Old Frankish was the language of the Franks and it is classified as a West Germanic language. Once it was spoken in areas covering modern Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and adjacent parts of France and Germany.

The Franks are descended from Germanic tribes from the Nordic countries that settled parts of the Netherlands and western Germany during the early Iron Age. From the 4th century they are attested as moving from the Roman Empire into what is now the southern Netherlands and northern Belgium. In the 5th and 6th century they expanded their realm and dominated Roman Gaul completely as well as client states such as Bavaria and Thuringen. The main difference between Frankish and neighbouring Germanic languages is that it is thought to be more 'celticised', probably by Belgic peoples, like for example the Menapii, whose language persisted in the realm of the Franks.

The language of the Franks managed to survive as Old Low Franconian in the north but it was superseded by French in the south. It had some impact on Old French. Old Frankish is not directly attested and is reconstructed from loanwords in Old French, and from Old Dutch.

Old Frankish has introduced the modern French word for the nation, France, to mean "land of the Franks", but except from loanwords, French is not closely related to Frankish. By the year 900 Frankish had evolved into Old Low Franconian (including Old Dutch) in the area that was originally held by Franks of the 4th century, while in Valois and Île-de-France (Paris) it was replaced by Old French as the dominating language.

Old Frankish has also left many etymons in the Walloon language, even more than in French, and not always the same ones. ^[1]

The impact of Old Frankish on modern French

Most French words of Germanic origin came from Frankish (most of the others are English loanwords, see Franglais), often replacing the Latin word which would have been used. This can be shown with the examples in the table below.

Frankish also had an influence on Latin itself; Latin words with Frankish roots include sacire, meaning "seize" (from Frankish sekjan, related to English "seek").

English also has many words with Frankish roots, usually through Old French eg. random (via Old French randon, from rant "a running"), scabbard (via Anglo-French *escauberc, from *skar-berg), grape, stale, march (via Old French marche, from *marka) among others.

Most Germanic words (especially ones from Frankish) with the phoneme w, changed it to gu when entering French and other Romance languages. Perhaps the best known example is the Frankish werra "to repel" (Compare English "war") which entered modern French as guerre and guerra in Italian, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese.

There were five primary sources for Germanic borrowings in French:

• early borrowings that were either widespread in Late Latin or at least common to a large part of the Mediterranean (S. Gaul, Spain), from Goths or Visigoths
  • choisir, guerre, heaume, riche, rôtir
• Germans from around the Rhine, when Trier became the capital (also counterbalanced by mutual borrowing INTO Western Germanic)
  • blesser, fourbir, garder vs. Kampf, kaufen, Kelch, Keller, Essig, Winzer
• confederates, settlers, liegemen (læti)
  • bâtir, maçon, crosse, haie, grêle, jardin
• Salian Franks (Merovingian period) 6thc-9thc
  • gagner, haïr, laid, Chilperic, Merovingian-period onomastics
• Rhineland Franks (Carolingian period) 9thc.-early10thc.
  • tiois, and cavalry vocabulary - éperon, étrier, haubert

Notes and References

1. ↑ See a list of walloon names derived from old frankish.
2. ↑ Because the expected outcome of *aliso is *ause, this word is sometimes erroneously attributed to a Celtic cognate, despite the fact that the outcome would have been similar. However, while a cognate is seen in Gaulish Alisanos "alder god", a comparison with the treatment of alis- in alène above and -isa in tamis below should show that the expected form is not realistic. Furthermore, the form is likely to have originally been dialectal, hence regional forms like allie, allouche, alosse, Berrichon aluge, Wall al'hî, some of which clearly point to variants like Gmc *al?só which gave MHG alze (G Else "whitebeam").
3. ↑ Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. "bastard" (NY: Gramercy Books, 1996), 175: "[...] perhaps from Ingvaeonic *b?st-, presumed variant of *b?st- marriage + OF[r] -ard, taken as signifying the offspring of a polygonous marriage to a woman of lower status, a pagan tradition not sanctioned by the church; cf. OFris bost marriage [...]". Further, MDu had a related expression basture "whore, prostitute". However, the mainstream view sees this word as a formation built off of OFr fils de bast "bastard, lit. son conceived on a packsaddle", very much like OFr coitart "conceived on a blanket", G Bankert, Bänkling "bench child", LG Mantelkind "mantle child", and ON hrísungr "conceived in the brushwood". Bât is itself sometimes misidentified as deriving from a reflex of Germanic *banstis "barn"; cf. Goth bansts, MDu banste, LG dial. Banse "byre", (Jutland) Bende "stall in a cow shed", ON báss "cow stall", OE b?sig "feed crib", E boose "cattle shed", and OFris b?s- (and its loans: MLG bos, Du boes "cow stall", dial. (Zeeland) boest "barn"); yet, this connection is false.
4. ↑ Rev. Walter W. Skeat, The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology, s.v. "dance" (NY: Harper, 1898), 108. A number of other fanciful origins are sometimes erroneously attributed to this word, such as VL *deantiare or the clumsy phonetic match OLFrk *dintjan "to stir up" (cf. Fris dintje "to quiver", Icel dynta "to convulse").
5. ↑ Webster's Encyclopedic, s.v. "screen", 1721. This term is often attached to *skermo (cf. Du scherm "screen"), but neither the vowel nor the m and vowel/r order match. Compare OFr eskirmir "to fence" from *skirmjan (cf. OLFrk bescirman "to protect").
6. ↑ Le Maxidico : dictionnaire encyclopédique de la langue française, s.v. "frapper" (Paris: La Connaissance, 1996), 498. This is worth noting since most dictionaries continue to list this word's etymology as "obscure".
7. ↑ Gran Diccionari de la llengua catalana, s.v. "guinda", http://ec.grec.net/lexicx.jsp?GECART=0072144.
8. ↑ C.T. Onions, ed., Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, s.v. "mason" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 559. This word is often erroneously attributed to *makjo "maker", based on Isidore of Seville's rendering machio (c. 7th c.), while ignoring the Reichenau Glosses citing matio (c. 8th c.). This confusion is likely due to hesitation on how to represent what must have been the palitalized sound [ts].
9. ↑ Jean Dubois, Henri Mitterand, and Albert Dauzat, Dictionnaire étymologique et historique du français, s.v. "osier" (Paris: Larousse, 2007).
10. ↑ Ibid., s.v. "pad", 640.
11. ↑ Skeat, op. cit., s.v. "patois", 335.
12. ↑ Onions, op. cit., s.v. "seize", 807.

See also

• Low Franconian languages
• List of Portuguese words of Frankish origin
• List of Spanish words of Frankish origin

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