# English nobility speaking french in the middle ages? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 14, 2004, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-nobility-speaking-french-in-the-middle-ages/245175 "2004-05-14T21:31:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-nobility-speaking-french-in-the-middle-ages/245175/41 "2004-05-15T22:32:40Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Of course, strictly speaking Rome didn’t conquer “England”, since there were no Anglo-Saxon kingdoms on the island at the time they conquered it up to Hadrian’s wall. But the area they conquered definately contains all of what is now England. > > But I suspect you just mis-spoke. But I gotta get my pedantry points in! Nope, I meant what I said. Rome did not conquer England. It conquered the area that later became England, but that was irrelevant to Latin borrowings in English. As far as I know, no Latin-derived word in English comes from the fact that what’s now England used to be the Roman province of Britannia. (There are people who are under the wrong impression on this matter, so I want to emphasize it.) The earliest Latin borrowings in English actually pre-date the Anglo-Saxon migration to the island. There’s a small number that were borrowed into German during the Empire. After that, the next Latin borrowings were church-related words from the time the English were Christianized. But the Angles and Saxons by-and-large displaced the Latin and Celtic speakers from Britannia and didn’t borrow any words from them. Placenames, yes, but not words. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-nobility-speaking-french-in-the-middle-ages/245175/42 "2004-05-16T02:55:35Z")
> [@Daver914](#): > > Cervantes, like Chaucer, was a pioneer in that _Don Quixote_ was one of the first major works written in Castilian, rather than Arabic. Whoa, whoa, WHOA!!! Then what do we call _La Celestina_? De Hita’s _Libro del Buen Amor_? Infante Juan Manuel’s _Libro de los Ejemplos_ aka _El Conde Lucanor_? Heck, the oldest written copies of _El Cantar del Cid_ are from the 1300s and they are **NOT** in Mozárabe, they’re very much in _Castillian._ Middle Castillian, mind you, hard to understand if you don’t know what you’re looking at, but then so’s Chaucer. What are today Asturias, Cantabria, and Catalonia were either never, or only very briefly, Arab-controlled, and the northernmost parts of Castille and Leon were independent as of the 1000s. The first standardized gramar of Castillian, Nebrija’s, was published around 1492. By 1600, Cervantes could even already be said to be writing in _Spanish_. ---
**Author:** ![Tusculan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@Tusculan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tusculan)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-nobility-speaking-french-in-the-middle-ages/245175/43 "2004-05-16T08:17:10Z")
> [@Grimpen](#): > > The abbreviation signified: “This is Greek, and therefore incomprehensible.” Graeca sunt, non leguntur. ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-nobility-speaking-french-in-the-middle-ages/245175/44 "2004-05-16T13:48:48Z")
> [@Grimpen](#): > > The abbreviation signified: “This is Greek, and therefore incomprehensible.” > [@Tusculan](#): > > Graeca sunt, non leguntur. AKA “It’s Greek to me!” 🙂 [return to original subject] One of my worst “Huh?” moments in Braveheart was when Princess Isabella and her handmaid were talking in French to avoid being understood by any English courtiers who might happen to overhear … 😕 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-nobility-speaking-french-in-the-middle-ages/245175.md?page=2)