Old Frankish was the language of the Franks and it is classified as a West Germanic language. Once it was spoken in areas covering modern France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The Franks first inhabited parts of the Netherlands and western Germany. From the 4th century they are attested moving into the Roman Empire into what is now the southern Netherlands and northern Belgium. In the 5th and 6th century they expanded their realm and dominated Roman Gaul completely as well as client states such as Bavaria and Thuringen.

The language of the Franks had a significant impact on Old French. By the year 900 it was evolved into Old Low Franconian (including Old Dutch) in the area that was originally held by Franks of the 4th century, while in Valois and Ille-de-France (Paris) it was replaced by Old French as the dominating language. Old Frankish is only directly attested in a few words in the Lex Salica, and is mostly reconstructed from Old Low Franconian and loanwords in Old French. This Germanic language has introduced the modern French word for the nation, France to mean "land of the Franks", but except from loanwords, French is not closely related to Frankish.

The main difference between Frankish and neighboring Germanic languages is that it is thought to be more 'celticised', probably by Belgic peoples, like for example the Menapii, that persisted their language in the realm of the Franks.

The impact of Old Frankish on modern French

Most French words of Germanic origin came from Frankish (most of the others are English loanwords, see Franglais), often replacing the Latin word which would have been used.

Frankish also had an influence on Latin itself; Latin words with Frankish roots include sacire, meaning "seize" (from Frankish sekjan, related to English "seek").

English also has many words with Frankish roots, usually through Old French eg. random (via Old French randon, from rant "a running"), scabbard (via Anglo-French *escauberc, from *skar-berg), grape, stale, march (via Old French marche, from *marka) among others.

Most Germanic words (especially ones from Frankish) with the phoneme w, changed it to gu when entering French and other Romance languages. Perhaps the best known example is the Frankish werra "to repel" (Compare English "war") which entered modern French as guerre and guerra in Italian, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese.

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