Heroes of the Middle Ages (Yesterday's Classics) by Tappan Eva March

Author:Tappan, Eva March [Tappan, Eva March]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781599151694
Publisher: Yesterday's Classics
Published: 2010-11-13T03:39:48.860000+00:00

Hugh Capet

IT has already been said that Charlemagne was a German. He, of course, spoke German, but even in his day the people in the western part of his kingdom, in what is now the land of France, used a language that was beginning to approach somewhat to what is now known as French. This change had begun long before, in the days when the country fell into the hands of the Romans, who introduced their own language, the Latin.

AN ANCIENT CASTLE AT CLISSON, FRANCE

Now if a new language were introduced into any country to-day, few people would speak it correctly, and it was so in France. The people mixed the new tongue with their own. For instance, when a Roman wished to say of or to he usually added a letter or two to the noun following. The people of France used the prepositions de or à, and did not trouble themselves to change the noun. Other words or expressions were made simpler or altered in much the same way, and before the end of the tenth century, the people of France were speaking a language that was composed of a little Celtic, a little German, and a great deal of Latin; but the Latin had become quite different from that used in Rome. This mixture was rapidly turning into French as it is spoken to-day.

The French people, then, differed in language from the Germans, and many of the nobles were feeling more and more strongly that they did not wish to be ruled by a German, but by one of themselves, who would talk French and feel and think like a Frenchman, one who would be satisfied with ruling France and would not be ever thinking of forming an empire and becoming emperor.

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