First cousin rivalry between English and French as languages?

So do you know that the English language is actually made up of 60-70% French words? So that’s shocking, isn’t it? Let me explain how that happened. We have to go back almost a 1000 years to find the connections and historical facts!

So a quick recapitulation of historical facts: regular and linguistic. In 1051, Edward the Confessor promised his throne to the Duke of Normandy, a faraway cousin, who history knows as Willam the Conqueror.

Edward had no heirs and he continued to make deals with different people for the English throne, right up to his death. Harold Godwinson the Earl of Wessex and the most powerful

English noble at the time and the King’s brother-in-law was captured by William in Normandy in 1064 and one of the conditions of his release was that he swore to support William’s claim to the English throne.

Since Edward the Confessor had made Harold Godwinson, his heir apparent, he was crowned the King of England on the 6th of January 1066. When William heard of this perfidy/ deception, he appealed to the Pope asking for his permission to invade England and claim his throne. The rest is history as we know it, William the Conqueror invaded England, killed Harold and imposed his own rule across almost the entire green isle. Hadrian’s wall was his natural border against the Scots, though!!

So you might ask at this point, what does this piece of history, interestingly enough, have to do with how we use English today? Well, the Duke of Normandy of course, did not come alone, but with more than 7000 nobles, knights and common soldiers. He was ruthless and to impose his rule over the land, he pillaged the country.

The MO aka the modus operandi was simple.The Normans raided an Anglo-Saxon stronghold, killed the noble and any sons he had and then forced the widow to marry the invader. A lot of the knights and soldiers were young, single men who also settled down in England, with English women.

William also imposed Norman French as the official language at court and since most of the nobility were Norman, they spoke Norman French.

As for the Anglo-Saxon nobles left who accepted his sovereignty, they scrambled to learn Norman French to be able to communicate. Old English in the 11th century was a mixture of Anglo-Saxon words and syntax of primarily Germanic origin, plus a good dash of Old Norse too, thrown in for good measure.

So this duality continued, with the peasants keeping their Old English, but reducing all the complexity of syntax, hence phrasal verbs and the merchants and nobility used Norman French.

This adaptation, of course, happened over a period of time and by the time the Dukedom of Normandy lost its hold over England, there were two different ways of using the language that we call Modern English.

I shall explore these linguistic connections in my following posts. Some websites/ articles for reference. Claimants to the English throne in 1066

An Introduction to the Battle of Hastings

Influence of French on English