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TEMA 42: THE NORMAN CONQUEST. INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE UPON…

- - - - Underwent many changes, evolutions, influences from other ppls and langs:
        
        OE period, (450-1066) influence of the Celts (1st inhabitants of the island), Latin (Roman Conquest) & Scandinavian languages ( Vikings´ invasions in the 8th and 9th Cs).
        
        ME period (1150-1500) - great influence of French. The Normans’ invasion put the native inhabitants of the country in direct contact with the language of the invaders: Norman French.
- - - - Invasion & defeat of English King Harold II at BofH.
        
        But WHY did W feel entitled to crown?
        
        Relations between England and Normandy had been fairly close since King Æthelred the Unready’s accession to the throne (978-1016 - 38yrs!)
        
        VIKINGS
        
        Sporadic raids from 787. Invaded and established the Danelaw 865. BUT driven out 954. But after a generation of peace, in 980s the Vikings returned - even more organised & dangerous
        
        Æthelred sought help from neighbours.
        
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        Early 11C Viking threat ↑ (despite Æthelred paying Danegold)
        
        1002 Athelred ordered massacre of Danes living in England.
        
        Danes retaliated - invasion (1003) led by the Danish King Sweyn - eventually overpowered Athelred & forced him into exile in Normandy.
        
        Sweyn died 1014 - succeeded by son Cnut.
        
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  - - - Settled along n. France from 911, founding a dukedom called Normandy
        
        Very powerful & influential - eclipsing at times the power of the King of France. Normans carried out a large number of invasions on European coasts during the High Middle Age period (11th,12th,13th century)
        
        They quickly absorbed the most important elements of French civilization (military tactics, law, Christianity and language) becoming one of the most advanced peoples of Europe.
  - - - Intro of new nobility - old AS nobility annihilated (lands confiscated etc) & all important positions/great estates held by Normans. By the time of the Domesday book(1086) - 4000 AS Thanes replaced by 200 barons. Power & wealth → far fewer hands.
        
        Many castles built - transformed landscape. Big cathedrals too - Durham, Ely, Lincoln etc.
        
        Normans → all imp positions in Church (bishops, abbots etc). Many religious orders introduced throughout Eng - ∴ ↑ in monasteries & nunneries
        
        System of feudalism developed as William gave out lands in return for military service
        
        Settlement of Norman troops, craftsmen & merchants meant ↑ in trade between Eng & continent
        
        Huge ↑ in record keeping & bureaucracy. (eg DB) In AS world everything had depended on verbal memory. Under Normans everything started being meticulously recorded.
        
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        NAMES eg Alice, Robert, William etc & SURNAMES - wealth - Darcy, Mandeville, Montgomery, Percy etc. LSE study revealed unbroken prestige of Norman surnames that featured in Domesday Book - eg these names dominate at Oxbridge. So SAME NAMES who were at the top of social scale in 1086 remain among elite now
- - - - Some 10,000 French words (David Crystal 2004) → English during Norman rule.
        
        Every sphere: art, literature, law & govt. Modern English has retained a large number of these words-have been completely assimilated into English in their structure, pronunciation and spelling.
        
        WHO SPOKE FR?
        
        All kings
        
        Upper classes & some M/C
        
        Some Knights, merchants and tradesmen
        
        Some clerks and bailiffs (as services conducted in Fr)
        
        BUT Latin remained lang of church & scholarship. Also used for recording imp documents (e.g. DB in L not F). The so-called ‘12C Renaissance’ also saw renewed interest in Classics on the continent - further boost for L
        
        F had cultural & social prestige but use restricted to court, regional aristocracy , well educated clergy etc. Still an expectation that intelligent ppl would know Latin. French ∴ never became sole voice of officialdom.
        
        SO from 1066 3 LANGS - 'triglossia'. Literature, religion, law, science all conducted in languages other than English.
        
        BUT: language of the masses remained English.
        
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  - - - Reasons for the decline in the use of Fr in 13thC were primarily political
        
        Good rels between Eng/Normandy lasted approx 150 yrs. After ascension of John to throne 1199 there was war - Eng lost control of Normandy & Eng nobility lost estates in France. Noblemen forced to take sides. Antagonism between Eng & Fr ↑, resulted in 100 yrs war (1337-1453). French was now the language of the enemy.
        
