Observação importante: Ao visitarem esta página de novo, não se esqueçam de acionar o dispositivo de “reload, recarregar” [no Netscape Navigator] ou “refresh, atualizar” [no Microsoft Internet Explorer] dos seus browsers para que a informação no cache dos mesmos seja atualizada e vocês possam visualizar os novos dados colocados na página. Caso contrário, verão apenas informação antiga e desatualizada.

História da Língua Inglesa   

The Norman Invasion and its Impact on the English Language

English Language Program, Kingston University (UK)

The invasion of England by William, Duke of Normandy, in September 1066 was the outcome of a dispute over the succession to the English throne. Edward the Confessor had died in January of the year; he had no children. The most influential of the English nobles was Harold (son of Godwin, Earl of Wessex). He and his father before him had effectively been in charge for some while. When Edward died, Harold was elected king.

William of Normandy had a rival claim through connections of family (he was second cousin to Edward). Also Edward was said to have promised him the throne. He was confident enough to launch an invasion, which was successful, and he was crowned King in London on Christmas Day, 1066.

He brought with him nobles and followers from his Duchy of Normandy. Though the Normans (Northmen) were originally Scandinavian (part of the same explosion of conquest that had brought the Danes to England), they had been settled in Normandy long enough to become French in language and culture. It was Norman French that they spoke when they came to England.

The cultural domination of England by this French-speaking aristocracy lasted for at least 250 years. The effect on the English language was in some respects greater than the impact of the Scandinavian invasions; English acquired hundreds of Norman French (originally, of course, Latin) words, and became the hybrid Germanic/Romance language that it continues to be down to the present day.

Who spoke what?

For several centuries the two languages existed side by side. Because we do not have socio-cultural surveys from the time, it is hard to know where the boundaries between the two languages fell. Some things are pretty certain: the upper class spoke French and the ordinary people English. French became the language of the court, of government and the law, and, with Latin, of the Church and (in the 13th century) the universities. But we do not know how many of the upper class also spoke English, or how many (e.g.) of merchants in towns would have spoken both languages in order to conduct their business. Presumably some did.

English-speaking people rapidly disappeared from the court, administration, law and Church after 1066 (they held on longest in the Church). French became the language of culture and literacy and continued to have this prestige as late as the 14th century. Books were written in French in England. The prestige of the language was reinforced when Henry II (ruled 1154-89) acquired almost all of western France from the channel to the Pyrenees through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and by later dynastic alliances in the 14th century.

The recovery of English

The ordinary people never ceased to speak English, but in areas of life where Norman French had replaced English the recovery was slow. There are some crucial markers along the way:

The impact of Norman French on English

The major impact on English did not really begin until about 1250. Most of the transfer of vocabulary seems to have occurred between 1300 and 1400. This may be because by that time people were moving between the two languages and taking terminology with them. As French fell into disuse, it is probable that former French speakers introduce words into English to fill gaps: after all, English had not been used for administrative or legal purposes for around 200 years, and would have lost its facility in those areas.

Whereas the impact of the Scandinavian languages between the 8th and the 11th century was structural as well as lexical, the impact of Norman French was overwhelmingly lexical: the introduction of new words.

English in the Middle English period

During the period of Norman hegemony English continued to change according to its own internal dynamics; not all the changes were the result of the imposition of Norman French. Thus the inflectional system, which had probably begun to decline in the OE period, continued to decline and by 1400 had largely disappeared. The influences from Scandinavian speech continued to penetrate wider areas of English. Toward the end of the ME period, the dialect of the East Midlands (which extended south as far as London) began to emerge as the standard English of the whole country.

However, because there was no standard written form of the language after the Norman conquest, English in the ME period is highly variable and dialectal. The main dialect areas of the OE period – Saxon/Jutish in the south (dialects of Wessex and the South East), Anglian in the Midlands and the North (dialects of east and West Midlands, the North, and Lowland Scotland) continued to be distinct. In so far as English was written, each writer devised his own orthography and often they were inconsistent even with themselves.

The variety of speech in Britain, and the continuing tensions over the position of French, is well represented in John of Trevisa's discussion of the languages of Britain (1387).

Voltar ao começo da página Voltar à página principal