1066 and all That

NCV

NCV

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Nigel
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Following on from my thread about the cost of visiting monuments, here are a few shots from the one monument we paid to visit. Actually I made two visits as, following a footpath from our hotel, crossing a field and climbing over a gate brought me onto the 1066 battlefield for free. Took a couple of shots as it started to rain, but I like the sheep in the foreground. We were there at opening time which as the EH staff obviously like a good lay-in in the morning, seeing that it opens at 10.00. A fast approaching storm added a bit of drama to the battlefield shots. As for the ruins. well just the remains of the monks living quarters remain today.

The battle it seems was a near run thing, that unusually lasted all day. The Normans were repulsed a couple of times before eventually killing Harold. My wife who is a linguist, mused that the English language would not exist if Harold had won. People in Britain today would speak a form of German Harold had won that day.

Everything shot on my Z7 with 24-200 14-30 and I also used my 24PC adapted via FTZ


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Harold was half Danish. England being ruled by the Danes under King Cnut.
 
NCV said:
My wife who is a linguist, mused that the English language would not exist if Harold had won. People in Britain today would speak a form of German Harold had won that day.
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Then your wife is not as much of a linguist as she thinks.

William was more Norse than French as was his language, hence the name 'Normans' - or Norsemen.

The language of England at the time of the invasion was 'old' or 'middle' English, which whilst it had Germanic routes was still English.
The modern English language is still classed as Western Germanic.

William didn't introduce the French language at all. The language of the Norse court was Latin (as was the case in most of Europe).

French as polutant language only really came in to force with the Plantagenet dynasty a century later.
 
DemiLion said:
Then your wife is not as much of a linguist as she thinks.

William was more Norse than French as was his language, hence the name 'Normans' - or Norsemen.

The language of England at the time of the invasion was 'old' or 'middle' English, which whilst it had Germanic routes was still English.
The modern English language is still classed as Western Germanic.

William didn't introduce the French language at all. The language of the Norse court was Latin (as was the case in most of Europe).

French as polutant language only really came in to force with the Plantagenet dynasty a century later.
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It was an aside, to make my post perhaps a little more interesting. My wife studied old European languages at university. She would have no problems describing the genesis of the English language to you.

Really some people just cannot resist being snide and nasty.

"For some time after the Norman Conquest of 1066, the English ruling class spoke a different language than the Anglo-Saxons they had conquered. Linguistic historians use manuscript evidence, particularly from legal documents, chronicles and creative works, to describe the aristocracy’s gradual shift from speaking Norman to speaking Middle English.

The designation "the Normans" refers to the inhabitants of Normandy, a region in the northwest of present-day France just across the English Channel from Britain. The Normans, whose name derives from the English words "Norsemen" and "Northmen," were descended from Vikings who had migrated to the region from the north. But by the 11th century, they spoke a dialect of Old French called Norman French. At that point, Old French, also called the Langue d’Oil, did not have a standard form, but rather described a range of dialects that included Norman French. William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, and his people thus spoke Norman French, also just called "Norman," when they invaded England in 1066."
 
NCV said:
William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, and his people thus spoke Norman French, also just called "Norman," when they invaded England in 1066."
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All anyone knows about the languages used during that period are the documents left behind. So far as I'm aware, the documents of that period are mostly written in Eclesiastical Latin together with the 400 or so remaining Old English texts dating from between the 7th and 11th Centuries.

So far as the evidence for a spoken Norman language goes, it may have been an early form of Balderdash... :wideyed:
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
All anyone knows about the languages used during that period are the documents left behind. So far as I'm aware, the documents of that period are mostly written in Eclesiastical Latin together with the 400 or so remaining Old English texts dating from between the 7th and 11th Centuries.

So far as the evidence for a spoken Norman language goes, it may have been an early form of Balderdash... :wideyed:
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It seems we do know.

Anglo-Norman (Norman: Anglo-Normaund; French: anglo-normand), also known as Anglo-Norman French, was a dialect of Old Norman French[2] that was used in England and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in Great Britain and Ireland during the Anglo-Norman period.[3]

When William the Conqueror led the Norman conquest of England in 1066, he, his nobles, and many of his followers from Normandy, but also those from northern and western France, spoke a range of langues d'oïl (northern varieties of Old French). This amalgam developed into the unique insular dialect now known as Anglo-Norman French, which was commonly used for literary and eventually administrative purposes from the 12th until the 15th century. It is difficult to know much about what was actually spoken, as what is known about the dialect is restricted to what was written, but it is clear that Anglo-Norman was, to a large extent, the spoken language of the higher social strata in medieval England.
 
NCV said:
I despair at times. I really should stay away from social media.
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Don’t despair Nigel. I really don’t think folk were being snide, just adding to the rich tapestry of TP.

I do congratulate you on getting to the battlefield for free, as William the Bastærd* did in 1066, very appropriate. :)


* diphthong to evade the censor.
 
DemiLion said:
Then your wife is not as much of a linguist as she thinks.

William was more Norse than French as was his language, hence the name 'Normans' - or Norsemen.

The language of England at the time of the invasion was 'old' or 'middle' English, which whilst it had Germanic routes was still English.
The modern English language is still classed as Western Germanic.

William didn't introduce the French language at all. The language of the Norse court was Latin (as was the case in most of Europe).

French as polutant language only really came in to force with the Plantagenet dynasty a century later.
Click to expand...

Never a good idea to criticise the wife! ;)
 
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