The Norman Conquest and its linguistic consequences

After the death of Edward Harold Godwinson was proclaimed the King of England but as soon as the news reached William of Normandy in France he gathered a big army and landed in Br because he was sure he had the right for the English throne. In the Battle of Hastings in 1066 the troops of Eng king were defeated and William of Normandy was crowned the King. The Norman had originally came to France from Scandinavia which is proved by the history of the word Norman > north man. They had lived a century and a half in the northern province of France before the conquest. During that period they inherited French culture and language. And the province they lived in was called Normandy.

The military occupation of England by Normans lasted several years after the battle of Hastings. William and his barons devastated and depopulated large territories burning down villages and estates. In Mercia and Northumbria the resistance was especially stubborn. These principalities were depopulated. As a result of the Norman Conquest the Anglo-Saxon nobility vanished almost completely. Many of them perished in battles and uprisings. Others were executed. Some emigrated. The original nobility was replaced by Norman barons who spoke French.

After the continental French penetrated into E. it began to be called Anglo-Norman. Their estates of Anglo-Saxon barons were distributed among the Norman barons. All the posts in churches were also given to Frenchmen. French merchants, soldiers, teachers, looking for new fields of activity arrived in England in great numbers. It’s posed that during the first 20 years after the battle of Hastings about 200 000 Frenchmen were settled in England. After the conquest they developed a very peculiar linguistic situation in England. The first E. king after the C. spoke French and didn’t know E. French was the language of the court, government, courts of law, army and E. was reduced to a lower social sphere. It was spoken by peasantry and town people. It’s existed mainly in oral form but nevertheless the primordial tradition of E. wasn’t broken.

In OE there were 7 kingdoms and each of them spoke its own dialect, because E. society was a feudal society. The kingdoms practiced natural economy and the contacts between kingdoms were very limited. They didn’t need any national language. In the course of time in OE the kingdom of Wessex got political domination. The West Saxon dialect is conventionally treated as the literary language of the OE period because it left the greater number of records. After the NC the linguistic situation in the country changed and the West Saxon dialect lost its dominating status and in the 12 and 13^th c. all the E. dialects were on an equal footing. Besides in MidE the old E. dialects regrouped on the geographical principle and got new names. There appeared 4 essential dialects – 1) the Northumbrian dialect developed into the northern dialect, Midland, 2) West Midl (OE-West Saxon) and 3) East Midl (Mercia, East Anglia), 4) Southern (Essex, Sussex, Kent)

And none of these dialects in early MidE had any privileges after others. The linguistic situation in England after NC was characterized by the following features: 1) there were 2 distinct layers in the country – 1st-feudal upper class – the Government and the Court spoke the Anglo-Norman dialect of French. 2nd layer consisting of townspeople, peasants stuck to E., 2) none of the E. dialects had any priviledge as compared to the others, 3) there was a considerable layer of bilingual population.

This state of matters resulted in conflicts and struggle for supremacy between the 2 languages. This struggle continued for 3 centuries lasted up to the 14^th c.

TEXT 12.

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 2100