaries, and the warnings of Latin grammarians against vulgarities. With the rise of Romanic literature the materials for tracing the changes become abundant, though as they do not give us the sounds themselves, but only their written representa tions, much difficulty, and some uncertainty, often attach to deciphering the evidence. Fortunately, early Romanic orthography, that of Old French included (for which see next section), was phonetic, as Italian orthography still is; the alphabet was imperfect, as many new sounds had to be represented which were not provided for in the Roman alphabet from which it arose, but writers aimed at re presenting the sounds they uttered, not at using a fixed combination of letters for each word, however they pro nounced it. The characteristics of French as distinguished from the allied languages and from Latin, and the relations of its sounds, inflexions, and syntax to those of the last-named language, belong to the general subject of the Romanic lan guages. It will be well, however, to mention here some of the features in which it agrees with the closely related Proven- gal, and some in which it differs. As to the latter, it has already been pointed out that the two languages glide insen sibly into one another, there being a belt of dialects which possess some of the features of each. French and Provencal of the 10th century the earliest date at which documents exist in both agree to a great extent in the treatment of Latin final consonants and the vowels preceding them, a matter of great importance for inflexions (numerous French examples occur in this section). (1) They reject all vowels, except a, of Latin final (unaccented) syllables, unless pre ceded by certain consonant combinations or followed by nt