page_title: Langues d'oïl
section_title: Influence
hierarchical_section_title: Langues d'oïl / Influence
caption_attribution_description: Català: Senyalització en gal·ló instal·lada a l’estació Charles de Gaulle del metro de Rennes, Bretanya. English: Gallo language signage in Rennes metro, Brittany. Español: Señalización en galó instalada en la estación Charles de Gaulle del metro de Rennes, Bretaña. Français&#160;: Signalétique en gallo à la station Charles de Gaulle, dans le métro de Rennes, Bretagne.
context_page_description: The langues d'oïl, also known as the French languages, are a dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives historically spoken in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands. These belong to the larger category of Gallo-Romance languages, which also include the historical languages of east-central France and western Switzerland, southern France, portions of northern Italy, and the Val d'Aran in Spain.
  Linguists divide the Romance languages of France, and especially of Medieval France, into three geographical subgroups: the first two are Langues d'oïl and occitan, both named after their words for 'yes', and the third is Franco-Provençal.
context_section_description: The langues d'oïl were more or less influenced by the native languages of the conquering Germanic tribes, notably the Franks. This was apparent not so much in the vocabulary (which remained overwhelmingly of Latin origin) as in the phonology and syntax; the invading Franks, Burgundians and Normans became the rulers and their accents were imposed as standard on the rest of the population. This accounts in large part for the relative distinctiveness of French compared to other Romance languages.
  The English language was heavily influenced by contact with Norman following the Norman Conquest and much of the adopted vocabulary shows typically Norman features.
  Portuguese was heavily influenced by more than a millennium of perennial contact with several dialects of both Oïl and Occitan language groups, in lexicon (up to 15–20% in some estimates, at least 5000 word roots), phonology and orthography. The influence of Occitan was, nevertheless, the most marked, through the status Provençal in particular achieved in southwestern Europe around the troubadour apex in the Middle Ages, when Galician-Portuguese lyric was developed. Aside the direct influence of Provençal literature, the presence of languages from modern-day France in the Galician-Portuguese area was also strong due to the rule of the House of Burgundy, the establishment of the Orders of Cluny and Cister, the many sections of the Way of St. James pilgrimage route that come from elsewhere in Europe out of the Iberian Peninsula, and the settlement in Iberia of people from the other side of the Pyrenees, arriving during and after the Reconquista.
  The anti-Portuguese factor of Brazilian nationalism in the 19th century led to an increased use of the French language in detriment of Portuguese, as France was seen at the time as a model of civilization and progress. The learning of French has historically been important and strong among the Lusophone elites, and for a great span of time it was also the foreign language of choice among the middle class of both Portugal and Brazil, only surpassed in the globalised postmodernity by English.
  The French spoken in Belgium shows some influence from Walloon.
  The development of French in North America was influenced by the speech of settlers originating from northwestern France, many of whom introduced features of their Oïl varieties into the French they spoke. (See also French language in the United States, French language in Canada)
caption: Signage in Gallo in the metro of Rennes
exif: {}