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The Penguin Guide to Plain English

become the intellectual centre of Europe. Be that as it may, the crucial

event in determining the future character o f the English language was
the Norm an Conquest in 1066. From that point our country had a ruling
class w ho spoke French. Not unnaturally natives found it useful to learn
the language o f their superiors. English became the language of the less
educated and socially inferior people. It is w orth recalling that our words
for animals w ho were looked after by peasants, such as ox, cow ,
sheep, pig and h o g , are Anglo-Saxon, w hile w hen the animals reach
the table to be eaten by the better off, the meat is defined in French as
b e e f, m utton and pork.

The Middle English Period

It was in the thirteenth century that English reasserted itself. Although
French was still m uch used in the upper classes and in business and
administrative circles, its preservation became increasingly a matter of
social convention, no longer a natural inheritance o f the m other tongue.
For English was adopted m ore and m ore in general use am ong all classes.
By the beginning o f the fourteenth century English was understood by
all. And here we m ust note that the English w hich had been in the care
of the uneducated peasantry since the N orm an Conquest had been freed
from the pedantic oversight o f the educated classes. Consequently it had
largely lost its inflexions. The English o f Chaucer may look strange to us
at first sight, but, by com parison w ith it, the English of the Anglo-Saxons
is a foreign language. To master it we are required to sit dow n and learn
how to inflect (or to decline) the nouns, adjectives and pronouns, and
how to conjugate the verbs. It is salutary for linguistic scholars and
protectors o f the purity o f our language to recall that it made such progess
w hen it was freed for a century or so from the control o f the educated.
If the changes in our gramm ar consequent on the N orm an Conquest
w ere so beneficial, the changes in our vocabulary w ere equally so. We
have seen how the N orm an-French occupation left us w ith two w ords
w here we m ight have had only one in the case o f cow and b e e f, p ig
and pork. This enrichm ent o f vocabulary, sometimes by duplication,
sometimes as straight additions, came about in many areas. W ords poured
in, w ords to do w ith governm ent (realm, sovereign, adjourn, alliance),
words to do w ith nobility (duchess, countess, marquis, baron, squire),
words to do w ith the Church (religion, theology, sacrament, com