Saurabh Chaudhari

How different was the French language in the period of time from William the Conqueror’s era until the Hundred Years’ War? Would a modern French speaker understand the Normans or the French people from those times?

No. Old French is difficult to understand for French speakers. If you think French is complicated with its two grammatical genders, then you will be unhappy to learn Old French had two grammatical cases as well, like what you see in German, Latin, Greek. Those of French were the nominative and the regime cases. It means the words changed of form wether they were the subject or the object of the sentence. This is why we have some duplicated words in French : sire, seigneur pute, putain gars, garçon copain, compagnon Now they have the same meaning, but at the time one was subject and the other object. The articles changed as well. For example, it was not le in the nominative case but li. For example, for the modern le chanteur, it was in nominative li chantere, and in regime le chanteor. Most of the time, when the grammatical case disappeared, the regime case was chosen, but a few words were taken from the nominative. As I said, some of them kept existing in both forms.

“I have to ( or must) get a gift for Mom”. The “me” is there as in this context the verb “falloir” (faut) is used reflexively. That is, a more literal translation would be: “it is essential to me” to find the gift. Put this way, however, it is an awkward construction. Placing the “me” before the verb is simply the appropriate reflexive construction.

In your opinion, what is the most objective language? I've heard that French, English, and Mandarin (Chinese) are objective. What exactly makes a language objective?