4. Prevalence of English over French.

Normans were Normans no longer, but Englishmen. The Normans were greatly outnumbered by the Anglo-Saxons. Since at the beginning of 13 c. Normandy was lost to the English crown, they had long ceased to speak the Norman dialect; though many of them still regarded French as their mother tongue and talked the Parisian dialect.

The great majority of the population considered English, in various dialects, their mother tongue and in the long run the aristocracy were obliged to follow their lead. E.g. in 1258 Henry III issued a proclamation in English (London dialect).

By the first quarter of 14 c. many descendants of the Normans had lost their French and were speaking English like their neighbours. Popularity of French actually stopped in the middle of 14 c., after the war with France began in 1339.

We may regard October 1362 the turning – point, when Parliament was first opened in English and the Statute of Pleading was enacted whereby all court proceedings were to be henceforth conducted in English though “enrolled in Latin”.

Before 1385 English was introduced as a language of teaching at school along with Latin. The first king to speak English as his mother tongue was Henry IV (1399 – 1413). Before 1400 English was introduced in the court.

French survived in parliamentary acts till 1485, in ordinances – till 1400. Law French persisted for many years longer. Cromwell tried hard to break it, but it was finally abolished by Act of Parliament in 1731.

Some fossil French have come up to time: e.g. the inscription in the Royal Arms “Dieu et mon droit”.

The prevalence of English over French was the result of growing influence of lower and middle classes of urban society and provincial gentry who wanted to use alien French neither in business transactions nor in legal proceedings nor elsewhere.

5. Me orthography.

OE spelling was reformed by Norman French scribes who introduced characteristic traits of French orthography into English.

1. Certain consonant phonemes began to be denoted by digraphs:

   [C]	ch	cheat, teach
   [G]	dg (g, j)	bridge (courage, joy)
   [S]	sh	dish, ship
   [x]	gh	right, night
   [D, T]	th	bathe, this, thin

2. OE c was rendered by k: e.g.

   OE	ME
   drincan cnawan	drinken knowen

3. OE f in the intervocal position was rendered by v, u which were variants of spelling: e.g.

   OE	ME
   lufu	love/loue

4. The digraph qu was used to render OE cw [kw]: e.g.

   OE	ME
   cwēn	queen

5. The letter g was used to render OE Z as [g], and y was used to render OE Z as [j]: e.g.

   OE	ME
   Ziefan	given
   Zēar	year

6. The digraphs ow and ou were introduced to render OE ū: e.g.

OE	ME
hūs	house
cū	cow

Introduction of these digraphs led to misunderstanding because in ME they denoted the diphthong [ou] as well as [H], e.g.

[u:]	cow	[ou]	snow
	now		low
	down		slow
	how		crow

7. The digraph ie was introduced to render OE ē: e.g.

   OE	ME
   fēld	field
   þēf	thief
   	chief, Fr
   	relief, Fr.

8. The letter o was introduced to render [u] when it was next to u, v, m, n to avoid misunderstanding, because they all represented a succession of vertical bars: e.g.

   OE	ME
   sum	some
   lufu	love
   cuman	comen

9. In the final position y was substituted for i, and w for u, e.g. every, holy, twenty, Canterbury, bow, tow, low.

In NE words ending in –i look distinct aliens: e.g. genii, rabbi, taxi. In general, ME spelling was rather unstable, which is accounted for independence and separation of dialects and weakness of a new national literary tradition that was coming to life in the second half of 14 c.

As it was stated before, the English dialects became equal and independent of each other after the Norman Conquest. They were now so far apart that a Southerner could hardly understand a man from Northern Counties. The Northern dialect (the descendant of the old Northumbrian), the Southern dialect (the descendant of the West Saxon and Kentish) and the Midland dialect (the descendant of Mercian) had gradually risen to the position of respectable literary tongues, but no one of them could claim precedence over any other. The border between the Northern and Midland dialects was the river Humber; the border between the Midland and Southern dialects was the river Thames; the Midland dialect was actually two dialects – West Midland and Eat Midland.

Most important written records are as follows:

The Northern dialect:

The Prick of Conscience by Richard Rolle, 14 c.

Towneley plays, 14 c.

York plays, 15 c.

The Midland dialect:

Peterborough Chronicle, 12 c.

The poem Orm, Ormulum, 13 c.

Havelok, the Dane, 13 c.

Handlyng Sinne by Robert Manning of Brunne, end of 13 c.

Sir Gawain and green Knight and other poems, 14 c.

Poems by Adam Dave, 14 c.

Works by Chaucer and Gower, 14 c.

The Southern dialect:

Layamon, Brut, 13 c.

Ancrene Riwle, 13 c.

The Chronicle by Robert of Glouster, ab. 1300.

The Owl and the Nightingale by John Trevisa, 13 c.

Polychronicon, a translation by Ranulphus Higden, 14 c.

Dan Michel, Ayenbite of Inwit, 14 c.