Frankish influence on French?

[Albion]

How much French vocabulary can be attributed to Frankish or other Germanic languages?
And how many French words that entered English are ultimately Frankish in origin?
Anyone have any ideas?

[Raskolnikov]

What I've wondered about was the Frankish influence on the sound of French. French sounds to me like a German speaking a Latin language.

[Sahson]

yes the frankish has a decent on the french language. like the word bleu is from Low Frankish: blāo or proto-germanic blēwaz

Danser from Low Frankish: Dansjan, Dansōn. There are many, but these are the first two that come to mind.

Forest comes from french forêt which is frankish(forhist) or proto-germanic: Furhist.

[Albion]

What I've wondered about was the Frankish influence on the sound of French. French sounds to me like a German speaking a Latin language.

It sounds very Romanic to me, very un-Germanic.

[Johnston]

French is the language of the Franks trying to speak Gallo-Romance. The same would have been the case for the Burgundians when they started to teach their children the language of Rome instead of their own ancestors. Willing to be assimilated, the Burgundians and French come off looking like pussies to other Germanics. On the other hand, this was a cold calculation for power on the part of the Franks, who preferred to usurp power than fight openly. Re: Lombards and Goths. Who knows what the Vandals did.

[Albion]

I think we've established that already. What I want to know is how much Frankish vocabulary or grammar was left behind in French?

On a side note, it'd be quite interesting to imagine what the French would speak like had Frankish triumphed over Romanic. I think something like the Dutch, since they still speak Low-Franconian in essence, but it'd have a lot of Romanic vocabulary like English.

[Sahson]

I think we've established that already. What I want to know is how much Frankish vocabulary or grammar was left behind in French?

On a side note, it'd be quite interesting to imagine what the French would speak like had Frankish triumphed over Romanic. I think something like the Dutch, since they still speak Low-Franconian in essence, but it'd have a lot of Romanic vocabulary like English.

I'm only human... i can't tell you the percentage, but i can show you, the etymology of french words...

[gandalf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Frankish

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_words_of_Germanic_origin

Lots of words from frankish .

The legacy of celtic and frankish into french is obvious

by the sound of french language , witch can sound very barbarian .

[antonio]

It sounds very Romanic to me, very un-Germanic.

It sounds neither Germanic nor Romanic. Id bet on Belgae (Keltic) tribes (dont know exactly how much related with Gaulish of Centre-South of France) and Franks as the agents of it's really distinctive speech.

Another critical point (albeit impossible this age) would be to establish linguistical differences between f.e. Franks and Goths. How much different branches of ProtoGerman differ.

[gold_fenix]

It sounds very Romanic to me, very un-Germanic.

yes, i am with you, in fact i think for example Spanish is the more rough of romance languajes, French although s more distant to latin sounds totally romance

[antonio]

I have to disagree. For me French is not much more distant from Latin than Southern Romances. It's not like Romenian. What is enigmatic is it does sound really away, also, from modern Germanic languages in its vicinity.

[Sahson]

syntactically French seems to be Gallic. 200 of the most commonly used words are gallic in origin, like Aller is Gallic. El, and eled is welsh. yllyf in cornish, and adall in irish.

[Anthropologique]

French certainly sounds more Latin than Germanic. However, there is a fair level of Germanic influence.

[Albion]

syntactically French seems to be Gallic. 200 of the most commonly used words are gallic in origin, like Aller is Gallic. El, and eled is welsh. yllyf in cornish, and adall in irish.

That's interesting. I suppose words used in everyday life are more likely to be preserved, its the same with English - even though it has a huge amount of Romanic vocabulary, the core vocabulary, the most popular words are mainly Germanic.

I found something anyway:


It is estimated that 12% (4,200) of common French words found in a typical dictionary such as the Petit Larousse or Micro-Robert Plus (35,000 words) are of foreign origin (where Greek and Latin learned words are not seen as foreign). About 25% (1,054) of these foreign words come from English and are fairly recent borrowings. The others are some 707 words from Italian, 550 from ancient Germanic languages, 481 from other Gallo-Romance languages, 215 from Arabic, 164 from German, 160 from Celtic languages, 159 from Spanish, 153 from Dutch, 112 from Persian and Sanskrit, 101 from Native American languages, 89 from other Asian languages, 56 from other Afro-Asiatic languages, 55 from Slavic languages and Baltic languages, 10 from Basque and 144 (about 3%) from other languages

Its ironic, a lot of the English borrowings themselves will no doubt be derived from Old French words that fell out of use in France.
The Germanic words also seem to have left more overall vocabulary than the Celtic.

[Ouistreham]

syntactically French seems to be Gallic. 200 of the most commonly used words are gallic in origin, like Aller is Gallic. El, and eled is welsh. yllyf in cornish, and adall in irish.

There are thousands other instances. One from the top of my head: milk is in French lait, which is supposed to be a derivate from Latin lactis. However lait is obviously closer to Breton laezh or Welsh llaeth.

The vocabulary of Celtic languages is/was extremely close to either ancient Germanic or Latin — some Gaulic examples: briv- for 'bridge', brig- for 'berg', duxtir for 'daughter', and as for Latin vir for 'man' (Latin: vir), tarvos for 'bull' (latin taurus) etc. Which is probably the reason why continental Celtic nations could switch to easily to either Romance or Germanic languages.


What I've wondered about was the Frankish influence on the sound of French. French sounds to me like a German speaking a Latin language.

Well, methinks it's pretty futile to explain language evolution in terms of 'influences', 'substrates', 'superstrates' etc. Especially as for French, since it rose in the Middle Ages as a linguistic compromise made (to Western European standards) over a very large area (including England at some time). It's safer to assume that such a language evolved according to its own internal logic, and that foreign influences didn't play any significant role.

This being said, there are indeed a cluster of features that associate French to Continental Germanic languages and that isn't found anywhere else, like:
• non pro-drop (an explicit subject is required for the verb),
• significant phonologic presence of schwas,
• a full set of front rounded vowels (ü, ø etc.),
• aspiration of fortis consonants (quite faint compared to German, English or Danish, but noticeably stronger than in Romance languages).

[Raskolnikov]

Well, methinks it's pretty futile to explain language evolution in terms of 'influences', 'substrates', 'superstrates' etc. Especially as for French, since it rose in the Middle Ages as a linguistic compromise made (to Western European standards) over a very large area (including England at some time). It's safer to assume that such a language evolved according to its own internal logic, and that foreign influences didn't play any significant role.
I didn't mean it like that.

[gandalf]

"This being said, there are indeed a cluster of features that associate French to Continental Germanic languages and that isn't found anywhere else, like:
• non pro-drop (an explicit subject is required for the verb),
• significant phonologic presence of schwas,
• a full set of front rounded vowels (ü, ø etc.),
• aspiration of fortis consonants (quite faint compared to German, English or Danish, but noticeably stronger than in Romance languages). "

I didn't understand everything but obviously french has a sound of deep forest
more than sunny beaches .
And I would'nt put this on german influence , but on gaulish language ,
but they were probably close in spirit .
The curious thing is that german and french are to my knowledge
this only languages of Europe witch sound cavernous ,
so there is a link between those only two .