20. Norman Conquest of the British Isles and Norman-French borrowings

The conquest of England by the Normans began in 1066 with the battle at Hastings, where the English fought against the Normans. The conquest was completed in 1071.

The Normans were the Vikings or the same ‘North men /Norsemen’ men from the North. Some 150 years before the conquest of England they came to a part of France, opposite England, the part which we now call Normandy. There they adopted the French language of their new home in France. They became French.

The Normans had invaded Britain three centuries earlier. They had assimilated not only the French language of the country, the northern part of which they had made their home, but together with the Romanized Celtic tongue of the Gauls, a Celtic tribe, assimilated their culture, their advanced civilization, so that the Duke of Normandy headed an already complex feudal state. The church, fully under the influence of Rome, exercised its cultural influence to the benefit of Norman civilization, and church architecture had reached an advanced stage there, so very soon the country was filled with churches and abbeys in the round-shaped and wide-arched Romanesque style. William’s army was superior to the Saxon “fyrd”.

When Edward the King of England died early in 1066, the Saxon “Assembly of Wise Men” declared Harold King. William, the Duke of Normandy, cousin to Edward the Confessor, declared himself heir to the throne of England. To make assurance doubly sure he got the Pope of Rome on his side and started preparations for an overwhelming campaign that was to sweep the Saxon rulers off the British throne for ever, placing one foreigner after another in that exacted position.

The two armies met at Hastings on October 14, 1066. In fact, the one battle of Hastings proved in the long run to be sufficient for the conquest of the whole country. By 1066 the whole of England was properly subdued and even the king of Scotland acknowledged William as his lord.

What did the Norman Conquest do to England? It gave England French kings and nobles. The Normans also brought with them the French language. After the Norman Conquest there were three languages in England. There was Latin, the language of Church and the language in which all learned men wrote and spoke, the kings wrote their laws in Latin for some time after the Conquest. Then there was French, the language which the kings and nobles spoke and which many people wrote. Finally, there was the English language which remained the language of the masses. Some men knew all these languages, many knew two, but most of the people knew only one. There were some people who understood the French language though they could not speak it. Rich people who owned land – the landowners, often knew French and Latin. But poor people, the peasants, did not understand French and Latin. They understood only English.

In time, however, came the general use of the English language. About 1350 English became the language of law.

But the English language when it came into general use was not quite the same as it used to be before the Conquest. The grammar remained, but many words came into English from the French language.

The Norman-French Element

French borrowings penetrated into English in two ways: from the Norman dialect (during the first centuries after the Norman Conquest in 1066) and from the French national literary language beginning with the 15^th century.

Before the Norman Conquest only a few words were borrowed (e.g. proud, turn, false, market, chancellor).

The French words borrowed during the 13^th- 16^th centuries are:

1) law terms: accuse, justice, rent, prison; 2) military terms: army, peace, battle, soldier, officer, pursue; 3) religious terms: saint, chaplain, charity, pray, religion, service; 4) words connected with trade and everyday affairs, mostly pleasant: barber, butcher, chair, beef, veal, pleasure, leisure, comfort, delight; 5) terms of rank: duke, duchess, prince, peer, viscount, baron; 6) terms of art: art, beauty, colour, image, figure, costume, garment; 7) terms of architecture: arch, tower, column, castle, palace.

Later French borrowings can be easily identified by their peculiarities of form and pronunciation (e.g. garage, machine, fiancée, automobile, resume, role, technique).

French suffixes are: -age, -ance, -ence, -ee, -ess, -ry, etc.