The English Language

The British Isles has had a number of different languages spoken in it over the last two thousand years. In fact, it probably had more different languages than the rest of western Europe.  The only ones that come close are the Mediterranean ones that experienced a mix of Latin, Greek, and Arabic before settling on their modern language.

Originally the islands were Celtic speaking.  Descendants of these languages persist in Ireland and Wales, and to a very small extent in Scotland and Cornwall.  Starting in the first century BC, however, when Julius Caesar conquered Great Britain, the predominant language became Latin.  Britain under the Romans was Latin-speaking and Christian, reading the Bible in Latin rather than the original Greek (much less the Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written before it became, in Greek, part of the Christian Bible--see more here on the Bible in late antiquity).

And then the Angles and Saxons showed up (on whom see more here).  They spoke a version of German.  In what is now England, named for the Angles (but not in the territories on England's margins or in Ireland, the same areas where Celtic languages still linger), both Latin and Christianity essentially disappeared, along with Roman culture.

But these Germanic speaking people were Christianized in the seventh century and by the eighth century were producing excellent scholars, very learned in Latin.  Because for them Latin was a learned language, not an everyday spoken language, they were very careful about things like declensions and case endings and verb forms.  Ironically, on the Continent, where Latin was still a spoken language, a lot of people thought they were speaking good Latin when, from a modern perspective, it was rapidly becoming Old French or Old Italian or Old Spanish.  When Charlemagne's royal court took on some Anglo-Saxon scholars, they were quick to point out the difference between real Latin and what people were speaking.

Anglo-Saxon continued as its own valid language, getting a good written collection of books, including translations of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon, writing down of ancient laws, and the like.  But everything changed abruptly with the Norman Conquest of 1066.

The Normans arrived speaking Old French, so Anglo-Saxon immediately became not a learned language but rather the language of conquered peasants.  For the next two centuries Norman French and Anglo-Saxon German existed side-by-side.  The same thing might be called two different things depending on who was talking about it.  A cow (a Germanic word, related to "cattle"), the creature being raised by a peasant, became beef, a French word, once it reached the lord's table.  (In modern French, boeuf still means both the animal and the meat.)

In the fourteenth century the two languages ended up merging, creating Middle English, the ancestor of modern English.  There were a number of different Middle English dialects, but Chaucer, for example, can still be read by modern readers if there are notes on some of the words.  Modern English, which has roughly as many words as modern French and German combined, came into its own in the so-called "Elizabethan age" on either side of the year 1600.  This is the age of Shakespeare, who can now be read more easily than Chaucer, and of the King James Bible, sponsored by Elizabeth's successor, King James.

The King James Bible is still the most frequently used Bible in English.  It was translated directly from the Hebrew (Old Testament) and the Greek (New Testament), without reference to the Latin (Vulgate) version that had been the standard in the Middle Ages.  (Contrary to popular belief, the Bible was not written in English.)  Once this language became the standard for religious service, the language stopped changing nearly as fast as it had earlier.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016

The Norman Conquest

I hope no one reading this blog thinks of history as "memorizing dates."  But there are still a few dates that everyone ought to know.  One of those is 1066, the date of the Norman Conquest of England.  It had major political, social, and cultural ramifications for England (and subsequently for the US.)

Between the seventh century and the eleventh, England was a Christian territory, with some scholars very well educated in Latin.  But its primary language was Anglo-Saxon, not the Old French of the territory right across the Channel.  England did not have the knights, the castles, or the fiefs that developed on the Continent in the first half of the eleventh century.

In 1066 King Edward of England died childless.  He was nicknamed "the Confessor" for his holy way of life--a confessor is a sort of second-class saint.  Several people were convinced they were Edward's rightful heir, including Harold Godwinson, an Anglo-Saxon lord, and William, duke of Normandy in France.

(Vikings had settled in Normandy--named for them--at the beginning of the tenth century and had in the subsequent generations become French, if lively French.)

Indeed, William claimed that Harold Godwinson had promised that he would be the next English king, after William had rescued him from shipwreck.  Harold remembered the whole event quite differently.  William is nicknamed "the Conqueror," so you can tell how this is going to turn out.

When Edward died, Harold Godwinson was elected king by the witangemot, the Anglo-Saxon general assembly of nobles. But no sooner was he crowned than he heard that England was being invaded--from Scandinavia.  A third claimant from there, Harald Hardrada, had allied with Harold Godwinson's brother and decided that he was rightful king of England.

Harold Godwinson met Harald Hardrada in a great battle and won.  Unfortunately for Anglo-Saxon purists, this great battle is now nearly forgotten, for no sooner had the English won than they learned that William had sailed from Normandy.  The exhausted English army met the Normans near Hastings and held their own remarkably well, in spite of just having marched on foot all the way down from Yorkshire, and in spite of having to face mounted knights.

But Harold Godwinson was killed, and many of the English lords with him.  William then declared his own men a witangemot, they elected him (who could have predicted?), and he was crowned king.

England under the so-called Anglo-Norman kings was immediately transformed.  Knights and castles were established on Continental models.  William declared the men who had accompanied him were now dukes and counts (earls) and insisted they hold from him in fief, the first time a king had been involved in fief-holding.  As English bishops died, they were replaced with French ones.

This was the beginning of the creation of the language we now call English, which has both Germanic elements (from Anglo-Saxon) and French/Latinate ones (from Norman French).  Modern English indeed has as many words as modern German and modern French combined.  In Anglo-Norman England, there were two distinct languages, one for the conquerors and one for the conquered.  In modern English, built on both these languages, a pig running around is a swine, a Germanic word, until it reaches the table and becomes pork, a French word--an Anglo-Saxon peasant raised swine, but a Norman lord ate pork.

Even now, the Germanic/Anglo-Saxon term is the simplest and pithiest, the French the more elegant.  You can say things in English in two ways.  It is possible to express a concept in English in a dual manner.  (See what I mean?)

© C. Dale Brittain 2015
For more on medieval political and social history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.