3.2. Norman Conquest and its effect on English

The Norman Conquest of England began in 1066. It proved to have a far-reaching influence on the English language which had changed under 3-century domination of the French language. The effect is mainly reflected in the vocabulary.

An enormous number of French loan-words (about 10,000) came into the language during the ME period. Many of them reflect the cultural and the political dominance of the Normans in Britain as conquerors and rulers. They are often the words to do with:

• government (county, court, crown)

• war (army, battle)

• law (crime, judge)

• religion (abbey, clerk)

• heraldry (baron, duke, knight)

• arts (point, poem, art)

• leisure (entertainment, dice, leisure)

After the Norman Conquest the prestige languages in England were Latin and French. Latin was the language of the church, the school and of the international communication, while French (its Anglo-Norman dialect) was official language of the country; it was spoken in the court, the army, education, and it was used in literature, which was being written for the nobility of England.

But the majority of the population was English-speaking. English was spoken by the lower classes in the towns and in the county-side.

Though a considerable number of Normans settled in England, they never outnumbered the English (about 2%), and ultimately French died out. This process was speeded up in the 13th c., after the loss of lands in France that cut off the Normans in Britain from the continental ones.

As a result, the 14^th c. sees the definitive triumph of English. French was rapidly seizing to be the mother-tongue even of nobility. In the middle of 14th English was introduced into Parliament. During the same period it was replaced by English in court. (And even then, it took a while to get everyone to speak English.) The 14th also saw the switch from French to English as the medium in grammar school education. Literature was written more and more in English. In 1399, King Henry IV became the first king of England since the Norman Conquest whose mother tongue was English. Thus, the supremacy of Anglo-Norman come to an end.

3.3. Middle English dialects

For the three centuries while a prestige language was Anglo-Norman there was no single form of English, and people spoke and wrote in different dialects with considerable divergences in grammar, phonology and vocabulary.

One result of the Norman Conquest of 1066 was to place all four Old English dialects more or less on a level. West Saxon lost its supremacy and the centre of culture and learning gradually shifted from Winchester to London.

	The dialects of
	Old English	Middle English
	Anglian:
	Northumbrian	Northern and Scottish
	Mercian	East Midland   West Midland
	West Saxon	South-Western
	Kentish	South-Eastern

ME dialects developed on the basis OE ones.

• The old Northumbrian dialect became divided into Scottish and Northern. It is due to political separation of the regions.

• The old Mercian dialect was split into East and West Midland. The marked difference between them is due in part to the fact that the East Midlands were in the Danelaw, whereas the West Midlands were in the part of England held by Anglo-Saxon kings, so that the two areas are subjected to different influences.

• West Saxon became slightly diminished in area and was more appropriately named the South Western dialect.

• The Kentish dialect was considerably extended and was called South Eastern accordingly.

All six Middle English dialects (Scottish, Northern, West Midland, East Midland, South Western, and South Eastern) went their own ways and developed their own characteristics.

There are many differences between ME dialects.

1) a few in pronunciation reflected in treatment of some vowels. For example, OE ā remained in the Scottish and Northern dialects, while it changed in the 12th c. in a half-open rounded vowel [o:].

2) the grammatical differences include the differences in inflections: