Talk:Oaths of Strasbourg

Classical latin

Can someone please do a translation into pure classical Latin (of the section beginning "Pro Deo amur" that is already translated into Vulgar Latin, French and Occitan), as I think it would be relevant and interesting to compare the different versions at different stages of language change?--Grammatical error 06:53, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

There's such a translation on page 318 of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler (ISBN 0-06-093572-3). AnonMoos (talk) 23:28, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Vulgar Latin translation

Can someone tell me what the source for that translation into Vulgar Latin was? Right now it is unverifiable, although it is likely to raise some questions. It looks highly ungrammatical as compared to Classical Latin, but then again I guess that's what it's called "Vulgar Latin" for. ;) I was wondering about the rationale behind some of the lexical/grammatical features though. Iblardi 19:39, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I've rated the article B-class, primarily because of the lack of references for the major section called "The text". Iblardi 20:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I was just going to ask the same thing. The "vulgar Latin" really looks less like a translation, but like a word-by-word lexical replacement, where each proto-French word has been mechanically replaced by its supposed Latin etymon. Which means we have Latin morphology, but no adjustments made for Latin syntax. If that's somebody's OR attempt, it should probably be removed.

Apparently it was added by User:Chameleon back in 2005 (). The user is still around, I'm dropping him a note. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:31, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Even if not, it should probably go - it's not really information about the oaths as such. --Pfold 10:31, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I totally don't remember adding that. I have no idea where it came from. — Chameleon 11:01, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Location

The article does not mention the current location of the scripts.

Now added --Pfold 15:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Correct category?

Please see Category talk:Earliest known manuscripts by language. Enaidmawr (talk) 01:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Dead link

Note 1: Link appears to be dead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by L'œuf (talk • contribs) 18:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Old French or Gallo-Romance

An anonymous editor has challenged the description of the Romance text as Old French and substituted Gallo Romance. The authority for doing so is Roger Wright, an acknowledged expert on the matter, so there can be no suggestion that this is actually wrong.

The editor's comment "reduced the untenable insistence that the Romance is necessarily Old French", however, suggests this is a clear-cut matter. It isn't. It took me less than 5 minutes of searching to come up with other authoritative sources which call the language Old French or which say the matter is uncertain:

• Marcelle Thiébaux, in the intro to "Dhuoda, Handbook for Her Warrior Son: Liber Manualis" (1998), p.22 calls it OF. ()
• Marc van Uytvange, "A linguistic dichotomy in Carolingian Gaul" in "Latin and the Romance Languages in the Middle Ages" edited by Roger Wright (1991), p. 122 (), who says, "As to the text of the *Oaths* conserved by Nithard, there is quite a scientific literature about his latinisms and his romanisms and on the question of knowing whether it is vulgar Latin or semi-Romance or already French."

Perhaps someone who knows the literature better than I do could suggest how we reword the article for a more balanced view. --Pfold (talk) 08:54, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Pfold, I'm the one who tried to calm down the Old French claims, and I wouldn't have done it without knowing the literature (and the Romance historical linguistics) well. If you search further, you'll find others of van Uytfanghe's and Wright's expertise saying the same thing (and Wright speaks up clearly now and then: after noting that the Oaths are Romance, "it is best not to beg the question by saying 'in Old French'"): it can't really be claimed that the language of the Oaths is Old French unless that label is used so vaguely as to mean not the more or less linear precursor of Middle French and Modern French but something like at best northernish-flavored-Gallo-Romance, the usage that Thiébaux seems to have short-cutted to, and short-circuited to the point of claiming that the Oaths are "the oldest surviving record of the French language", for which "very iffy" is an overly kind euphemistic judgement, as is suggested in her own fn 52 on that same page (also, please read the rest of the paragraph containing van Uytfanghe's quote).

