Old Frankish language
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, preceding the
7th century (in one view) or extending into early
Carolingian times. It is widely believed that the Franks originally inhabited the
Netherlands and
Flanders before they started to fight their way south, but the location of their homeland is actually not a settled matter. The language had a significant impact on
Old French. It evolved into
Old Low Franconian /
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.
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.
| Old Frankish | Old French | Modern French | Latin | Modern Dutch | Modern English | | warding | guardenc | gardien | custōs | verweerder | warden/guardian |
| skirmjan (verb) | escarmouche (noun) | escarmouche (noun) | leve proelium (noun) | schermutseling (noun) | skirmish (verb or noun) |
| bera | biere | bière | cervīsia | bier | beer |
| scoc (noun) | choc (noun) choquer (verb) | choquer (verb) | perculsus (noun) | schok (noun) | to shock / shock |
| grappon (verb) | graper (verb) | graper (verb) | comprehendo (verb) | (be)grijpen (verb) | to grasp/to comprehend |
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", "standard", "grape", "stale", 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,
Spanish and
Portuguese.
*
List of Spanish words of Frankish origin
