Old French

Old French was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from roughly the late eighth to the mid-fourteenth century. Rather than a unified language it was a group of mutually intelligible Romance dialects, collectively known as the langues d'oil, in contrast with the langues d'oc, the emerging Occitano-Romance languages of Occitania in the south. The mid-fourteenth century saw the emergence of Middle French, a predecessor of Modern French, while other Old French dialects developed into modern forms such as Norman, Picard and Walloon. Its influence was much wider than its native region, because it was carried to England and to the Crusader states as the language of a feudal elite and of commerce. In this atlas the entry names texts and names recorded in Old French.