A History of the French Language

by Peter Rickard

This well-established and popular book provides students with all the linguistic background they need for studying any period of French literature. For the second edition the text has been revised and updated throughout, and the two final chapters on contemporary French, and its position as a world language, have been completely rewritten. Starting with a brief description of the Vulgar Latin spoken in Gaul, and the earliest recorded forms of French, Peter Rickard traces the development of the language through the later Middle Ages and Renaissance to show how it became standardized in a near modern form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction, France

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Rickard's A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE was first published in 1974 with a second edition appearing in 1989. Please note that although this listing describes the second edition, I read the first edition and my review is based on that.

Rickard was Drapers Professor of French at Cambridge and in this 174-page text he brings us from the earliest days when the speech of France was but a collection of vulgar Latin dialects to the modern standard language. Along the way, he shows how sound change spurred morphological change, how literary production down through time reflects the evolution of the language, and what polemics authorities engaged in on language standardization.

I should mention that this a not a book for those with some French who want to learn how to read earlier texts. The reader of A HISTORY OF FRENCH ideally has some training in Latin and in basic linguistics (phonology and morphology). I'd recommend reading W. Sidney Allen's VOX LATIN before Rickard's history, in order to have a better understanding of the pronunciation of late Latin.

My only real complaint about Rickard's history is that discussion of diaspora French is missing. Once the various dialects of France have formed a standard language, his focus rests entirely on that standard language and its registers in France. African French, which I find quite fascinating, is in no way covered. Neither is Quebec French, which is simply inexplicable.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit I'm basing this on my having read not the entire book, but part of it, for a project for a French linguistics course. I referred mainly to Chapter 5 (Progress and Prestige in the Sixteenth Century), which I found very helpful for the paper I wrote focusing on the origin of silent consonants in French. The author provides a detailed and engaging history on French spelling during the time when French was gaining prestige as a written language. This is an older resource, but nonetheless provided a lot of the exact information I was looking for. The author was quite a scholar on this subject, and this book ended up being my main source for my paper.

[Andrea Renfrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I look forward to re-reading this when I'm further along in my French studies.