Old French  

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Old French was the language spoken in Northern France from the 8th century to the 14th century. Rather than a unified language, Old French was really a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligible yet diverse, spoken in the northern half of France.

In the 14th century, these dialects came to be collectively known as the Template:Lang, contrasting with the Template:Lang in the south of France. The mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of Middle French, the language of the French Renaissance in the Île de France region; this dialect was a predecessor to modern French. Other dialects of Old French evolved themselves into modern forms (Poitevin-Saintongeais, Gallo, Norman, Picard, Walloon, etc.), each with its own linguistic features and history.

The region where Old French was spoken natively roughly extended to the northern half of the Kingdom of France and its vassals (including parts of the Angevin Empire, which during the 12th century remained under Anglo-Norman rule), and the duchies of Upper and Lower Lorraine to the east (corresponding to modern north-eastern France and Belgian Wallonia), but the influence of Old French was much wider, as it was carried to England and the Crusader states as the language of a feudal elite and commerce.Template:Sfn

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Old French" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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