Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
L'Académie Française
To be elected as one of the '40 immortals' of the French Academy
is one of the highest honours a person can receive. Among the
approximately 300 former Academy members are Jacques-Yves
Cousteau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas (the son), Honoré
de Balzac, François-René de Chateaubriand, Eugène Ionesco, Alexis
de Tocqueville and, surprisingly, the French-born American writer
Julien Green who lived in Paris and wrote in French. Green was the
first non-French national to be elected. It was not until 1980 that a
woman, novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, was elected.
HISTORY OF FRENCH
The first written example of early French—not the version
we know today—dates as far back as 862. French is actually
one of the Romance languages, along with Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese and Romanian. In fact, some scholars prefer the
term Romanic languages, for what binds these languages is
their common origin in the spoken language of the ancient
Roman Empire. These languages evolved according to the
ethnicity of the peoples of the conquered territories, as well as
the legacy of the conquerors who forced the Romans out.
In Gaul (present-day France), the native Celts spoke
Gaulish when the Romans arrived in about 100
BC
, but
not for long, as Latin became the language of the upper
classes—the rulers, teachers and even merchants who
traversed the Empire. Fortunately for the beautiful (and
some say, extremely romantic) French language as we know
it today, the Romans were supplanted by Germanic Franks,
such that by the 5th century, the Latin language spoken in
France had incorporated some Germanic words, in addition
to Celtic ones. The lasting presence of the Franks and their
great rulers (including Charlemagne, King of the Franks
and the Lombards, and first Holy Roman Emperor) was
instrumental in allowing the language to develop admidst
wars and migration. This distinguished French from the
other emerging Romanic languages.
This 'Old French' lasted for about 400 years, during
which the dialect spoken in Paris became pre-eminent, as
the power—cultural, as well as political—of the city grew.
'Middle French' lasted only a few hundred years, but it was
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