Old Frankish was the language of the Franks. Classified as a West Germanic language, it was spoken in areas covering modern France, Germany, and the Low Countries in Merovingian times, preceding the 7th century. The Franks originally inhabited the Netherlands and Flanders before they started to fight their way south. The language had a significant impact on Old French. It evolved into Old Low Franconian in the north and it was replaced by French in the south. Old Frankish is not directly attested and is reconstructed from loanwords in Old French, and from Old Low Franconian.

The impact of Old Frankish on modern French

Most French words of Germanic origin (most of the others are English loanwords, see Franglais) came from Frankish, often replacing the Latin word which would have been used. This can be shown with the examples in the table below.

Frankish also had an influence on Latin itself; Latin words with Frankish roots include sacire, meaning "seize" (from Frankish sekjan, related to English "seek").

English also has many words with Frankish roots, usually through Old French eg. "random", "standard", "grape", "stale", among others.

Most Germanic words (especially ones from Frankish) with the phoneme w, changed it to gu when entering French and other Romance languages. Perhaps the best known example is the Frankish werra "to repel" (Compare English "war") which entered modern French as guerre and guerra in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

See also

• List of Spanish words of Frankish origin

Extinct Germanic languages | West Germanic languages | Dutch language

古フランク語