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Period: 100 to 100
ORIGINS (100).
The first inhabitants of what we know today as France were the Gauls, a Celtic people they spoke a Celtic language from which Irish, Welsh, Breton and the current languages are named. -
Period: 987 to 987
LANGUAGE EVOLUTION (987).
During the high middle ages to the north and south of the Loire River two different languages began their evolution. They were consolidated as two different languages already at the end of the thirteenth century, the language of Oďl to the north and that of Oc to the south. -
1066
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Oďl's language was well known in Europe. It was the language of the court of Naples. The Germanic princes and nobles were educated by preceptors born in France who taught their language to children and in England during the two centuries after the Norman conquest (1066), French rivaled English as a spoken language and almost eliminated it as a language literary -
Period: 1337 to 1453
THE WAR OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS (1337-1453).
The Hundred Years' War between France and England, which devastated French territory and took place between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was a popular impulse in favor of French nationalism and the acceptance of the court dialect as a national linguistic norm. -
Period: to
FRENCH AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE (1700-1900).
At the beginning of the 17th century, the poet François de Malherbe triumphed by achieving an exact norm to use French words in his poetic and critical works. This standard made the language a very careful instrument, so that any reasoning could be expressed clearly and concisely. -
Period: to
INFLUENCES IN THE MODERN FRENCH (1900).
At the beginning of the 19th century, romantic writings recovered archaisms brought from ancient French for use. Which led to an analogous movement with symbolist poetry a century later, which has meant its permanence in the language in many cases. -
From the 16th and 17th centuries.
French replaced Latin as an international language, especially in the world of diplomacy, and international communication of the European continent, where it is still used in some forums. It is one of the mandatory languages of the United Nations Secretariat, the North Atlantic Pact and the European Union. Its area of influence in the African continent has created the Group of Francophone countries.
