and those of Poitou and Saintonge (southwest). The dialects were marked by
regionalisms and may not have been entirely mutually intelligible. Their corresponding
written languages, called “scriptas,” were colored in varying degrees by dialectal traits
but remained understood by speakers in other areas; the scriptas, therefore, were not
faithful records of the dialects. The base of the scriptas was from the beginning Francien,
the scripta of the Île-de-France region around Paris, and that was so mainly for political
and geographical reasons. Modern French is derived from the Francien dialect. The
following description of the Old French (Francien) sound system of the late 12th century
nevertheless represents a reliable conjecture:
Consonant phonemes: probably twenty-one: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /m/, /n/, /l/, /f/, /r/,
/v/, /s/, /z/, and /h/ (in words of Germanic origin) and the new consonants /λ/, /ts/,
/dz/, and In the 13th century, affricates reduced to their fricative element: /ts/>/s/,
/dz/>/z/, and
Oral vowels: probably the high vowels /i/, /y/, /u/, and the mid-vowels /ę/, /ø/,
and and the low vowel /a/. There was a sound longer than and one longer than
Oral diphthongs: probably six, that is, /ei/ (in an open syllable, as rai-son); /oi/</ei/, /yi/
(nuit); /au/ (from vocalized (chief); /iø/ (Dieu); and the triphthong /eau/ (beaus). By
the end of the 12th century, /ai/ had been reduced to /ę/ in a closed syllable, and /ou/>/u/.
The diphthongs /ue/, /eu/, and the triphthong /ueu/ became /ø/, spelled eu or œ. There
were two nasal monophthongs, /ã/ and /õ/, and two nasal diphthongs, /iẽ/ and /ẽi/.
In the 13th century, long free>/ø/ (flor>fleur), checked>/u/ (tor>tour). The first
element of the diphthongs /ieu/, /oi/, and /yi/ consonantalized, becoming /jø/, /wę/,
and /Чi/, respectively. The high vowels /i/ and /ø/ nasalized to and
The Francien scripta could employ varying spellings to render each of those
phonemes, even in the same text, paragraph, or line. For example, the competing
spellings ilg, lg, lli, or illi, could appear for the new /λ/. Regional scriptas, and dialectal
differentiation, added to the variety of graphemes.
Twelfth-Century Morphology and Syntax. Classical Latin was a synthetic language,
one in which flexions marked relationships between the parts of a sentence. Modern
French, an analytic language, expresses those relationships through the use of particles
(e.g., prepositions) and fixed word order. Accordingly, in the development of French the
Latin cases, which had been reduced to just the nominative (replacing the Latin
nominative and vocative) and oblique (replacing the Latin accusative, genitive, dative,
and ablative), probably by the end of the Late Latin period, were gradually lost. The two-
case system of the 12th century used -s or -z alone to mark both case and number in
several classes of nouns:
Table 1. Old French Nouns
(^) A. Masc.B. Masc. C. Fem.D. Fem.
Nom. sgmurs pere rose flors
Obl. sg.mur pere rose flor
Nom. pl.mur pere roses flors
Obl. pl. murs peres roses flors
The Encyclopedia 711