Angevin

Angevin is the traditional langue d'oïl of Anjou in western France, spoken from the Loire around Angers and Saumur into Maine, where it coexists with related Mayennois speech. With Sarthois and southern Norman it forms the eastern Armorican group of the langues d'oïl, and in the ninth and tenth centuries helped shape Gallo beyond the Breton march.

The land was the Roman civitas of the Andecavi, descended from the Gaulish Andes, Angers staying its capital through the Frankish county and duchy. The counts of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Fulks, built Anjou into a major principality, and Count Geoffrey Plantagenet's marriage to Empress Matilda carried its inheritance to the English throne; Angevin words entered English through the Plantagenet court's Anglo-Norman.

The dialect produced little written literature: Anjou joined the French royal domain early in the thirteenth century, Parisian Francien the language of letters. In 1360 the county became the Duchy of Anjou, a royal appanage until absorbed into the crown lands in 1482; it remained a province until 1790, then the core of Maine-et-Loire.