ABSTRACT
This extract has been included for a number of reasons. First, it is an example of an early French metalinguistic text. In the period before the sixteenth century, when the activity of writing grammars really took off in France, various kinds of metalinguistic texts were produced, and principally in England for the benefit of foreigners. These were: nominalia or thematic glossaries which are known from the twelfth century on, and the most famous of which is Walter of Bibbesworth's Traite, a verse vocabulary dating from the second half of the thirteenth century; spelling treatises, which also touched upon questions of morphology and syntax; grammars following in the tradition of the Latin grammarian Donatus and bearing the name Donait, the most interesting of which is the Donait franc;ois dating from the first decade of the fifteenth century and commissioned by John Barton; cartaria or artes dictaminis, collections of model letters; and finally, what we have here, collections of conversations for travellers and merchants. Second, in providing model conversations for those who needed a practical knowledge of French and a supply of useful expressions and phrases, these texts are a good source of information about informal and conversational usages. Third, this text, like the majority of its kind, was produced in England; it provides valuable information about the status and form of French in England during the Middle French period and about the influence of continental usage on insular speech.
