Ol

Geographic

Northern and central France, Belgium,

distribution:

Switzerland

Linguistic classification:

Indo-European
Italic
Romance
Western
Gallo-Romance
Ol

Proto-language:

Old French

Subdivisions:

see below

Glottolog:

oila1234

[1]

{{{mapalt}}}
The geographical spread of the Ol languages (other than French) can be seen
in shades of green and yellow on this map

The langues d'ol (/wil/ French: [l djl]),[2] or ol languages (also in

French: langues d'oui [l dwi]), are a dialect continuum that includes
standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives spoken today
in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel
Islands. They belong to the larger Gallo-Romance languages, which also
cover most of east-central (Arpitania) and southern France (Occitania),
northern Italy and eastern Spain (Catalan Countries).
Linguists divide the Romance languages of France, and especially of
Medieval France, into three geographical subgroups: Langues d'ol and
occitan, named after their words for 'yes' (ol, c), and Franco-Provenal
(Arpitan), which is considered transitional.

Meanings and disambiguation

Langue d'ol (in the singular), Ol dialects and Ol languages (in the plural)
designate the ancient northern Gallo-Romance languages as well as
their modern-day descendants. They share many linguistic features, a
prominent one being the word ol for yes. (Oc was and still is the
southern word for yes, hence the langue d'oc or Occitan languages). The
most widely spoken modern Ol language is French (ol was pronounced

[o.il] or [o.i], which has become [wi], in modern French oui).

There are three uses of the term ol:
1. Langue d'ol
2. Ol dialects
3. Ol languages

Langue d'ol
In the singular, Langue d'ol refers to the mutually intelligible linguistic
variants of romana lingua spoken since the 9th century in northern
France and southern Belgium (Wallonia), since the 10th century in the
Channel Islands, and between the 11th and 14th centuries in England
(the Anglo-Norman language). Langue d'ol, the term itself, has been
used in the singular since the 12th century to denote this ancient
linguistic grouping as a whole. With these qualifiers, langue d'ol
sometimes is used to mean the same as Old French (see History
below).

Ol dialects
In the plural, Ol dialects refer to the varieties of the ancient langue d'ol.

Ol languages
In the plural, Ol languages refer to those modern-day descendants that
evolved separately from the varieties of the ancient langue d'ol.
Consequently, langues d'ol today may apply either: to all the modern-day
languages of this family except the French language; or to this family
including French. "Ol dialects" or "French dialects" are also used to refer
to the Ol languages except Frenchas some extant Ol languages are
very close to modern French. Because the term dialect is sometimes
considered pejorative, there is a trend today among French linguists to
refer to these languages as langues d'ol rather than dialects.

Varieties

Five zones of Ol dialects have been proposed:[3]

Frankish zone (zone francique)

Picard
Walloon
Lorrain
Norman (spoken north of the Joret line): includes Anglo-Norman;
Dgrnsiais (spoken in Guernsey); Jrriais (spoken in the Channel
Islands).
Eastern Champenois

Francien zone (zone francienne)

Standard French
Varieties of the le-de-France (Paris Region) dialect:
Orlanais
Tourangeau, of Touraine provence
Western Champenois
Berrichon
Bourbonnais

Burgundian zone (zone burgonde)

Bourguignon
Franc-Comtois

Armorican zone (zone armoricaine)

Eastern Armorican: Angevin; Mayennais; Sarthois; Norman (spoken
south of the Joret line)
Western Armorican: Gallo
Gallo has a stronger Celtic substrate from Breton. Gallo originated from
the ol speech of people from eastern and northern regions: Anjou;
Maine (Mayenne and Sarthe); and Normandy; who were in contact with

Breton speakers in Upper Brittany. See Marches of Neustria

Poitevin-Saintongeais zone (zone poitevine and

zone saintongeaise)
Named after the former provinces of Poitou and Saintonge
Poitevin
Saintongeais

Development
For the history of phonology, orthography, syntax and morphology: see
History of the French language and the relevant individual Ol language
articles.
Each of the Ol languages has developed in its own way from the
common ancestor, and division of the development into periods varies
according to the individual histories. Modern linguistics uses the
following terms:
Old French, Old Norman etc. for the 9th13th centuries.
And then for French:
Middle French for the period 14th15th centuries.
16th century: franais renaissance (Renaissance French).
17th to 18th century: franais classique (Classical French).

