The Adventure of English

EP2 summary

This episode discusses how class affected the use of English, especially
during the reign of William the Conqueror and for 300 after. In 1077, William
the Conqueror ordered the construction of White Tower on the banks of the
Thames in London. It was a very special building: part palace, part treasury,
part prison and part fortress. It was a big symbol of how Normans were
imposing themselves on England. It weren’t just their armies and architecture
that marked their authority here – it was their language as well. The French
vocabulary forced it’s way into the English language. Crown and court were
both French words, so are castle, tower, obedience, justice, treason and prison.
The anglo-saxon kings used the old English, now the Normans used French and
Latin, so English had become the third language in it’s own country. It would
take over 300 years for it to come out from the shadows.
The Normans tightened their grip on England more further. William’s
men took over every position of power in the state and in the church across
the land. Within 60 years the monk and historian William of Moultrie could
write: “No English one today is an earl or bishop or abbot. The newcomers nor
the wealth and guts of England. Nor is there any hope in ending this misery.”
He wrote in Latin written English, which established itself very boldly before
the conquest was now dying. Monks had been recording the great events of
last 650 years in books known as anglo-saxon chronicles. They were written in
English – the language of people, there was nothing like them anywhere in
mainland Europe. Since the Norman contest in 1066, these unique accounts
had been abandoned one by one. The last survivor of them all was the
Peterborough chronicle.
Old English had ceased to the language of record in the land, but it
wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, because since the conquest, English in
varying dialects had remained spoken by 90% of the population - from the
south coast to the uplands of sounthern Scotland. Even futher north in
Scotland and Westley Wales, the language and culture were still Celtic. Old
English had continued to develop and change partly because of it’s contact
with the language of the days, particularly in the north. The grammar was
becoming simplier, more plurals were being formed by adding an S. Naman
(old english plural of name), for example, became nomes, which would become
our names. Prepositions were having roles of the functions of the word
endings, word order was becoming more fixed. Despite being officially ignored,
English continued to evolve and change. It would endure resisting and
absorbing the invader’s language untill the time came free to resume centre
stage as a nation’s language.
The Peterborough chronicle of 1154 also recorded that people of
England also acquired a new king – Henry Curtmantle – grandson of William
the Conqueror and the first of Plantagenet kings. He spoke fluent Latin and
French, but no English. The English aquired a new queen – Eleanor of Aquitaine
– daughter of William the tenth of Aquitaine. Henry Ⅱ was crowned in
Westminister Abbey in a lavish ceremony full of luxury materials. He brought
his inheritance of William the Conqueror’s land in England. Alana, the greatest
heiress in the Western world, brought with her a great sway, that what is now
France, from the Loire to the Pyrenees, from the Rhone to the Atlantic. This
was a huge kingdom, the greater part of which was made up of french-
speaking lands across the channel. As it grew, the English lands and language
became an ever less important and significant part of it. French and Latin were
more entrenched as the languages of court and goverment of the country, yet
after their coronation Henrt and Eleanor rode in procession along the Strand, it
was reported that people shouted was hail and vive a trex, wishing them a long
life in English and Latin. English was still alive and thriving in the streets.
New ideas were in the air in the court and royal palaces and so were
new words to express them: cortices, honour, questing, damsels, justing and
tournaments. The vocabulary of romance and chivarly was heard in English
more often. Alana, England’s new queen, was considered the most cultured
woman in Europe, because of her attribution to patronizing the poets and
troubadours, whose songs and verses created the romantic imagery of Middle
Ages. As the age of chivarly, a glorious vision, which was never realized outsidr
the pages of medieval literature. A hundred years before, the word chivarly,
revolved around the word for horse, had simply meant cavarly. When mounted
warriors had become knights, the word chivarly came to mean a whole model
of ideals and behaviour for a knight. It was in Eleanor’s reign that French
writers brought the stories of Arthur and his knights out of the history books
into poetry, while cultivating a language far richer and subtler than ever
before. When the poetry of affairs and love had come to England, running
through Shakespeare’s sonnets to the day’s three-minute pop lyrics, England’s
natives were singing songs about things that concerned them everyday, in
their own language – English. One of those, first recorded in 1225, is one of the
earliest species of English, that’s recognizable today. Words like summer,
come, so, see and you can be traced back to the flatlands of Frisia. Spring and
wood can be found in Beowulf and Mary, sing and loud were in the works,
authorized by Alfred the Great. A lot of English vocabulary were in songs from
the peasants, meanwhile at the opposite end of the social scale, from the
troubadour songs, French language of the grand Lords hasn’t penetrated down
to the ordinary people. When William introduced feodalism, it defined all
economic and social relations, expressed in French words, like villain, vassal,
laborer, bailiff and factor. The English were essentially serfs. Not technically
slaves, but tied for life to their Lord’s estate. When peasants lived in cottages,
their french-speaking masters were living privileged lives in their castles. Our
modern vocabulary still reflects the distinction between them. For example,
English speakers tended the living cattle, which we call by the old English
words – cow and ox, meanwhile French speaking people ate prepared meat,
which we call by the French word beef. In the same way the English sheep
became a French mutton, calf became veal, deer – venison and pig – pork.
Despite the changes in english goverment in 150 years since Norman
Conquest, French was still absolute and more privileged. Written English,
which was a triumphant achievement of Alfred and English scholars, was dead
and spoken English was progressively colonized by French words, but the
balance of power and languages was about to shift. Towns were growing,
sometimes French and English towns together, as at Norwich and Nottingam.
Petit France was one of many areas in English towns, originally housed by
French immigrants. English and French speakers met and mingled in these
places and the English middle classes picked up French words by the thousand:
merchants, money, price, discount, bargain, contract, partner, embezzled.
French could eventually have engulfed English, but it never happened. Because
of particular history events, French speaking people became cut off from their
cultural and linguistic roots. In 1204 John, King of Normandy, Aquatine and
England, lost his norman lands in the war with way much smaller kingdom of
France. It would be seen like French speaking people’s identity was secure, but
they started losing connections across the channel and language started to
lose it’s grip on English. French speakers, even within the noblest families,
began to look for English speakers and married them. Many children in the
13th century started to learn English from their mothers or nurses. Children of
anglo-french families grew up bilingual. By 1250 there’s some evidence that
children of the nobility were having to learn French from a written primer.
Most of French speakers within society became bilingual and started speaking
English. As a result, French became more of a foreign language. In 13th
century, English became a language that could be counted on to know.
In 14th century English started to be acknowledged more – in 1362 it
was recognized as a language of official business, by 1385 it had replaced
French in the schoolroom. In the same year, parlament was opened at
Westminister and for the first time ever, the Chansellor adressed the essambly
in English. But the darkest reason why English became to have it’s redemption
arc was Black Death, which took a third of England’s population of 4 million
people. It set in train a set of social upheavals which gave English language the
recognition it deserved.

Vocabulary

Chansellor – a senior state or legal official.

Upheaval - a violent or sudden change or disruption to something.
Hail – word, which is used to praise someone
Calf - a young bovine animal, especially a domestic cow or bull in its first year.
Venison – meat from a dear.
To embezzle – to steal or misappropriate (money placed in one's trust or
belonging to the organization for which one works).
Ox – any domesticated bovine animal kept for milk or meat; a cow or bull.
Vassal – a holder of land by feudal tenure on conditions of homage and
allegiance.
Bailiff – a sheriff's officer who executes writs and processes and carries out
distraints and arrests.
Labourer – a person doing unskilled manual work for wages.