The uncertainty that you rightly cite is precisely the reason for holding the label to Gallo-Romance, which presumably no one in the know would say is not factual -- whereas plenty of people in the know would and do dispute the Old French label, on grounds that it simply can't be claimed with any confidence, i.e. non liquet. Bref, at the empirical level: Is the language Gallo-Romance? Yes. Is it Old French? Impossible to tell. Unless there's some way to strike a balance between accuracy and inaccuracy, it seems to me that we should try to not mislead readers, and call the language what we know it to be. Hope this helps. (My ISP seems to have changed my IP address to a strange one this morning. But I'm the same as 96.42.57.964)2600:6C44:980:268E:C4A3:1C46:C7:AFF2 (talk) 18:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your detailed reply and for clarifying the scholarship. I wonder whether there might not still be a case for recording at a single place in the article (perhaps just in a note rather than in the text, the end of the opening para being an obvious palace) that the language is sometimes referred to as OF.

On a related issue: is the reference in the 2nd sentence to Old Gallo-Romance correct? --Pfold (talk) 19:09, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Pfold, yes, I think that's a very good idea -- a brief explanation of Old French / (Old) Gallo-Romance, as part of the text, so that those who run into (loose) talk about Old French in other sources will understand why the distinction is being drawn. (No room for it here, but for your own curiosity, a glance at the Cantilène de Sainte Eulalie alongside the Romance Oath makes it very clear. Even buona of the opening line -- which seems to scream Italian -- is presumably not just Gallo-Romance, but documented @1900 in the Atlas linguistique de la France [available online] as geographically what could be considered French without too much of a stretch, and most of the rest of the Cantilène even more clearly is. In comparison, the Oaths are not only distinct, but have a koiné look, understandable given their purpose.) As for Old Gallo-Romance, I was just trying to be specific, even if 'old' is obvious. The language in the Oaths isn't very close to any of today's varieties of Gallo-Romance, and it is old, so voilà. I'm not married to it, though. 2600:6C44:980:268E:C4A3:1C46:C7:AFF2 (talk) 23:22, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't unduly concerned about the "Old", just that since it was the only time in the article that specific term occurred, it occurred to me it might have been an inconsistency. --Pfold (talk) 00:03, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Introduction issue OR Old French or Gallo-Romance cont.

My question may seem quite basic compared to the above, but it is related. I read over the introduction, and then went to look the source (2), and looked at "Gallo Romance", which redirected to Gallo-Romance languages in Wikipedia. The page cited didn't mention *any of the three languages* that were discussed. Now I think from the above that you guys recognize them via different names, (I didn't didn't read it in detail) but that doesn't help me, or other general readers, who are entirely unfamiliar with the Oath or its languages, and want to learn the basics from the introduction. Second, Gallo-Romance was not one language, but a group of many languages (which you also probably know) but which one was it? Or is that not relevant and why? Above you discuss it as if it is one. These questions may seem minor to linguists, but Wikipedia is supposed to be for the *general* reader. Unlike some, I am all for including all the detail that people want to add. However, the introduction particularly, should be clear and succinct, and not get into detail until the basic terms are clear defined, and the context described etc. Links should be to sources that really reflect the information, or explain briefly why something is contested, and should not cite sources that have magic translations that only linguists can interpret! Thanks for listening to the rant, and to anyone who can help. Peacedance (talk) 19:11, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't mean to jump the gun on your discussion! The document is written in 3 different languages, so of course the Gallo-Romance article doesn't mention the other two (Latin & OHG). Also, at this very early period Gallo-Romance is undifferentiated, i.e. we can't identify the form in this document as a specific one of the later individual languages - this is after all the very first surviving evidence of Gallo-Romance languages.

Asking for clarification is absolutely legitimate, but the fact that you don't find it sufficiently clear doesn't itself make it dubious. "Dubious" would surely imply the existence of sources which challenge it - which I think you'll be hard put to find. Detailed explanations of the individual language terms belong properly on those pages and don't belong here, certainly not in the intro. It seems to me that what has possibly caused a problem here is that the Gallo-Romance article may need to be clearer about how the term is used. If you look at the discussion above, you can see that we took considerable pains before settling on Gallo-Romance as the preferred term for the French-like language of parts of the text. Aadmittedly some sources do think it's more appropriate to call it "Old French", but the choice is between more or less appropriate, not between right and wrong. With that caveat, the statement, as it stands, is not in any way "dubious", and is not likely to be found so by anyone familiar with the literature on the Oaths. It might be worth asking on Talk:Gallo-Romance languages whether there's further work to be done there. --Pfold (talk) 19:54, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Re: Further Reading

