The event that began the transition from Old English to Middle English was the Norman Conquest of 1066, when William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy and, later, William I of England) invaded the island of Britain from his home base in northern France, and settled in his new acquisition along with his nobles and court. William crushed the opposition with a brutal hand and deprived the Anglo-Saxon earls of their property, distributing it to Normans (and some English) who supported him.
The conquering Normans were themselves descended from Vikings who had settled in northern France about 200 years before (the very word
Norman comes originally from
Norseman). However, they had completely abandoned their Old Norse language and wholeheartedly adopted French (which is a so-called Romance language, derived originally from the Latin, not Germanic, branch of Indo-European), to the extent that not a single Norse word survived in Normandy.
However,
the Normans spoke a rural dialect of French with considerable Germanic influences, usually called Anglo-Norman or Norman French, which was quite different from the standard French of Paris of the period, which is known as Francien. The differences between these dialects became even more marked after the Norman invasion of Britain, particularly after King John and England lost the French part of Normandy to the King of France in 1204 and England became even more isolated from continental Europe.
Anglo-Norman French became the language of the kings and nobility of England for more than 300 years (Henry IV, who came to the English throne in 1399, was the first monarch since before the Conquest to have English as his mother tongue). While Anglo-Norman was the verbal language of the court, administration and culture, though, Latin was mostly used for written language, especially by the Church and in official records. For example, the
“Domesday Book”, in which William the Conqueror took stock of his new kingdom, was written in Latin to emphasize its legal authority.
However, the peasantry and lower classes (the vast majority of the population, an estimated 95%) continued to speak English - considered by the Normans a low-class, vulgar tongue - and the two languages developed in parallel, only
gradually merging as Normans and Anglo-Saxons began to intermarry. It is this mixture of Old English and Anglo-Norman that is usually referred to as Middle English.
The Normans bequeathed over 10,000 words to English (about three-quarters of which are still in use today), including a huge number of abstract nouns ending in the suffixes “-age”, “-ance/-ence”, “-ant/-ent”, “-ment”, “-ity” and “-tion”, or starting with the prefixes “con-”, “de-”, “ex-”, “trans-” and “pre-”. Perhaps predictably, many of them related to matters of crown and nobility (e.g.
crown,
castle,
prince,
count,
duke,
viscount,
baron,
noble,
sovereign,
heraldry); of government and administration (e.g.
parliament,
government,
governor,
city); of court and law (e.g.
court,
judge,
justice,
accuse,
arrest,
sentence,
appeal,
condemn,
plaintiff,
bailiff,
jury,
felony,
verdict,
traitor,
contract,
damage,
prison); of war and combat (e.g.
army,
armour,
archer,
battle,
soldier,
guard,
courage,
peace,
enemy,
destroy); of authority and control (e.g.
authority,
obedience,
servant,
peasant,
vassal,
serf,
labourer,
charity); of fashion and high living (e.g.
mansion,
money,
gown,
boot,
beauty,
mirror,
jewel,
appetite,
banquet,
herb,
spice,
sauce,
roast,
biscuit); and of art and literature (e.g.
art,
colour,
language,
literature,
poet,
chapter,
question). Curiously, though, the Anglo-Saxon words
cyning (king),
cwene (queen),
erl (earl),
cniht (knight),
ladi (lady) and
lordpersisted.
While humble trades retained their Anglo-Saxon names (e.g.
baker,
miller,
shoemaker, etc), the more skilled trades adopted French names (e.g.
mason,
painter,
tailor,
merchant, etc). While the animals in the field generally kept their English names (e.g.
sheep,
cow,
ox,
calf,
swine,
deer), once cooked and served their names often became French (e.g.
beef,
mutton,
pork,
bacon,
veal,
venison, etc). Sometimes a French word completely replaced an Old English word (e.g.
crime replaced
firen,
place replaced
stow,
people replaced
leod,
beautiful replaced
wlitig,
uncle replaced
eam, etc). Sometimes French and Old English components combined to form a new word, such as the French
gentle and the Germanic
mancombined to formed
gentleman. Sometimes, both English and French words survived, but with significantly different senses (e.g. the Old English
doom and French
judgement,
hearty and
cordial,
houseand
mansion, etc).
