Welcome back. You'll be hearing enough from me in a second, so let's get started, shall we?
Where we left off last time: Britain was being invaded (again), the Celts were being persecuted (again), the Vikings were causing trouble (again), and a whole lot of linguistic gymnastics occurred.
Part 2: Normandy Comes to Call
in which William earns his Moniker, or why we still hate the French
Oh, the Normans. Their influence on what England is today is unquestionable, and frankly, astounding. Music, architecture, law, property rights, military practices: name a discipline, and you'll find the Norman hand in it. They even brought us the Plantagenets, probably my favorite screwed up royal dynasty. (A category with stiff competition, for sure. But thanks to Eleanor, John, two Richards, and all three Edwards, their history reads like a particularly frothy soap opera.)
Or a 1968 Academy Award winning Film
But with all these advancements beginning in the 11th century, one of their greatest contributions was the radical change in the English language.
William the Conqueror, as his name implies, conquered England in 1066, a feat which has not been achieved since. Of course the Spanish and French have tried multiple times, as did the Germans, but William's campaign was the last successful one. Not bad for a man whose title before conquering a country was William the Bastard.
I like to think it's because he's such a dashing rouge and not because of illegitimacy.
That in itself is amazing, as is the fact that William united all of England under a single ruler and dynasty whose decedents still rule today. No one had done that prior to that point in time. We went from the Romans and the Celts squabbling in the 2nd and 3rd century, to the heptarchy of the 8th and 9th, rounding out with the Anglo-Saxons and Danes fighting a tug-of-war over the crown of England in the 10th.
But sailing across from the ducal of Normandy with a tenuous claim as Edward the Confessor's heir, the Norman-French William conquered both the warring factions of the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes. Laying a massive slap down at the Battle of Hastings and killing Harold II, he took the crown and united the country by force into a single kingdom. Scandinavian influence was banished from English politics indefinitely. Thus, England as we know it was born.
Harold, after he met William. He's the one with all the arrows in his head.
We also saw the biggest evolution of English since the advent of the language. For after the Norman Conquest, Old English developed into Middle English.
A simple statement, but take a moment to think of what that really means. The whole language evolved into something completely different. It was not something so simple as archaic words versus modern ones. Like reading a Regency Novel today and needing a dictionary at your side to find out what entailment means.
No, English became a whole new language. A large portion of the vocabulary, spelling, and usage completely altered.
And how could it not?
England now had a French speaking monarchy, aristocracy, and clerical hierarchy. One of the first orders of business was to remove all those who were English-born from every peerage and position of power. No one who ruled spoke English as their native tongue, and business was conducted in French. So of course English would adapt significantly along with the ruling class.
In 1080, this dictionary would not have been necessary.
Borrowing heavily from Norman-French vocabulary and spelling, the people of Britain anglicized numerous French words. English kept the same syntax of a Germanic language, but the vocabulary, the heart and soul of language, altered. In essence, the whole landscape of the language changed, based upon the class differences between those who spoke Old English and those who spoke Norman French.
I think this point is best illustrated with a simple example: our words for meats. If you speak English, you know we have different words for the animal when it's alive, and when it is served to us. A pig is served as pork, chicken as poultry, cow as beef, and sheep as mutton. We know this, but have never bothered to question why. In fact, we take for granted that very few other languages do this. This anomaly comes directly from Norman England.
The people slaughtering the animals, the farmhands and cooks handling the meat, called it by the old English names. Swīn (swine), cū (cow), cīcen (chicken), scǣp (sheep), etc. But when it arrived on the table of the French speaking hierarchy, no doubt lovingly prepared, they called it by the old French words: porc, boef, pouletrie, moton. They never saw it as an animal, but only as meat on their plates.
Thus, the Modern English words for animals are derived from Germanic roots, and the culinary term for the meat itself derives from Middle French.
Which is absolutely rocking.
Meat: both delicious and informative.
But English words do not have a basis merely in Germanic languages and French. Anyone can tell you that many words have a large basis in Latin. The various flourishes and embroideries on the section of our textile that is Middle English. Many words with Latin roots entered our lexicon during this time.
Why? The influence lies, as with most things in the Middle Ages, with the church.
Not exactly a time of widespread learning in Europe, the monks who did keep up scholarly practices did so in Latin, the lingua franca of the time. Since this was the case, when monks in England wrote in their own vernacular, what did they do when they did not have an English word for the term they were trying to describe? They fell back on the only other language they were used to writing in: Latin. That is why so many new words from that time were derived from Latin.
"We shall call this insect centipede, because hundred feet is simply ridiculous."
Therefore Latin, and to a certain extent Greek, became connected with education and learning. This connection never faded, and intellectual elitism continued the practice well past the middle ages. In fact, it is why it still continues today. It is the reason so many English words, especially those that are technical or scientific, are constructed based on Latin and Greek roots. And why biology class can be like a Latin lesson at times.
So there we were in the Late Middle Ages, writing in Latin and mixing in French. But as this time in history drew to a close, we saw the last great section added to our project.
In 1450, Modern English began.
Next time: Shakespeare, Gutenberg, Johnson, and a whole slew of people you might remember from history class.
