Request for variant subtag fr 16th-c 17th-c

[CE Whitehead]

Hi:
>Is it possible to describe these language variants without using centuries?
Hi, I do not know about you but I have always used the terms 16eme siecle 
and 17eme siecle even more than terms like Renaissance and Baroque to refer 
to these two periods.

>Are the dates of 16th-century French 1500-01-01 to 1599-12-31? Or whatever, 
>since the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582.

Probably not exactly and there is no one thing as 16th century French 
anymore than there is modern English in that you and I will not use quite 
the same vocabulary nor have the same accent; unless one of us is from the 
U.K. and one from the U.S. hopefully we will have the same spelling (that's 
today though because spelling is finally a bit regulated; it was not at one 
point).
But, in any case, the beginning date is close to that of 1600 mainly because 
the French got their first permanent establishment in the New World in about 
1605; the ending date has to be past 1694, the dictionary date.

>Actually, I took courses in Romance Philology at University and in 
>particular a  course in the history of the French language. Oath of 
>Strasbourg, chansons de geste....

I have not taken Romance philology I confess;
French/Romance languages was my minor as an undergrad where I especially 
studied Old French (langue d'oeil) Occitan/Old Provencal (langue d'Oc); I've 
also taken a course in the 17th century focusing on prose ( Pascal, 
Perrault, Mme. de LaFayette, also also as an option because we did not read 
it in class; Suchon, Petit Traite; also Moliere in an intro French class in 
college and on my own: I think I still prefer Shakespeare to Moliere but 
Moliere really seems to have created comedy to some extent; oh well)   So 
much variety in this century in the French and in the French published at 
the same time as other French, in spite of the Academy.
I read the 16th century stuff in class in my initial college survey of 
French lit but have since read Joachim du Bellay who is my favorite from 
this time on my own)

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com
>

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