Effect of the Normans on Middle English
The year 1066 had a resounding impact on the course of English history. William the First, Duke of Normandy, conquered England and took it as a stronghold in his reign. The French rule over England lasted for several centuries and brought about innumerable changes to the English state, language, culture and lifestyle. William imported French rulers to take over English government and religious posts. The French were not only the new aristocracy in England, but the new society. The English amended their language and their culture in an effort to more resemble the French and to communicate with their new lords. The English language was more changed by the Norman Conquest than by any other event in the course of English history. Middle English is defined as the four hundred year period between the Norman Conquest and the time the printing press was introduced to England in 1476. This essay will explore the specific effects that the French had on Middle English morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics and lexicon. During the period of French rule in England the standing of English as a valid language dropped substantially as French took over as the status language. Because so much of the French influence
Alexander, James W. William I, King of England, Grolier's Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1996. The French gave the English language many specialized words, such as those used in culinary or legal situations. Because the Normans had taken over judicial and aristocratic roles, their high-prestige vocabulary was passed on to the lower-class English who acted as their clerks and servants. Thus, many cooking terms such as broil, goblet, and beverage were passed on by masters to their servants. The French influence on the lexicon was nearly nonexistent in areas where the French masters would have had little or no contact with their servants, for example, in the field. French introduced two novel graphemes to Middle English, *q* and *z*. Although the phoneme /z/ was new to ME, the sound /kw/ was already prevalent in such Old English words as cwic and cwen. After the introduction of *q*, these native English words came to be spelled quicke andquene in Middle English. In addition to introducing new words into the English language, the Normans also introduced some new sounds. The English had previously had no phonemic distinction between /f/ and /v/; /v/ was merely an allophone of /f/ that occurred between vowels. However, with the influx of French loans which began in /v/ and contrasted as minimal pairs in English, this distinction made its way into Middle English:
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2431
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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