MiddleFrench is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the 14th to the early 17th centuries. It is a period of transition during which:
the French language became clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages, which are sometimes subsumed within the concept of Old French
the literary development of French prepared the vocabulary and grammar for the Classical French spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Middle French, and more so for the end of the period, is mostly understandable to a speaker of modern French, contrary to the earlier Old French.
History
The most important change found in Middle French is the complete disappearance of the noun declension system. There is no longer a distinction between nominative and oblique forms of nouns, and plurals are indicated simply with an s. This transformation necessitates an increased reliance on the order of words in the sentence, which becomes more or less the syntax of modern French. Among the elites, Latin was still the language of education, administration, and bureaucracy; this changed in 1539, with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, in which François I made French alone the language for legal acts. Regional differences were still extremely pronounced throughout France: In the south of France, Occitan languages dominated; in east central France, Franco-Provençal languages were predominant; while, in the north of France, Oïl languages other than Francien continued to be spoken. The fascination with classical texts led to numerous borrowings from Latin and Greek. Numerous neologisms based on Latin roots were introduced, and some scholars modified the spelling of French words to bring them into conformity with their Latin roots, sometimes erroneously. This often produced a radical difference between a word's spelling and the way it was pronounced. The French wars in Italy and the presence of Italians in the French court brought the French into contact with Italian humanism. Many words dealing with military and artistic practices were borrowed from Italian. These tendencies would continue through Classical French. There were also some borrowings from Spanish and German and from the Americas. The influence of the Anglo-Norman language on English had left words of French and Norman origin in England. Some words of Romance origin now found their way back into French as doublets through war and trading contacts. Also, the meaning and usage of many words from Old French were transformed. Spelling and punctuation in this period are extremely variable. The introduction of printing in 1470 highlighted the need for reform in spelling. One proposed reform came from Jacques Peletier du Mans, who developed a phonetic spelling system and introduced new typographic signs ; but this attempt at spelling reform was not followed. This period saw the publication of the first French grammars and of the French-Latin dictionary of Robert Estienne. At the beginning of the 17th century, French would see the continued unification of French, the suppression of certain forms, and the prescription of rules, leading to Classical French.
Literature
Middle French is the language found in the writings of Charles, Duke of Orléans, François Villon, Clément Marot, Rabelais, Montaigne, Ronsard, and the poets of the Pléiade. The affirmation and glorification of French finds its greatest manifestation in the "Defense and Illustration of the French Language" by the poet Joachim du Bellay, which maintained that French was a worthy language for literary expression and which promulgated a program of linguistic production and purification.
