Normanization of England

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/9/01 11:44:09 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
dlwhite at texas.net writes:

> But probably not, for another factor here is that the Normans took
> themselves very seriously as kings of England, as opposed to overlords of
> some wet green land, and never contemplated extirpating English
> institutions, of which language was one.

-- note that the Normans themselves were the descendants of a
Scandinavian-speaking intrusive group in Normandy -- which was assimilated
into a Romance-speaking population.  In fact, very few of the Viking-era
Scandinavian settlements abroad retained a Scandinavian language; only those
where there was no native population and the Scandinavians were in an
overwhelming majority. (Iceland, the Faeroes, etc.)

As for Norman respect for English, for two centuries or so after 1066, it was
a language for peasants.  The Court in London spoke French; for the first
couple of generations the _entire_ landowning aristocracy spoke French; and
most of their immediate retainers spoke French.  French was also the language
of administration, and the law courts -- and remained so down to Tudor times.
 The Angevin dynasty which replaced the Norman one was also emphatically
French and primarily oriented towards its Continental possessions.

In between William the Conqueror and the Black Prince no "English" monarch
spoke English as his first language, and it's doubtful if many of them even
learned it as a second, acquired tongue.

Post-1066 there was massive French influence on English, and in many personal
habits -- for example, French personal names largely replaced Germanic ones
with in a century or two of the conquest.  Besides the new aristocracy, many
Norman (and other French-speaking) merchants settled in the towns.

Which shows the extraordinary powers of endurance of a language spoken by a
solidly established peasant population.  It's very hard to change such a
linguistic bloc.