Thanks for the vote of confidence, John! Years and years ago, I did Mediaeval French ... not that I can remember any of it, but I've still got one or two texts, with glossaries. Unfortunately, I can't reconcile Michelle's friend's sentence with anything in these texts (I'm looking particularly at "Yvain", by Chrestien de Troyes; Chrestien was apparently writing in the language of Southern Champagne).

This is what Old French looks like:

"Artus, li buens rois de Bretaingne,
La cui proesce nos ansaingne,
Que nos soiiens preu et cortois,
Tint cort si riche come rois
A cele feste, qui tant coste,
Qu'an doit clamer la pantecoste."

I could easily be wrong, of course, but, FWIW, Michelle's sentence just doesn't have the same sort of feel.

However, "Yvain" was written right at the end of the 12th century. Older texts show different linguistic features; this is a 9th century document known as the "Serments de Strasbourg": [www.fh-augsburg.de]. As can be seen, there's still a heavy Latin influence. However, I still can't trace any resemblance between that and Michelle's sentence ... (It might help if we knew more about the context in which the sentence occurs).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2005 04:35PM by Pandora.