The recent edits have added some useful literature specifically on the oaths, and this shows up how non-specific some of the other items in Further Reading are. I can't help feeling that these works don't really help - if anyone needs more reading on the Carolingian background, they'll look at the articles on Louis the German or Charles the Bald and find references there. Unless anyone can come up with a counter argument, I propose to remove these general works sometime soon. --Pfold (talk) 08:54, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Major revision

While I understand that @Pfold: is concerned that the edit was too radical, I find that it has improved the article in numerous ways. Namely:

• Citation is far more thorough. This addresses a major issue that had been noted by a banner at the top of the article dating from Febuary 2012, more than eight years ago.
• It avoids some questionable uncited claims, which had been tagged with '[who?]' by a previous editor.
• It adds Hall's reconstruction of the Oaths' pronunciation, a topic which the older article did not address at all.
• It adds a discussion on the meta-linguistics of the Oaths. (E.g. which 'dialect' were they written in?)
• It explains the historical background in more detail, with accompanying maps.
• It explains the background of the surviving manuscripts.
• It fixes some problems with the 'close transcription' of Louis' Oath, such as the use of the ordinary Latin character p instead of the scribal abbreviations for 'per' and 'pro', as well as the incorrect representation of the abbreviation for 'us' found at the end of the second line.
• It avoids translating unnecessarily a major narrative portion in Latin that buries the relevant Romance and Germanic portions under a wall of text. (Why add an entire column for a partial translation into French and German? Those languages have their own versions of this wiki article already.)

The older article does not seem to contain anything of use that the newer article doesn't.

The edit is, in short, such an improvement that a 'bulldozing' approach is justified in the interest of speeding along change in an article that clearly needed it. Accordingly, I have reinstated the edit. If you find aspects of it lacking, please write a critique so that improvements can be made.--Excelsius (talk) 14:59, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I think it's worth mentioning that Hall's reconstruction is 70 years old and very, very much outdated, with some questionable choices (Deus clearly didn't go through that form with a schwa, neither did meum > mon). I don't know if it's worth leaving. Samuel D Rowe (talk) 19:29, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

@Samuel D Rowe: I agree that the modern French Dieu suggest a former pronunciation as *[dɛ́u̯], however I don't see any issues with unstressed *[məon] > [mɔ̃]. Hall's transcription is indeed outdated; if someone can find a more recent scholarly transcription, it would make for a welcome replacement. The Nicodene (talk) 07:55, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

None of the literature I've encountered posit it. They go through a yod or remove the e early on, which is borne out by diachrony, not a form with schwa. Occasions where it is written <meon> are better explained as deliberate archaisms. Samuel D Rowe (talk) 11:41, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

@Samuel D Rowe: Now that you mention it, I remember reading that 'short' possessives were found in informal Latin quite early on, with the specific form <mum> being attested in multiple places. That would develop into modern French mon rather straightforwardly.

Still I have to wonder why Nithard, or whoever came up with the phonetic spelling we see in the Oaths, wrote the word as <meon>. Perhaps the form was stressed after all (contrary to what Hall thinks) and so pronounced *[mɛ́on], a fore-runner to modern French mien. The Nicodene (talk) 01:26, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

The latin orthography is quite clear. Deo? -o was definitely not there anymore. Same with chr-, it's relatinisation (Spanish has crist-). Meon would be a better way of linking to meum. Assuming Nithard perfectly copied it or why he includes it is also extremely problematic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samuel D Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:47, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

References

/los tanit/

Should that be /lo franit/? It would agree with the Germanic translation way better. Kwékwlos (talk) 21:11, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

The Germanic Portion

To preface: I’m not all too familiar with manuscripts, so I don’t fully know everything practice. So if I’m wrong please correct me.

I’ve been reading the manuscript provided in the external links, and I find it strange how the words of the manuscript don’t fully match the text here. Would the reason be that a French scribe was writing it down and didn’t understand Germanic languages, causing him to butcher the words?