History
Romana lingua
In the 9th century, romana lingua (the term used in the Oaths of
Strasbourg of 842) was the first of the Romance languages to be
recognized by its speakers as a distinct language, probably because it
was the most different from Latin compared with the other Romance
languages (see History of the French language).

A good number of the developments that we now consider typical of

Walloon appeared between the 8th and 12th centuries. Walloon "had a
clearly defined identity from the beginning of the thirteenth century". In
any case, linguistic texts from the time do not mention the language,
even though they mention others in the Ol family, such as Picard and
Lorrain. During the 15th century, scribes in the region called the
language "Roman" when they needed to distinguish it. It is not until the
beginning of the 16th century that we find the first occurrence of the
word "Walloon" in the same linguistic sense that we use it today.

Langue d'ol
By late- or post-Roman times Vulgar Latin had developed two distinctive
terms for signifying assent (yes): hoc ille ("this (is) it") and hoc ("this"),
which became ol and oc, respectively. Subsequent development
changed "ol" into "oui", as in modern French. The term langue d'ol itself
was first used in the 12th century, referring to the Old French linguistic
grouping noted above. In the 14th century, the Italian poet Dante
mentioned the yes distinctions in his De vulgari eloquentia. He wrote in
Medieval Latin: "nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil" ("some say 'oc',
others say 'si', others say 'ol'")thereby distinguishing at least three
classes of Romance languages: oc languages (in southern France); si
languages (in Italy and Iberia) and ol languages (in northern France).
Other Romance languages derive their word for "yes" from the classical
Latin sic, "thus", such as the Italian s, Spanish and Catalan s,
Portuguese sim, and even French si (used when contradicting another's
negative assertion). Sardinian is an exception in that its word for "yes",
eja, is from neither origin. Similarly Romanian uses da for "yes", which is
of Slavic origin.[4]
However, neither lingua romana nor langue d'ol referred, at their
respective time, to a single homogeneous language but to mutually
intelligible linguistic varieties. In those times, spoken languages in
Western Europe were not codified (except Latin and Medieval Latin), the
region's population was considerably lower than today, and population
centers were more isolated from each other. As a result, mutually

intelligible linguistic varieties were referred to as one language.

French (Old French/Standardized Ol) or lingua

Gallicana
In the 13th century these varieties were recognized and referred to as
dialects ("idioms") of a single language, the langue d'ol. However, since
the previous centuries a common literary and juridical "interdialectary"
langue d'ol had emerged, a kind of koin. In the late 13th century this
common langue d'ol was named French (franois in French, lingua
gallica or gallicana in Medieval Latin). Both aspects of "dialects of a
same language" and "French as the common langue d'ol" appear in a text
of Roger Bacon, Opus maius, who wrote in Medieval Latin but translated
thus: "Indeed, idioms of a same language vary amongst people, as it
occurs in the French language which varies in an idiomatic manner
amongst the French, Picards, Normans and Burgundians. And terms right
to the Picards horrify the Burgundians as much as their closer neighbours
the French".
It is from this period though that definitions of individual Ol languages
are first found. The Picard language is first referred to by name as
"langage pikart" in 1283 in the Livre Roisin. The author of the Vie du
bienheureux Thomas Hlye de Biville refers to the Norman character of
his writing. The Sermons poitevins of around 1250 show the Poitevin
language developing as it straddled the line between ol and oc.
As a result, in modern times the term langue d'ol also refers to that Old
French which was not as yet named French but was alreadybefore the
late 13th centuryused as a literary and juridical interdialectary
language.
The term Francien is a linguistic neologism coined in the 19th century to
name the hypothetical variant of Old French allegedly spoken by the late
14th century in the ancient province of Pays de Francethe then Paris
region later called le-de-France. This Francien, it is claimed, became the
Medieval French language. Current linguistic thinking mostly discounts
the Francien theory, although it is still often quoted in popular textbooks.
The term francien was never used by those people supposed to have

spoken the variant; but today the term could be used to designate that
specific 10th-and-11th centuries variant of langue d'ol spoken in the
Paris region; both variants contributed to the koine, as both were called
French at that time.

Rise of French (Standardized Ol) versus other

Ol languages
For political reasons it was in Paris and le-de-France that this koin
developed from a written language into a spoken language. Already in
the 12th century Conon de Bthune reported about the French court
who blamed him for using words of Artois.
By the late 13th century the written koin had begun to turn into a
spoken and written standard language, and was named French. Since
then French started to be imposed on the other Ol dialects as well as on
the territories of langue d'oc.
However, the Ol dialects and langue d'oc continued contributing to the
lexis of French.
In the 16th century the French language was imposed even more by the
Ordinance of Villers-Cotterts to replace Latin in judgements and official
acts and deeds (although the local Ol languages had always been the
language respectively spoken in justice courts). It is argued that the
Ordinance of Villers-Cotterts was not intended to make French a
national language, merely a chancery language for law and
administration. Although there were competing literary standards
among the Ol languages in the mediaeval period, the centralisation of
the French kingdom and its influence even outside its formal borders
sent most of the Ol languages into comparative obscurity for several
centuries. The development of literature in this new language
encouraged writers to use French rather than their own regional
languages. This led to the decline of vernacular literature.
It was the French Revolution which imposed French on the people as the
official language in all the territory. As the influence of French (and in
the Channel Islands, English) spread among sectors of provincial

populations, cultural movements arose to study and standardise the

vernacular languages. From the 18th century and into the 20th century,
societies were founded (such as the "Socit ligoise de Littrature
wallonne" in 1856), dictionaries (such as George Mtivier's Dictionnaire
franco-normand of 1870) were published, groups were formed and
literary movements developed to support and promote the Ol
languages faced with competition. Until the First World War, the regional
languages of France were still the languages most used in the home
and in the fields. This was also generally the case in areas where Ol
languages were spoken. French is now the best-known of the Ol
languages.

Literature

The Ol languages have literary

traditions, as for example seen in this
19th-century collection of Jrriais
short stories

Besides the influence of French literature, small-scale literature has

survived in the other Ol languages. Theatrical writing is most notable in
Picard (which maintains a genre of vernacular marionette theatre),
Poitevin and Saintongeais. Oral performance (story-telling) is a feature
of Gallo, for example, while Norman and Walloon literature, especially

from the early 19th century tend to focus on written texts and poetry
(see, for example, Wace and Jrriais literature).
As the vernacular Ol languages were displaced from towns, they have
generally survived to a greater extent in rural areas - hence a
preponderance of literature relating to rural and peasant themes. The
particular circumstances of the self-governing Channel Islands
developed a lively strain of political comment, and the early
industrialisation in Picardy led to survival of Picard in the mines and
workshops of the regions. The mining poets of Picardy may be
compared with the tradition of rhyming Weaver Poets of Ulster Scots in
a comparable industrial milieu.
There are some regional magazines, such as Ch'lanchron (Picard), Le
Viquet (Norman), Les Nouvelles Chroniques du Don Balleine [1]
(Jrriais), and El Bourdon (Walloon), which are published either wholly in
the respective Ol language or bilingually with French. These provide a
platform for literary writing.

Status

Bilingual street sign for market

square in French and Walloon

Apart from French, an official language in many countries (see list), the
Ol languages have enjoyed little status.
Currently Walloon, Lorrain (under the local name of Gaumais), and
Champenois have the status of regional languages of Wallonia.
The Norman languages of the Channel Islands enjoy a certain status
under the governments of their Bailiwicks and within the regional and

lesser-used language framework of the British-Irish Council.

The French government recognises the Ol languages as Languages of
France, but the Constitutional Council of France barred ratification of the
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[5]

Inuence
Further information: Anglo-Norman language

Signage in Gallo in the metro of

Rennes

The English language was heavily influenced by contact with Norman

following the Norman Conquest and much of the adopted vocabulary
shows typically Norman features.
Portuguese was heavily influenced by more than a millennium of
perennial contact with several dialects of both Ol and Occitan language
groups, in lexicon (up to 1520% in some estimates, at least 5000 word
roots), phonology and orthography.[6][7][8] The influence of Occitan was,
nevertheless, the most marked, through the status Provenal in

particular achieved in southwestern Europe around the troubadour apex

in the Middle Ages, when Galician-Portuguese lyric was developed.
Aside the direct influence of Provenal literature, the presence of
languages from modern-day France in the Galician-Portuguese area was
also strong due to the rule of the House of Burgundy, the establishment
of the Orders of Cluny and Cister, the many sections of the Way of St.
James pilgrimage route that come from elsewhere in Europe out of the
Iberian Peninsula, and the settlement in Iberia of people from the other
side of the Pyrenees, arriving during and after the Reconquista.[9][10]
The anti-Portuguese factor of Brazilian nationalism in the 19th century
led to an increased use of the French language in detriment of
Portuguese, as France was seen at the time as a model of civilization
and progress.[11] The learning of French has historically been important
and strong among the Lusophone elites, and for a great span of time it
was also the foreign language of choice among the middle class of both
Portugal and Brazil, only surpassed in the globalised postmodernity by
English, in both, and more recently by Spanish, in the latter.[12][13][14][15]
The French spoken in Belgium shows some influence from Walloon.
The langues d'ol were more or less influenced by the native languages
of the conquering Germanic tribes, notably the Franks. This was
apparent not so much in the vocabulary (which remained
overwhelmingly of Latin origin) as in the phonology and syntax; the
invading Franks, Burgundians and Normans became the rulers and their
accents were imposed as standard on the rest of the population. This
accounts in large part for the relative distinctiveness of French
compared to other Romance languages.
The development of French in North America was influenced by the
speech of settlers originating from northwestern France, many of whom
introduced features of their Ol varieties into the French they spoke. (See
also French language in the United States, French language in Canada)

Languages and dialects with signicant Ol

inuence

all regional languages spoken in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg

Limburgish, particularly Maastrichtian
all French-based creole languages
English (Ol influences on vocabulary, transmitted via the AngloNorman language spoken by the upper classes in England in the
centuries following the Norman Conquest, and later from French)
Portuguese (Ol and Occitan influences on lexicon, phonology
especially European and Europeanized Brazilian dialects, and
orthography)

See also
Old French
Bartsch's law
Lenga d'c

References
1. ^ Hammarstrm, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank,
Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Oil" . Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute
for the Science of Human History.
2. ^ Le Petit Robert 1, 1990
3. ^ Manuel pratique de philologie romane, Pierre Bec, 19701971
4. ^ "DA - DEX online"

(in Romanian). Retrieved 11 Aug 2014.

5. ^ Constitutional Council Decision 99-412 DC, European Charter for

regional or minority languages
6. ^ (Portuguese) Exhibition at the Museum of the Portuguese
Language shows the French influence in our language
7. ^ (Portuguese) Contacts between French and Portuguese or the
first's influences on the second
8. ^ (Portuguese) The influence of loanwords in the Portuguese
language: a process of globalization, ideology and communication

9. ^ A lngua que falamos: Portugus, histria, variao e discurso

Luiz

Antnio da Silva, 2005.

10. ^ Occitejano: Sobre a origem occitana do subdialeto do Alto Tejo
portugus

Paulo Feytor Pinto, 2012.

11. ^ Barbosa, Rosana (2009). Immigration and Xenophobia: Portuguese

Immigrants in Early 19th Century Rio de Janeiro. United States: University
Press of America. ISBN 978-0-7618-4147-0., p. 19
12. ^ (Portuguese) The importance of the French language in Brazil:
marks and milestones in the early periods of teaching
13. ^ (Portuguese) Presence of the French language and literature in
Brazil for a history of Franco-Brazilian bonds of cultural affection
14. ^ (Portuguese) What are the French thinking influences still present
in Brazil?
15. ^ (Portuguese) France in Brazil Year the importance of cultural
diplomacy

Bibliography
Paroles d'Ol, Dfense et promotion des Langues d'Ol, Mougon 1994,
ISBN 2-905061-95-2
Les langues rgionales, Jean Sibille, 2000, ISBN 2-08-035731-X

External links
Songs in ol languages