Perhaps someone can tell me if William the Conqueror (not sure of the real name of William Duke of Normandy…Guillaume de Normandie?). Did he ever learn to speak English. I had always read that he never managed to learn it. That could also me a myth.
davidmich
Could be, but I think it is from a source independent of Chaucer. If the source was, say, 50 years before Chaucer then the chances are the situation was not too different 50 years before the poem’s composition. However, I really am talking from a stance of profound ignorance on this matter.
I’m reading a recent book, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter, and one of the points he really drives home is that previous linguists who swore there was no Celtic influence on English were downright wrong.
He points to two isolated grammatical habits that did not exist in the proto-English of the Saxon and other Germanic invaders but does exist by Middle English - the meaningless do and the present participle verb form - as being Welsh in origin. He makes a strong case, specifically pointing out that the written form of Old English was extremely static - as in ‘from the time the Germanic tribes invaded until Chaucer started writing in vernacular English, written English remained the same’ - and never reflected dialectical variations or changes like dropped case endings. When the Normans invaded, French became the language of choice for writing, and English was ignored for 150 years. By the time they started writing English down again, it reflected the vernacular much more accurately.
The meaningless do is our habit of adding the word do to sentences where it has no real function. We say “Do you like this?” instead of “Like you this?” The latter construct is what you get in pretty much every other European language. The former only occurs in a couple of very obscure dialects - in Siberia and Italy - and Welsh. McWhorter believes it was the remaining Welsh - populous enough to be addressed in the law of the time and probably subjugated as slaves or serfs - who brought their meaningless do into English, and it was adopted over time.
The present participle verb form puts an -ing ending on the verb, so that we say “I am writing” or “I am singing” instead of “I write” or “I sing”. It’s a handy way to differentiate between a present action or a habitual action. Most other European languages also have a way to differentiate if they need to make a point. If you asked a German what she was doing, she might say “Ich schreibe” or “I write”. If she had to make a point that at that moment in time, she had pen to paper, she would say “Ich bin auf schreiben” or “I am on the writing.” (This is from memory, so please excuse mistakes.) We used to do this in English and started to elide the phrase so that “I am on the writing” became “I’m a’writing”. Or a’hunting or a’carolling. However, the Welsh were already using the -ing form of the verb to indicate present action, so their use either reinforced the “I’m a’writing” or swamped it out.
Fascinating stuff. I highly recommend his book.
Pretty sure I read in The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England that he never did.
That appears to be the case and similarly with his older sons including William II. His youngest, the later Henry I, supposedly could speak it “some” but how much fluency that implies is open to question.
Given his background Stephen I probably didn’t speak much if any English and Henry’s daughter “Empress Matilda” probably didn’t either - she left for Germany at 8 and didn’t return until a decade and half later where she sat at the court in Normandy for a couple of years before being married off to the French nobleman Geoffrey Plantagenet. She spent most of the rest of her life in Normandy and Anjou.
Geoffrey and Matilda’s son Henry II didn’t set foot in England until his mid-teens. He later learned enough that he supposedly “understood” a little English but couldn’t actually speak it. His wife Eleanor of Aquitaine apparently never learned a word. Of his sons, the eldest three ( Henry the Young King, Richard I and Geoffrey of Brittany ) were strongly associated with the continent in one way or another and probably never developed any fluency, if they even understood a word.
John may have been able to speak some English, as he was ( at times unwillingly ) forced to live there for many years. But if so even for him it would certainly have been a second language - he spent his formative years being raised at Fontevraud Abbey in Aquitaine.
His son Henry III was as noted fascinated by certain aspects of English tradition. But he had French-speaking parents and a French ( well, Provencal ) wife and surrounded himself with his French-speaking half-siblings ( his mother had remarried after John’s death and produced a further nine little Lusignans ). The court language remained French. His brother Richard of Cornwall was noted in passing for being able to speak English ( in relation to his being able to learn German after being elected ‘King of the Romans’ ), so it is not unreasonable to guess that Henry III could as well.
I think Edward I is probably the first monarch we have direct claims from contemporary sources for reasonable fluency. Even then Edward II and later kings often made their coronation oaths in French and we don’t see a flowering of English as a courtly language until at least Edward III.