For reference, the manuscript is written so:

Ingodes minna indinthes χραnes folches || indunser bedherogeal^tnissi. fonthese || moda ge frammordesso framso mirgot || geuuizci indimadh furgibit sohaldihtes || an minan bruodher soso manmit rehtu || sinan scal inthi utha zermigsoso || maduo. indimit lu(d)heren inno^꜔he in uit || hing nege gange. zheminan uuillon imo || ces cadhen uuerhen.

Obviously there are some things that are errors by the scribe, but partially I wonder if some of the words are written correctly. For example “bedherogealtnissi” which gives a feel of being truly one word, meaning both-haltedness (meaning same commitment/salvation).

And while transcribing this, I noticed that the word “nohheiniu” is written “no^꜔heuniu.” So is that a form of scribal abbreviation, or do we disregard the superscript and write it with one “h?”

On a different note: should we work on attempts to a direct translation? I feel like a more direct meaning of the words might help with a better reconstruction of what is written, given how strange this language already is.

Most Humbly, Ælfwis Ælfwis (talk) 04:59, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

Transcription error?

In the Romance portion, looking at the yellowed real manuscript and NOT at the digitalized copy, the second word in line 2 (beginning from "Pro deo amur) is identical to the third word in line 6. Later, someone has believed that these words are quite different ones and silently "corrected" them, the first one to "d'ist" and the second one to "dift", even though they are identical in the original.

I'm ready to believe that these in fact can't be the same word and the old manuscript must be faulty - or that these letters were in fact not visually differentiated at that time - but not without documentation and without reasons. TooManyFingers (talk) 15:52, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Just to begin, I haven’t yet read the romance portion, but just to be clear you’re sure it’s a f and not a long s “ſ” which is visually similar? Very often people get that confused, and even more often scribes do make mistakes lol. If you could tell me what page to refer to I can also give it a lookie myself.

-Ælfwis Ælfwis (talk) 21:34, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Nvm I see where you’re talking about. I can try to see if there’s anything that can be reconstructed from the French/Romance portion and see what works better between dift and dist logically as I did the Germanic portion, so that we could attempt to make that determination.

-Ælfwis Ælfwis (talk) 21:41, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I looked into the literature a bit and the matter appears to be quite complex. Most online published transcriptions on the web as well as most editions visible on Google Books seem to have "dist", but there are also a few that have "dift". The problem is that based on the visual evidence most editors seem to have thought the scribe meant to write "dist", but etymologically "dift" would be easier to explain (with "f" being a reflex of the Latin "b" in "debet"). There's been quite some debate about it in the literature, and basically there seem to be three explanations: (a) it's really "dift" and reflects "debet"; (b) it's really "dist" and reflects some other etymology, but scholars have found it quite challenging to explain how that word could arise; (c) it's really "dist" in the extant manuscript, but that's a scribal error for what would have been "dift" in the hypothetical original text.

Incidentally, the word(s) that we are currently rendering as los tanit seem to pose a similar s-vs-f problem, plus an unclear word boundary: all of (a) los tanit, (b) lo stanit, (c) lof tanit seem to have been proposed.

Of course, we ought not to be fiddling around with these spellings based on our own conjectures; rather, we should pick one sourced and citable transcription from a modern high-quality reliable source and just stick with that for the entire text. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:05, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

On final -a

Especially in view of the spellings ⟨fradra⟩ and ⟨fradre⟩ side by side, it seems obvious that the text postdates the merger of final -a into final -e (really /ə/), while its spelling still has both but the scribe couldn't tell where to put which anymore, hence both spellings reflect /fraðrə/, and ⟨sendra⟩ is to be read as /sɛndrə/, like ⟨contra⟩ really stands for /kɔntrə/.

It might not be final -a only: Also, ⟨sagrament⟩ is presumably to be read as /saɣrəmɛnt/, and ⟨salvament⟩ as /salvəmɛnt/.

Generally, like many early texts in Romance, the scribe was certainly trained to write Latin but not skilled at rendering the actual spoken language, and as such, it is possible that some strange features of the language are due to the struggle of the scribe with the vernacular language, which might just have been the Early Old French of the time. However, some features might be due to influence from Early Occitan.

But as for the evidently lacking contrast -a vs. -e, I'm not sure why this does not seem to have been remarked on before. It's an indication that the archaic character of the spelling is at least partly misleading. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:14, 28 July 2026 (UTC)