I tell you as I mean it: we, French speakers of 2024, do not know our happiness! Because if we had been born a few centuries earlier, we would have had to learn French variations at school. Like in Latin? Yes, like in Latin, except that old French did not have six “cases” in the singular and as many in the plural like our mother language (remember Brel’s song: “Rosa, rosa, rosam, rosae, rosae, rosa…), but two. Certainly, it’s three times less, but it still represents double one (which proves in passing that, although literary, I am also very good at math).
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Far be it from me to inflict a boring grammar lesson on you, but let’s remember that with declensions, the form of words changes according to their function. Let’s take an example taking us back to the time of Old French (from the 9th to the 13th century, to simplify). In the sentence “Charles is the king”, Charles is the subject: it was necessary to write “Carlare est li rois” (we logically speak of “subject case”). But in the sentence “I see Charles”, Charles is the direct object. It was therefore necessary to use “I see Carlwe” (this is the “diet case”). Today, the brave “Charles” keeps the same form whatever its function in the sentence. There are no more declensions. De Profundis…
Let’s nuance it. If the said variations have disappeared, we nevertheless still have some traces of them. Our personal pronouns, for example, have retained the two forms of the former tense. I, you, he, She, We, YOU, they, they ? Here are the old “subject cases”. Me, you, se, the, the, We, YOU, THE ? These are the old “diet cases”. The same goes for relative pronouns. In the question “Who passes by my house?”, “who” is the old “subject case”. Whereas in the sentence “This girl I see passing my house”, “that” is the old regime case.
From here also come the two appearances of “old” (subject case), generally used before a consonant (an old village) and “old” (regime case), generally used before a vowel or a silent h (an old friend, an old man). In other circumstances, there was specialization between the old subject case and the old regime case, which often took two different meanings: cantor/singer; guy/boy; shepherd/pastor; sire/lord and even – let the most chaste eyes go directly to the next paragraph – whore/whore.
Finally, note that there were sometimes clear distinctions in appearance between the plural and the singular. We no longer pay attention to it, but, a priori, there is no reason why one “eye” added to another “eye” should result in two “eyes”. Except that “eye” and “eyes” correspond respectively to the ancient singular regime cases and plural regime cases (because to make matters worse, the forms of the words also varied according to the number).
It was during the Middle French period (14th-15th century) that the variations finally disappeared. Since then, words have only one appearance. In rare situations, the subject case prevailed: “priest”, for example, (formerly priest) made it disappear foresee. But, as a general rule, the victory went to the diet case, which was encountered most frequently. “Baron” thus supplanted ber ; “thief”, lerre ; “nephew”, denied, “child”, enfes; “glutton”, gluttony… Failing that, we could say “what a glutton, this bastard”!
However, I leave it to the minds of Raymond Devos to decide whether a language which no longer declines after having declined is or not in decline.
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