Old Gallo-Romance is a Romance language spoken from around 600 to 900 AD. It evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the Gallo-Romans during the time of Clovis I's successors belonging to the Merovingian dynasty.
Characteristics Like other Romance languages, Old-Gallo Romance distinguished the masculine and feminine forms. The noun forms in Old Gallo-Romance were reduced from the Latin six to two, as shown in Old Occitan and Old French, with the nominative ending being -s. Old Gallo-Italic appears to have used V2 word order.
Literature Old Gallo-Romance literature consists of a few texts, with them including the Oaths of Strasbourg (also written in Old High Frankish).« Moyen Âge : l'affirmation des langues vulgaires » in the Encyclopædia universalis.Bernard Cerquiglini, La naissance du français, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1991, Que-sais-je ?; éd. mise à jour, 2007.Conference of Claude Hagège at the historical museum of Strasbourg, , (read online) Texts that precede the Oaths of Strasbourg include the Kassel conversations and Reichenau Glossary.
Sample text The following text is Louis the German's oath in the Oaths of Strasbourg (843), which was sworn in Romance. Old Gallo-RomanceModern FrenchEnglishFor the love of God and Christiandom and our joint salvation, from this day onward, to the best of my knowledge and abilities granted by God, I shall protect my brother Charles by any means possible, as one ought to protect one's brother, insofar as he does the same for me, and I shall never willingly enter into a pact with Lothair against the interests of my brother Charles
References
External links Old Gallo-Romance corpus