French

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Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics

Language belonging to the Romance language family of Indo-European, native language of about 80 million speakers in France, Canada, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, and some countries formerly colonized by France. After English, French is one of the most important languages of education today. The term ‘French’ (from the Vulgar Lat. franciscus) refers particularly to the dialect of the Ile-de-France (the region around Paris), which is the basis for the literary language. Early on two separate linguistic regions developed: in the north the langue d’oïl and in the south the langue d’oc ( Occitan); these terms are derived from the different words for ‘yes’: in the north the Old French oïl (from Lat. hoc ille), in the south oc (from Lat. hoc). French is the earliest and most richly attested descendant of Latin; the oldest attestation is the Strasburg Oath from the year 842. Usually three periodizations are undertaken: Old French (until approx. 1350), Middle French (until approx. 1600) and Modern French, whose sound inventory, morphology, and syntax diverge the most from Latin of all the Romance languages. ( also creole)

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