In his preface to Barnes & Noble Classics The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Professor Robert W. Hanning, Professor of English at Columbia University states :
on page xix
“French had been considered the language of genteel society for almost three centuries after the Conquest, although even the upper nobility was English-speaking within a few generations of that even, and French ( in its insular form, commonly known as Anglo-Norman,) was increasingly a language that had to be learned, as opposed to spoken from birth.”
This preface was written in 2006. What really surprised me was that everything I have read and heard on the subject of English during that time suggested that English was driven underground for 300 years and that it was a marginalized language and certainly not spoken by the nobility. I’d love to know where I can find more authoritative information on just how pervasive English really was a few generations after the Norman Conquest.
English was never driven underground. At all times, it was the dominant language of the common people, and probably at all times a clear majority of the population were monoglot English speakers. Norman French was the language of the court and of higher-ranking nobles (initially, their native language) and was used in law (along with Latin, of course) and public administration; merchants and gentry and the lower-ranked nobles were probably bilingual, but with mostly with a preference for English; everyone else predominantly or exclusively spoke English. French enjoyed a certain prestige, and of course had a significant influence on the English language. It’s true that we don’t have much literature in English from this period but, then, we don’t have much literature in Norman French either. England at this time was not producing much in the way of literature in any language.
It would be nice to know of some authoritative books on the subject that particularly focus on the period 40-50 years(one or two generations) after the Conquest. I’m aware that later on English did become more widely spoken but I have yet to read anywhere that English was spoken by the upper nobility so soon after the Conquest ( one or two generations) and that Anglo-Norman had to be learned as a second language. That was surprising to read.
Captain Amazing’s link (Thanks for that!) only repeats what I had already read and heard. I doesn’t focus on the period so soon after the Conquest.
davidmich
Silly question but… to what extent was French the language of nobility? What proportion of the existing nobility was supplanted by Normans? I would imagine a decent number of British nobles would be killed in battle like Harold or arrested afterward; perhaps the most ardent supporters were executed. I assume they would be replaced by Normans being rewarded. But surely a number of lords were busy in their castles in Wessex and York and did not have time to pack up the knights and join the horde on short notice. Wouldn’t these guys have been left in charge of their estates once they swore allegiance to their new overlord? I’m imagining there weren’t enough higher-born Normans to replace the entire British nobility, especially the lower echelons of knights, etc.?
In a lot of the interesting politics of the era, the families of nobles were treated well and rarely lost their entire holdings and position. (Presumably nobody had an interest in starting a serious feud, or wanted the same clemency if they fell on the same hard times. Rarely was the estate forfeit from the heirs…)
David Crystal’s The Stories of English devotes several chapters to the time period you mention and he is quite thorough. I’d recommend anyone curious about the evolution of English to take a wander through this book.
Remember that the Norman lords, themselves, had only been speaking Norman for* at most* 150 years, before that they spoke a Germanic language related to English, so they were perhaps not as tied to French as all that - Norman French/Old Norman having retained many Norse words.
A major part of the imposition of the feudal system was the systematic replacement of Saxon nobility with Normans. As noted, those nobles in the North who had not committed to Harold Godwinson mostly found themselves killed off or co-opted by the Norse (well, Danes, I suppose) instead (and northeast England was mostly Scandinavian already.)
This is not a topic on which I’m competent, but the Orbilat paper by Baugh & Cable seems quite opposite on several points to the opinions in Language Contact, etc. by Thomason and Kaufman.
The link points to page 308, the most relevant page. On pages 267-269 Thomason-Kaufman imply that the Norman conquerors represented less than 1% of England’s population, that after the 1204 conquest of Normandy by King Phillip II of France, the Norman nobles remaining in England switched to English, and that the adoption of Parisian vocabulary in the 14th century was due to status-seeking English speakers.
It’s also worth noting that William’s followers spoke a range of langue d’oïl dialects, only one of which was Norman. As they all sort of merged together as these disparate persons from Northern France formed a Norman administration in England is where the distinct Anglo-Norman dialect came from.
I suspect the answer to how many nobles spoke English is similar to a previous thread we had about Latin in the Roman Empire and about whether say, a Roman Governor would speak the local vernacular of the province over which he was suzerain. The answer that made the most sense is the Governor probably wouldn’t, because his dealings would primarily be with the upper echelons of society who would all speak Latin, thus too for the highest nobility and royalty of early Norman England. But lower level Norman noble families probably would have been required to develop some familiarity with the vernacular as their dealings would intersect too much with English servants and retainers for them to be wholly ignorant of it. We do know that a line of Norman Kings of England though could not speak English at all.
I also believe (I’m struggling with the specifics here) that when the initial dynasty of William was taken over by a different line of his family (I believe traced through a bastard or a female) that was more linked to the actual French royal family that you had an infusion at the very top of Norman England of “real” French dialect, or the dialect spoken in the French court itself. At which point you may have seen the English royal family speaking court French and most of the highest nobles probably still speaking Anglo-Norman French.
That’s still a long time, and I’d be surprised if any of those Normans had any linguistic ties to Old Norse. Six generations is plenty of time for the language to disappear.
But if there is evidence otherwise, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
It was such a marked phenomenon that one of the few Anglo-Saxon noble families that did survive intact, the precursors to the later quite powerful house of Neville, took a matrilineal and very Norman surname. The cultural revolution that took place in England was really quite profound at the top.
In terms of the rebirth of “native” English particularism vis-a-vis continentals, we start seeing hints as early as the reign of the first Plantagenet, Henry II. This became considerably more marked in the aftermath of the disastrous loss of Normandy and other continental possessions after 1204. In Normandy in particular families that held lands on either end of the channel were forced to choose their lords and were promptly dispossessed of their lands in the opposite camp.
Really it was the royal house the were the longest adherents to the French language. For example despite his fascination with the cult of Edward the Confessor and his son’s deliberately Anglo-Saxon names, Henry III’s court was very French. It was this persistence at the top that somewhat camouflages the quicker assimilation of the lower nobility.
I remember reading about a poem from either Chaucer’s time or just before him. In it the poem says, and im paraphrasing, that the nobles could speak French, the clergy could speak Latin but that everyone could speak English.
You may be thinking of the Prioress in the Canterbury Tales, of whom Chaucer said
"Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frenssh of Parys was to hire unknowe. "
At this point, English was spoken throughout society and French had lost much of its status, in part because the French spoken in England had diverged from the French spoken in France. But this was over 300 years after the Conquest.
That’s brilliant!