The History of the English Language, Part Two

In 1066 ad, William of Normandy led the Norman Conquest of England. Interestingly, while these Normans spoke French, they were not French. They were Danish Vikings who had two centuries before invaded France. In 911 ad, the French king, Charles the Simple, gave them Normandy with their promise not to invade further into France. Keeping their promise, they instead invaded England a century and a half later! As mentioned, these Vikings had adopted the French language, but it did have decidedly "non-French" embellishments, an important point to which we will return. Further, they were not considered "French" by the French. This too would help shape later developments.

In any case, the Norman Conquest radically changed the face of England. William the Conqueror killed most of the Anglo-Saxon nobility, and placed Normans in all government and church positions. He also imported the feudal system to England, establishing grand estates throughout the land. In the feudal system, your place in society is determined by your birth, allowing no upward mobility. The Anglo-Saxons, now relegated to the positions of serfs, were not in the strictest sense slaves, but as serfs born to serve a particular estate, they were bound to it for life. The English language, as the language of the now lower class, was considered a vulgar base tongue, effects of which may still be seen today. Consider the following words: fornicate, defecate, urinate. That's the "nice" way to say those words, yet we have other words that express those same meanings, but they are swear words, not so "nice". Guess, which words are French? The nice ones. Our "swear" words had no such improper meaning for the Anglo-Saxons; they were just the words you used.

Another relic of this split can be found in our terms for food and the animals it comes from. For instance, pork comes from pigs and beef from cows, and the origins of these are from this time period. Anglo-Saxons tended the animals, hence the Anglo-Saxon terms for the animals, but the Norman French ate the cuisine, hence beef from boeuf and pork from porc (also poultry from poulet). Anglo-Saxons and their language were shut-out from higher society.

The isolation of English speakers from one another had drastic effects on the English language. Even before the Normans came, literacy was very low among the Anglo-Saxons. Only the nobility and church leaders learned to read and write. Further, there was no standard written form of English--people wrote it as it sounded to them. Consider a contemporary example. If I write the word "car" as I pronounce it, I might write it "kar". A British speaker would write the same word as "ka" (a fact illustrated by the popularity of the Ford Ka in the UK). Now imagine every word is written the way it sounds. If the writer sounds like you, no problem. If the writer does not, big problem. You will be hard-pressed to get through the text. So consider the situation in 1000 ad. The Anglo-Saxons who could read and write did not vary enormously in their pronunciation, making a literate person to a great degree literate in any English writing. Yet with the Norman invasion, many of the literate Anglo-Saxons were killed. The others, along with the rest of the Anglo-Saxon population were largely relegated to the new Norman estates. For all intents and purposes, there was no further instruction in English writing and reading in England for the next hundred years.

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