I sent this to coff, but it bounced. Trying again. [-tuhs] [+coff] On Sun, Apr 2, 2023 at 3:39 AM Noel Hunt <noel.hunt(a)gmail.com> wrote: Charles li reis, nostre emperesdre magnes, Set anz totz pleinz ad ested in Yes, it's Old French, and means "Charles the king, our great emperor[*] / Seven full years has been in Spain." You pronounce it pretty much like Spanish, except for the "z" which is pronounced "ts". [*] Old French had two noun cases, nominative and oblique (a combination of the Latin genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative). In 99% of modern French nouns, only the oblique survives. In particular, "emperesdre" is the old nominative of "empereor"; it survives today in the name "L[']empriere". A dozen nouns picked up different semantics in the nominative and both survived: sire/seigneur, prêtre/Provoire (proper name), copain/compagnon, pâtre/pasteur, chantre/chanteur , maire/majeur, gars/garçon, and (most surprising) on/homme. In a few nouns, only the nominative survives: soeur, peintre, traître (English traitor is from the oblique), and the names Charles, Georges, James (now in English only), Hugues, Marie, and Eve.