It is an understatement to say that our national honor escaped him beautiful. It was very little that the three colors of our flag were originally … the current Germany, which was for a long time our hereditary enemy! And for good reason. When the friends of Clovis, who spoke Frankic, settled in the territory which was going to become France (moreover, Francic, Franc and France, huh, it has a little family air …), they very strongly influenced the Latin late that the “Gauls” of the time practiced. See instead.
Let’s start with bluewhich comes from a word from this famous Francic, blao – We find it almost as it is in modern German blau. The same goes for whitefrom blank. Both have replaced the ancient adjectives then in use, from the Latin, which generally only remain in the sustained register. Cæruleus (“sky blue”) provided us the poetics cerulean (from the color of the sky). Albus (“white”) gave alabaster And albumin And appears in certain place names like Montauban (etymologically: the white mountain). As for the old candle (“bright white”), which has become candidhe found refuge in the moral field, in the sense of “pure”, “Probe”, before designating from the 17th century a naive person. And, of course, he is also directly related to “candidate”. In Imperial Rome, in fact, the one that brigade a function must imperatively put on a white toga …
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Other color adjectives have the same Frankish origin, such as blond (Germanic blunda) Or brown (of brownwhich will evolve in braun in modern German). Grayfor its part, has not undergone any transformation since it comes directly from … gray. Note, however, that, In northern Europe, this word was first of all a name designating the fur of the squirrel in winter, which is why the rodent is also called small gray. Let us quote again bewilderwhich was originally an adjective (Falwa, “From a yellow pulling on the redhead”) before characterizing in the 16th century all the wild beasts sporting this color, such as the deer or the hare, then to be finally reserved, from the 19th century, only fierce animals.
Although jostled by the language of the francs, Latin has still made resistance in the world of colors. This is particularly the case for red – thanks to which our collective pride is saved. From Rubeus “Roux, Roussâtre”, this term is found in close forms in other Romance languages: rossoin Italian; rojo in Spanish; Russu in Sicilian; roge in Occitan; rossu in Corsica; rump in Picard… this is also the case with black (from Niger), of Green (of viridis) and YELLOWeven if the latter has experienced a fairly original evolution. Latin derivative galbinushimself heir to Galbus “Pale green, yellow-green”, he ended up supplanting the traditional designations of this color in the language of Cicero: fulvus “Dark, shiny yellow” and flavus (“light yellow, shiny”), which only survives in the little used flavy (“of a color that shoots yellow”).
The purple adjective (of Violathe violet) also descends from the Latin, which provides me with a skillful transition to evoke the colors resulting from the observation of nature having the same origin. Pink obviously comes from the flower called rosa. The same goes for chestnut (chastaigneat the end of the 12th century), “which has the shade of the chestnut” (of castanea); For Mauve, from malavathe plant, and for hazelnut (“small nuts”, of nux), the fruit of the hazelnut.
Failing to be exhaustive, let’s finish this list by color orangewhose etymology is much more complex than it seems. The adjective comes from the fruit of the orange tree? Certainly, but his French name is a distant heir to Persian narangand this after a long journey. The oranges were indeed transmitted by the Persians to the Arabs, who imported them into Sicily, before they spread throughout Mediterranean Europe – as what globalization is not an invention of the 21st century!
Remains to understand why this narang has become our orange. Go again, you will tell me that the first has has transformed into o, But how n Has initial could have disappeared? Well, by mistake! The “narange” of ancient times, which has become “norange” said, preceded by an indefinite article, “a norange”. Now repeat these two words out loud: “a norange”, “a norange”, “a norange” … Have you guessed what happened? Over the generations, “a norange” has become “an orange” so that the “n” ended up falling into the forgettions.
And everyone has only seen blue.
Source :: Historical dictionary of the French language,, Editions Le Robert.
To read – On the side of the French language
Is there really a “young language”?
“No”, answers this article argued on the site The Conversation. In fact, “There are not two people to speak the same way […]. All individuals have several directories or several styles, young people are no exception, “said the linguist Auphélie Ferreira, from the University of Strasbourg.
The leaflet of linguists attered entitled French is fine, thank you was a resounding success, which did not please everyone, and in particular to Lionel Meney. This other linguist publishes a counter-argument provided by trying to dismantle point by point the theses of his colleagues, whose inaccuracies and a priori he denounces. “Although they defend themselves from it, the linguists are constantly sliding from factual judgments (objectives) with value judgments (subjective),” he said.
Sociolinguistics between science and ideology. A response to linguists reachedby Lionel Meney. Editions Lambert-Lucas.
100 homonyms of the French language
Walk and ballad, supposed and sensible, place and bound, without forgetting saint, healthy, breast, seing, surrounding and five … The French language is full of homonyms which, always, make the humorists happy (see the section “To look “). In this work that is both pleasant and intelligent, Julien Soulié explains its origin through multiple examples.
100 homonyms of the French languageby Julien Soulié. Editions Le Figaro Literary.
To read – On the side of minority languages
In the Basque Country, teaching in the Basque language is now the majority
This is a first. In the French Basque Country (or “North”, depending on the view), students in the bilingual sector are now in the majority in kindergarten. From a little, certainly, but the tilting is symbolic. At the start of the 2024 school year, there were 1,485 children in the first year of kindergarten in Ikastola (immersive education) and in the bilingual sectors of private and public schools, while 1448 followed a teaching exclusively in French.
A commune forced to subsidize a bilingual class French-Breton
The Aualeuc municipal council (Côtes-d’Armor) had initially refused to finance the schooling of children in this town in a bilingual French-Breton school located in Dinan. The prefecture reminded him that it was a duty arising from the Molac law of 2021 on regional languages. This indeed obliges the localities which do not have bilingual schools to contribute to the tuition fees of establishments of this type located in another city offering this type of education.
Prohibition of Corsica to the Corsican Assembly: Simeoni seized the Court of Cassation
The president of the Executive Council of Corsica, the autonomist Gilles Simeoni, has just announced his intention to seize the Court of Cassation in order to contest the prohibition made to elected officials to use the Corsican language in the assembly of the island of the island . An appeal which, he knows, should be rejected because of the restrictive interpretation of article 2 of the Constitution by the Constitutional Council: “The language of the Republic is French”. But precisely: Gilles Simeoni intends to use this refusal to ask Emmanuel Macron to modify the fundamental law on this point.
Listen
I was lucky to be the guest of the show Adishatzhosted by Alain Pierre on the Radio Entre-deux-Mers, broadcast in Gironde. I come back to the ideas developed in my book Save regional languages! (Editions Hélioples). The questions are asked in OC, but the answers are given in French.
To look
Hilarious ! “We don’t understand each other”, by Marc Tourneboeuf
The expression “word game” is insufficient to describe the virtuosity shown by Marc Tournebeuf in his funny videos devoted to the French language under the title “We do not understand each other” (here, an example with Racesbut look on the internet: there are many others). From where they are, Raymond Devos and Pierre Dac must say that the next generation is assured.
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