        Result: 13C & 14C - English began to be used by U/C as they felt more ‘English’, and French ∴ started to lose importance & became a 2nd lang that was learnt. However - this was the new Parisian version (which by 13C came to be viewed as the 1st international lang of culture & fashion), not the Norman one.
        
        Period also coincided with new importance within Cath church given to vernacular langs as a religious medium - further boost to Eng.
    - - General adoption of Eng
        
        But Fr still lang of church (with Latin) & govt. BUT those who used French were bilingual.
        
        By late 1300s use of Eng in schools widespread &, importantly, Eng started to be used in legal proceedings. 1362 a statute recognized the role of Eng for the 1st time in parliament
    - - ↑ ignorance of French
        
        By 15C Eng widespread, even among elite. However Fr cont. to be cultivated as lang of culture and fashion, hence often being learnt as 2nd lang.
        
        BUT -process of English supplanting Fr was very gradual - eg until 15C Fr had routine presence in parliamentary records.
        
        Final step → general adoption of Eng was when it displaced both Latin and French in writings, politics and literature
- - - - OE tended to enlarge its vocabulary mainly by using prefixes & suffixes & combining native elements into compounds. This habit weakened in ME. Instead of using an existing native word to form a new word, a French word was borrowed instead.
        
        ∴ after Norman Conquest huge influx of F vocab mainly connected with religion, army, art, government & administration. (interests of Fr-speaking ruling group)
        
        Definition of loan words and calques
        
        Borrowing = A process which adopts linguistic material from another lang - realised by means of loanwords & calques
        
        Loan translations/Calques = word for word translations of foreign words/expressions, but expressed by native lexical units (bull by horns)
    - - a) The first period 1066-1250.
        
        100 years went by before an important no. of Fr words were present. Less than 900 words borrowed in this period, most associated with church (need for transference of doctrine/belief clergy → ppl.
      - b)The second period: 1250-1400
        
        After 1250 big ↑. Coincides with re-estab of Eng & general adoption of Eng by Fr UC after loss of Normandy (1204). As UC didn't know English perfectly they often used French words. Result: 10,000 new words (approx 75% still in use)
        
        a) Govt & Administration
        
        General : government, crown, royal, empire; office titles: minister, governor; ranks: noble, prince, duke, sir, madam..
        
        b) Ecclesiastical
        
        General: religion, baptism; council; clerical positions: cardinal, dean, pastor; religious life: image, abbey, miracle..
        
        c) Legal
        
        F was lang of legal courts for so long that most of Eng legal vocab comes from F. General terms: complaint, justice, punishment; crimes: slander, arson, fraud, assault; property: tenant, heritage, heir…
        
        d) Military
        
        War v imp in M Ages & F speakers controlled Army & Navy. Many words now obsolete, ones still in use are: army, peace, navy, spy; names of officers: captain, sergeant, lieutenant..
        
        e) Familiar
        
        U/Cs set standards in fashion & dress. General: fashion, button, coat; Food: supper, dinner, appetite, toast, cream, salad, olives, sole, sardine, salmon, oyster, beef, veal, mutton, pork, sausage, herb, vinegar, cinnamon, clove..
        
        As Eng remained lang of masses, original terms for livestock retained: ox, sheep, swine, deer, calf. Fr words – beef, mutton, pork, bacon, venison, veal – used for flesh of animals, eaten mostly by U/Cs.
        
        French also innovated domestic & social life: Articles of comfort: curtain, chair, basin, cushion, lamp, couch; Entertainment: conversation, leisure, chess, recreation, music…
        
        f) Art, Learning, Medicine
        
        Reflect cultural & intellectual interest of ruling class: cathedral, palace, mansion, tower; literature: prose, rhyme, chapter, medicine: surgeon, pain, stomach, anatomy…
        
        g) Family
        
        Immediate rels mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter** kept Germanic names. But uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece etc. = French terms. Father-in-law & mother-in-law use native Eng words but in fact calques**, loan translations from Old French.
        
        h) Numbers kept originals
        
        DOUBLETS
        
        Sometimes a word was taken from both fashionable Central French AND Norman French resulting in doublets: reward/regard: warden/guardian; catch/chase; warranty/guarantee; gaol/jail” (1st N Fr & 2nd Parisian Fr).
      - Many AS words used side by side with new F equivalents. BUT meaning evolved. F words more formal, polite & less emotional; eg “amity” doesn't have the warmth of “friendship”, begin/commence; make/elaborate; freedom/liberty; child/infant; happiness/felicity; friendly/amicable; hearty/cordial …
      - c) The third period: From 1400.
        
        End 1400s ↓ in borrowing. Words already borrowed had been assimilated & now formed part of compounds, derivation, eg gentle (taken around 1225) was now part of gentleman, gently..;
        
        1500 the intellectual awakening of Europe (Renaissance), reached England. portmanteau, genteel, moustache, machine examples of words borrowed at this time.
        
        After ME: Mid 17C - civil war in Eng & court resided in France. ∴ with Restoration many F words/phrases → Eng. Eg parole, rendezvous, envelope, critique, memoir, tableau, routine + many more
        
        Fr REV (1789) also = French words relating to revolution: regime, guillotine, aristocrat, democrat, revolutionise, royalism, terrorism, liberal, conservative, despotism, etc.
        
        19thC - great influx. Period of English liberalism; ∴ renewed interest in the country home to ideas of liberty, equality & fraternity. Also increase in travel to Fr. So words related to art, food/drink, fashion, decorations & social pastimes arrived: ballet, souvenir, cuisine, liqueur, route, canteen, bureau, baroque, cliché, resumé, blouse, acrobat, restaurant, chef, fiancée, prestige and phrases eg coup d'état, savoir faire, etc.
        
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  - - - Decay of inflectional system had big influence on syntax. Inflections used to express meaning - however, in ME fixed word order developed to distinguish between sentences eg: the boy likes the cat, the cat likes the boy.
        
        Way of indicating number/plural also affected. By early ME: period only 2 methods left: -s or –es for strong declension; & –en for weak. The –en disappeared (bar children) and –es confined to certain instances (eg words that end in -s bus/buses) & by 1200 –s was standard plural ending.
        
        Loss of grammatical gender: In O.E. gender of nouns had no connection with their meaning of sex, e.g. cild (child) neuter, wif (wife) neuter , stine (stone) feminine; gender indicated by the form of an adj or article agreeing with it. With loss of inflectional endings = tendency to replace grammatical gender with natural gender accelerated.
        
        SO decay of inflections made it necessary to ↑rely on juxtaposition, word-order and use of prepositions
    - - Losses suffered by the strong conjugation. Nearly 1/3 of strong verbs (verbs that form the past tense by changing their stem vowel) in O.E. died out in early M.E. period.
        
        In OE Thou (+ thee/thy/thine) used for 2person sing. and you (+ye, your, yours) for the 2person plural. With Fr influence in 13C you emerged as singular in polite/formal speech (thou remained for informal). Cont. until thou disappeared from standard English in 17C (Barnsley!)
        
        ↑ in no. of prepositions (already considerable in OE). Some eg sans & save borrowed directly from F. Others eg during, excepting & saving were anglicised versions of F words. Some are calques on originally French equivalents, e.g. notwithstanding derives from Old French non obstant.
        
        Grammatical points reconstructed on F model:
        
        WHO remodelled on French qui & became used in as a relative pronoun eg the boy who lives next to me, (OE used the).
        
        Passive : OE used verb weorpan (to become) to form passive. Fr introduce to be
        
        Syntactic patterns e.g. phrases consisting of nouns + adjs introduced into Eng. Eg attorney general, court martial
  - - - 1. Loss of inflections
        
        2. Loss of Germanic vocabulary
        
        3. Intro of enormous no. of French words.
- - - - Oct 14 1066 Eng & Norman armies met nr Hastings (Sussex) & William defeated & killed Harold. Xmas day 1066, Duke William of Normandy crowned King of England
        
        Harold - last Eng-speaking king for 300 years. Normans took control of Eng territory & established his own regime
- - - - ESO
        
        Romance langs (careful - FFs!), registers etc. Activities: scavenger hunt etc. Cross curr links