Historical background from the 12th to the 14th century. The struggle between English and French

The Norman Conquest was not only a great event in British political history but it was also the greatest single event in the history of the English language.

The conquerors had originally come from Scandinavia (compare “Norman” and “Northmen”). About one hundred and fifty years before their Conquest of Britain they seized the valley of the Seine and settled in what henceforth known as Normandy. In the course of time they were assimilated by the French and in the 11th century came to Britain as French speakers and as bearers of French culture. They spoke the Northern dialect of the French language, in some minor points differing from central French. Their tongue in England is usually referred to as Anglo-Norman; for the present purpose we shall call it “French”.

One of the most significant consequences of the Norman domination in Britain is to be seen in the use of the French language in many spheres of British political and social life. For almost three hundred years French was the official language of the king court, the language of the law courts, the church and the castle. It was the everyday language of the most nobles and of many townspeople in the south-east. The intellectual life and education were in the hands of French-speaking people, and boys at school were taught to translate their Latin into French instead of English.

The lower classes and especially the country people, who made up the bulk of the population, held fast to their own tongue. Thus the two languages coexisted and gradually permeated each other. Translators of French books used a large number of French words in their translations and imitated the sentence structure of the original, unable to find good English equivalents.

In the course of the 14^th c. the English language gradually took the place of French as the language of literature and the official language of the government and ousted French from all the social spheres.

Two hundred years after the Norman Conquest, in 1258, Henry II issued a Proclamation to the counsellors elected to sit in Parliament from all parts of England, in three official languages: French, Latin and English. This was the first official document after the conquest to be written in English. In 1349 it was ruled that English should be used in schools. In1362 Edward III gave his consent to an Act of Parliament ordaining that English should be used in the law courts, since “French has become much unknown in the realm”. In the same year Parliament, for the first time, was opened with a speech in English.

Thus in the late 14^th century English was re-established as the official language of the country.

The three hundred years of domination of the French language in many spheres of life affected the English language more than any other single foreign influence before or after. The greater French influence in the south and in the higher ranks of the society led to greater dialectal differences both regional and social.

A more specific influence was exercised on the alphabet and spelling. The tremendous number of French borrowings adopted by the English language indirectly affected even the phonetic structure of the language, especially word accentuation.

Lecture 4