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A History of the French Language Through Texts
This new history of the French language allows the reader to see how the language has evolved for themselves. It combines texts and extracts with a readable and detailed commentary allowing the language to be viewed both synchronically and diachronically.
Core texts range from the ninth century to the present day highlight central features of the language, whilst a range of shorter texts illustrate particular points.
The inclusion of non-literary, as well as literary texts serves to illustrate some of the many varieties of French whether in legal, scientific, epistolatory, administrative or liturgical or in more popular domains, including attempts to represent spoken usage.
This is essential reading for the undergraduate student of French.
Core texts range from the ninth century to the present day highlight central features of the language, whilst a range of shorter texts illustrate particular points.
The inclusion of non-literary, as well as literary texts serves to illustrate some of the many varieties of French whether in legal, scientific, epistolatory, administrative or liturgical or in more popular domains, including attempts to represent spoken usage.
This is essential reading for the undergraduate student of French.
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First published December 14, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 9, 2017
Perfect textual selection & great, clear and insightful analysis. An indispensable reference for those interested in the history of the French language, or diachronic Romance or even Indo-European linguistics more generally. Excellent, five stars.
August 15, 2015
In this book, Wendy Ayres-Bennett traces how the French language has changed over time by compiling French writings from across a millennium and commenting on the developments found within. The texts selected here span from the 9th-century Strasbourg Oaths, a political pact, to newspaper articles and fiction of the second half of the 20th century. Along the way, one of course encounters great French literature like the Song of Roland, Rabelais and Voltaire, but there are also a lot of little-known works like Crusaders' tales and diaries of life at the French court.
Each text presented here is given first in the original French (Ayres-Bennett usually notes which edition the orthography is based on), followed by English translation, and is then described in a linguistic commentary. The commentary is usually broken down into subsections for issues like phonology and the lexicon. In its format and approach, the book is comparable to Christopher Pountain’s A History of the Spanish Language Through Texts from the same publisher around the same time, but Ayres-Bennett's linguistic description is more rigorous and she dedicates much more space to syntax.
Although the texts are always given an English translation (which is necessary, since the earliest ones are written in a language not readily understandable for French speakers today), the individual French words and sentences mentioned in the commentary are not translated. That is, anyone reading this should already have a decent command of modern French.
I found this an eye-opening book. I had no idea that so many features that might have seemed ancient, typically French from time immemorial, didn't arise until well into the second millennium. I was also surprised to find out that the case system described for Old French by modern grammars of the medieval language is very much and idealization, and across the historical texts the system was much messier in practice.
The downside of the book is the scanty coverage of French outside France. We do get a brief song in early Haitian Creole and a work of fiction from French-speaking New Brunswick, but to give a whole picture of the development of French, surely one needs to look at texts from the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, in the two decades since the publication of this book, the formal literary standard has been increasingly challenged by more colloquial writing, and the French language has drawn from the immigrant community in France, so an updated and expanded addition is called for.
Each text presented here is given first in the original French (Ayres-Bennett usually notes which edition the orthography is based on), followed by English translation, and is then described in a linguistic commentary. The commentary is usually broken down into subsections for issues like phonology and the lexicon. In its format and approach, the book is comparable to Christopher Pountain’s A History of the Spanish Language Through Texts from the same publisher around the same time, but Ayres-Bennett's linguistic description is more rigorous and she dedicates much more space to syntax.
Although the texts are always given an English translation (which is necessary, since the earliest ones are written in a language not readily understandable for French speakers today), the individual French words and sentences mentioned in the commentary are not translated. That is, anyone reading this should already have a decent command of modern French.
I found this an eye-opening book. I had no idea that so many features that might have seemed ancient, typically French from time immemorial, didn't arise until well into the second millennium. I was also surprised to find out that the case system described for Old French by modern grammars of the medieval language is very much and idealization, and across the historical texts the system was much messier in practice.
The downside of the book is the scanty coverage of French outside France. We do get a brief song in early Haitian Creole and a work of fiction from French-speaking New Brunswick, but to give a whole picture of the development of French, surely one needs to look at texts from the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, in the two decades since the publication of this book, the formal literary standard has been increasingly challenged by more colloquial writing, and the French language has drawn from the immigrant community in France, so an updated and expanded addition is called for.
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March 24, 2012Geeky, yes, I know....I just can't help myself. And after a year I have to say UNCLE! I like it but I need to take a class on it. Not going to finish is at this time on my own. :(
December 12, 2016
I had to focus on just a few texts, namely: Les serments de Strasbourg (842), La chanson de Roland (early 12th century), and Lettre d'Hippocrate (mid-13th century).
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews