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Old Frankish was the language of the Franks. Classified as a West Germanic language, it was spoken in areas covering modern France, Germany, and the Low Countries in Merovingian times (until the 6th century), possibly extending into early Carolingian times (8th century). The Franks first inhabited the Netherlands and Flanders before they began their southward expansion, eventhough the location of their ultimate homeland thought of to have been Northern Poland. The language had a significant impact on Old French. It evolved into Old Low Franconian (including Old Dutch) in the north and it was replaced by French in the south. Old Frankish is not directly attested, and is reconstructed from Old Low Franconian and loanwords in Old French.
The impact of Old Frankish on modern French Most French words of Germanic origin (most of the others are English loanwords, see Franglais) came from Frankish, 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"), standard (via Old French estandart, from 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, Spanish and Portuguese. See also | ||||||||
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