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List of French words of Germanic origin

 
Wikipedia: List of French words of Germanic origin
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French is a Romance language descended from Vulgar Latin spoken in the early Middle Ages. However, the area known as Gaul in Roman times was conquered in 486 by Germanic tribes, namely the Franks, led by Clovis I. It is from this tribe that the country derives its modern name, France.

As the Frankish Kingdom expanded under the reigns of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne, the power, prestige and influence of the Frankish Kings increased. So too did the language they spoke, Frankish, for the Franks did not immediately surrender their tongue to the Proto-Romance speech of their subjects (Early Frankish invaders spoke Old Frankish, which later evolved into Old Dutch. The Carolingian Franks, on the other hand, spoke a form of Old High German). The Germanic language continued to be spoken among the élite ruling class of Francia well up until the time of the Capetian Kings (10c.): it seems that Hugh Capet in AD 987 (born to a Saxon mother) was the first King of France who required the assistance of an interpreter when being addressed by envoys from Frankish Germany. Many other Frankish nobles were bilingual in Frankish and Gallo-Romance, and many Gallo-Romans desired to learn the Frankish language in order to better their fortunes (this despite the Neustrian army being wont to receiving their orders in Gallo-Romance since the time of Clothar II and Dagobert I)[citation needed] . The situation was not unlike that in England after the Norman Conquest, with Frankish occupying the role of superstratum language over the existing Proto-Romance language spoken by the populace. In time, the Franks, like the Normans, gradually gave up their native tongue and learned the language of the people.

As a result of 500 years of Germano-Latin bilingualism, many Germanic words were incorporated into the Gallo-Romance speech by the time it emerged as Old French in AD 900. And after the Franks abandoned Frankish, the Old French they spoke tended to be heavily Frankish influenced, with a distinctively Frankish accent, which introduced new phonemes, stress-timing, Germanic grammatical elements, and contained many more Germanic loans not found in the Old French spoken by the native Gallo-Romans. Even though the Franks were largely outnumbered by the Gallo-Roman population, the position of the Franks as leaders and landholders enabled the influence of their version of Old French to disproportionately outweigh that of the Gallo-Romans, thus allowing it to go on to form the basis of later versions of the French language, including Modern French. It is for this reason that Modern French pronunciation has a rather distinct and undeniably "Germanic" sound when compared to other Romance languages, such as Italian and Spanish, and is a major contributing factor in why there exists a distinction between Northern French varieties spoken in regions where Frankish settlement was heavy (langue d'oïl) vs. those where Frankish settlement was relatively slight (langue d'oc).

Frankish was not the only source of Germanic words in French. Gothic languages, like Burgundian, made contributions (via Provençal), as did Old Norse via Norman French. Other words were borrowed directly from Dutch and German, and still others came through the Germanic elements found in Latin and other Romance languages, like Walloon, Italian, and Spanish. Finally, English has made contributions to the French lexicon, most notably within the past few decades.

The following list details words, affixes and phrases that contain Germanic etymons. Words where only an affix is Germanic (eg. méfait, bouillard, carnavalesque) are excluded, as are words borrowed from a Germanic language where the origin is other than Germanic (for instance, cabaret is from Dutch, but the Dutch word is ultimately from Latin/Greek, so it is omitted). Likewise, words which have been calqued from a Germanic tongue (eg. pardonner, bienvenue, toujours, compagnon, plupart), or which received their usage or sense (i.e. were created, modified or influenced) due to Germanic speakers or Germanic linguistic habits (eg. forêt, comté, avec, commun, on, panne, avoir, ça) are not included.

Many other Germanic words found in older versions of French, such as Old French and Anglo-French are no longer extant in Standard Modern French. Many of these words do, however, continue to survive dialectally and in English. See: List of English Latinates of Germanic origin.


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See also

References

  • Auguste Brachet, An Etymological Dictionary of the French Language: Third Edition
  • Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales [1]
  • Auguste Scheler, Dictionnaire d'étymologie française d'après les résultats de la science moderne
  • Dictionary.com. [2]
  • Diez, An Etymological Dictionary of the Romance Languages"
  • Dossier des Latinistes, La Greffe Germanique [3]

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