I know this is slightly off topic, but do you know if these “English” Kings could even read in their own language(s)?
Interestingly enough apparently English charters continued to be published in both Latin and English from William I’s time ( with French only appearing starting in the 13th century ). That said while I personally don’t know for certain, I suspect that for most on the above list the answer is no. Or very weakly literate at best.
In terms of literacy English certainly would have been a tertiary priority for the royal house behind Latin and Norman French. The use of English in law courts was only formally established by statute by Edward III in 1362, almost three hundred years after the Conquest.
That said it should be emphasized again that we’re only talking about the royals here. The lower you were on the nobility ( or priestly ) food chain the faster you seem to have assimilated.
Yeah just look at a list of today’s hereditary nobility – almost all have Norman family names. Even Scotland’s hero Robert the Bruce was actually Robert de Brus.
Oh, wait - did you mean read in French or Latin? Yes, likely most could at least to some degree. The extent of illiteracy in the high medieval nobility tends to be an exaggerated meme. Exceptions abound, but most wealthy families paid at least some lip service to a literate education.
Cheers for the info. I meant French primarily. I thought if they were to read any language it would be their own. I hadn’t thought of the ability to read Latin but being unable to read French. However, thinking it over Latin would have been the language many texts were written in. Or at least I assume so.
Oh, given - I’m not saying they were secretly still speaking Norse at home or anything. Just that the particular dialect of Old French that they spoke was already pre-loaded with Germanic vocabulary, so a bit less of a jump to English than, say, if they spoke Champenois.
Not sure what you want evidence for? That Norman French contained many Norse loanwords isn’t exactly hard to find out. That that pre-primed Normans to learn English is just my own speculation.
From “The Story of English” by Robert McCrumbRobert Macneill and William Cran
p. 75
“The great historian Ordericus Vitalis provides good eviddence of the decline of french in educated society, both courtly and clerical. The son of a Norman knight and an English mother, Ordericus was born less than a decade after the Conquest near Shrewsbury and was taught Latin by a local priest. At the age of ten he was sent to continue his education in a monastery in Normandy. There, he writes (in Latin, of course), “Like Joseph in Egypt, I heard a language which I did nit know.” In other words, he knew no French”
What was the motivation for the complete replacement of the nobility by Normans? It would seem to me that the average noble had little choice but to follow their lord; but from what I recall of various conflicts, many had no problem switching allegiance depending who was at the top - fairly obvious action should you want to keep your lands, Vicar-of-Bray style. Did William distrust the English that badly? Did he have so many hangers-on above the rank of foot soldier that he needed to replace pretty much down to the manor house level? Were there that many second and third sons around? I would imagine every lord of the age understood that a lot of their underlings were not fanatically committed to their cause.
I think it’s pretty evident. The Normans won the war of succession. They wanted to be in charge. I dint think there was anything unusual about that.
I don’t think the concept of a “real name” meaning a particular firm, spelling, and pronunciation was all that solid back then. In most writing they would likely use a Latinized form, like “Vilhelmus,” even for a Germanic name like “William.”
Thanks Ascenray. I wasn’t sure on that point.
davidmich
I have a book of collected letters of Lord Lisle. He was arrested and his correspondence collected by Henry VIII since he was a Plantagenet and Henry was justifiably paranoid. Even almost 500 years post-Norman, consistent spelling is optional - varies from Lisle to Lyall to Lille to almost any conceivable spelling or various vocalizations. Daniel likewise varies from Danyall to Dannil to Danyel to Daniel. Even the same correspondents spelled things differently from letter to letter. Add to that regional accents and variations on pronunciation (i.e. between “V”, “B”, “W”, etc.)
Some historians, most notably David Bates, have argued that William originally intended to rely on some of the more compliant English nobles, but that, thanks to the rebellion of Edwin, Earl of Mercia and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria in 1068 and the Danish invasion in 1069, this quickly proved to be completely impractical. He tried divide-and-rule and that turned out to be less effective than brutal repression.
William’s third son, Henry, was literate, to the point that his nickname was “Beauclerc”.
William the Bastard
William the Conqueror
William, Duke of Normandy
King William I of England
I’m guessing that Guillaume de Normandie would probably work, too.