The Norman Conquest took place in the 12th -13th centuries. In the 12th century the struggle between the Anglo-Saxon earls for supreme power began again. It caused a foreign conquest. The Norman Duke, (Earl) William the Conqueror, became complete master of the whole of England within 5 years (beginning with 1066 when the battle of Hastings took place). The lands of most of Anglo-Saxon aristocracy were given to the Norman barons and they introduced their feudal laws to compel the peasants to work for them. Thus, the English became the servile class. The Normans spoke Norman – French. During the following two hundred years that they kept coming over to England they couldn’t suppress the English language.
Communication went on 3 languages:
· at the monasteries the scholars were taught in Latin;
· Norman – French was the language after ruling class, spoken in court and official institutions;
· common people held obstinately to their own expressive mother tongue English.
Each rang of the society had its own literature:
1. During the 12th and 13th centuries monks wrote historical chronicles in Latin. The scholars at Oxford and Cambridge Universities described their experiments in Latin and even anti-religious societies were also written there.
2. The aristocracy wrote their poetry in Norman — French.
3. The country folk made up their ballads and songs in Anglo – Saxon.
The Danish Influence upon the Language of the Anglo-Saxons
The Danes, who had occupied the North and East of England, spoke a language only slightly different from the Anglo-Saxons dialects. The roots of the words were the same while the endings were different. People made themselves understood without translators simply by using the roots of the words.
The endings, which show the relations between words, were substituted by dashes. This brought about changes, which developed the language in a new way. The droppings of case ending meant:
1. The stress of the words was shifted. That’s why the sound and rhythm of the language were altogether different.
2. New grammar forms developed to show the relations of words and prepositions and pronouns came to be used more than before. Since both languages were spoken by all classes of society they emerged with by another very rapidly. The Danes were in many ways far more civilized than the English (for example, they brought the game of chess to the English).
Comments