The Viking Saga Continues

This another installment of the History of English which tells of how English was influenced by the Normans. In this video, they explain that the Normans are Scandinavians (who we tend to call Vikings – but they never had horns on their helmets). Vikings were called many different names and were not one distinct group of people. It is similar to how “pirate” gives us the image of the Caribbean and Johnny Depp but in reality it’s a much more varied group of people. The Normans were called Nor- because they came from the North and settled on the coast of France in the 800’s.  Two hundred years later they were distinctly called the Normans. So when the Normans go north to England they carried their name even though they were coming from the South. This was the famous Norman invasion of 1066.

This was not the first time Vikings had invaded England. Old English developed because of many different Scandinavian and Germanic groups that invaded the Island after the Roman Empire declined (generally accepted as 476 AD) and left it unprotected. The earliest forms of Old English was brought by invading groups and is known as Prehistoric Old English that was from around 450-650 AD. We think of prehistory as being much older but this is obviously the world’s prehistory we think of. We know that prehistory is defined as “before writing” and this means there is no written example of that period of Old English. What is considered to be the first example of written Old English was Caedmon’s Hymn written around the mid to late 600’s. Of course Old English fused forms of Norse and Danish and other the other Germanic groups that were found on the island at the time. They had to learn to speak to each other with and do business so Old English made many changes during those 400 years.

The next significant moment is 1066 when the Normans invaded. The Normans were now speaking a variety of French and they had learned to use Latin in context of laws and religious doctrines. When they conquered, they became the ruling class. Everyone who spoke Old English had to learn to speak Norman French. If and when they didn’t have to interact with the ruling class they continued to speak Old English. Eventually some of the French and Latin fused with the Old English which at this point is considered Middle English. A Modern English speaker can almost read Middle English because this was the important moment when recognizable vocabularies were coming together. But, a Modern English speaker’s eggs would scramble if they had to read Old English.

Of course, English stayed “alive” with the lower class people. They didn’t stop using it between themselves and that is why the animal on the farm has a different name from the food prepared on a plate that was served to the Lord of the farm. The Normans enforced the use of French and it was used anytime when speaking to the ruling class. So, English existed parallel to French and it absorbed a number of influences and, at the same time, maintained its roots. When modern English emerged it was able to draw on French and Latin root words as well as English root words for the same things. This is what people mean when they say that English is a rich language. We can use foot and pedal or father and paternal as well as cow and beef or chicken and poultry. This ambidextrous characteristic of English is even more interesting when you know that English and Latin come from the same family of languages. I will talk about the discovery of that connection some other time.

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