But, often, different words with roughly the same meaning survived, and a whole host of new, French-based synonyms entered the English language (e.g. the French
maternity in addition to the Old English
motherhood,
infant to
child,
amity to
friendship,
battle to
fight,
liberty to
freedom,
labour to
work,
desire to
wish,
commence to
start,
conceal to
hide,
divide to
cleave,
close to
shut,
demand to
ask,
chamber to
room,
forest to
wood,
power to
might,
annual to
yearly,
odour to
smell,
pardon to
forgive,
aid to
help, etc). Over time, many near synonyms acquired subtle differences in meaning (with the French alternative often suggesting a higher level of refinement than the Old English), adding to the precision and flexibility of the English language. Even today, phrases combining Anglo-Saxon and Norman French doublets are still in common use (e.g.
law and
order,
lord and
master,
love and
cherish,
ways and
means, etc). Bilingual word lists were being compiled as early as the 13th Century.
The pronunciation differences between the harsher, more guttural Anglo-Norman and the softer Francien dialect of Paris were also carried over into English pronunciations. For instance, words like
quit,
question,
quarter, etc, were pronounced with the familiar “kw” sound in Anglo-Norman (and, subsequently, English) rather than the “k” sound of Parisian French. The Normans tended to use a hard “c” sound instead of the softer Francien “ch”, so that
charrier became
carry,
chaudron became
cauldron, etc. The Normans tended to use the suffixes “-arie” and “-orie” instead of the French “-aire” and “-oire”, so that English has words like
victory (as compared to
victoire) and
salary (as compared to
salaire), etc. The Normans, and therefore the English, retained the “s” in words like
estate,
hostel,
forest and
beast, while the French gradually lost it (
état,
hôtel,
forêt,
bête).
French scribes changed the common Old English letter pattern "hw" to "wh", largely out of a desire for consistency with "ch" and "th", and despite the actual aspirated pronunciation, so that
hwaer became
where,
hwaenne became
when and
hwil became
while. A "w" was even added, for no apparent reason, to some words that only began with "h" (e.g.
hal became
whole). Another oddity occurred when
hwo became
who, but the pronunciation changed so that the "w" sound was omitted completely. There are just some of the kinds of inconsistencies that became ingrained in the English language during this period.
During the reign of the Norman King Henry II and his queen Eleanor of Aquitaine in the second half of the 12th Century, many more Francien words from central France were imported in addition to their Anglo-Norman counterparts (e.g. the Francien
chase and the Anglo-Norman
catch;
royal and
real;
regard and
reward;
gauge and
wage;
guile and
wile;
guardian and
warden;
guarantee and
warrant). Regarded as the most cultured woman in Europe, Eleanor also championed many terms of romance and chivalry (e.g.
romance,
courtesy,
honour,
damsel,
tournament,
virtue,
music,
desire,
passion, etc).
Many more Latin-derived words came into use (sometimes through the French, but often directly) during this period, largely connected with religion, law, medicine and literature, including
scripture,
collect,
meditation,
immortal,
oriental,
client,
adjacent,
combine,
expedition,
moderate,
nervous,
private,
popular,
picture,
legal,
legitimate,
testimony,
prosecute,
pauper,
contradiction,
history,
library,
comet,
solar,
recipe,
scribe,
scripture,
tolerance,
imaginary,
infinite,
index,
intellect,
magnify and
genius. But French words continued to stream into English at an increasing pace, with even more French additions recorded after the 13th Century than before, peaking in the second half of the 14th Century, words like
abbey,
alliance,
attire,
defend,
navy,
march,
dine,
marriage,
figure,
plea,
sacrifice,
scarlet,
spy,
stable,
virtue,
marshal,
esquire,
retreat,
park,
reign,
beauty,
clergy,
cloak,
country,
fool,
coast,
magic, etc.
A handful of French loanwords established themselves only in Scotland (which had become increasingly English in character during the early Middle English period, with Gaelic pushed further and further into the Highlands and Islands), including
bonnie and
fash. Distinctive spellings like "quh-" for "wh-" took hold (e.g.
quhan and
quhile for
whanand
while), and the Scottish accent gradually became more and more pronounced, particularly after Edward I's inconclusive attempts at annexation. Scottish English's radically distinct evolution only petered out in the 17th Century after King James united the crowns of Scotland and England (1603), and the influence of a strongly emerging Standard English came to bear during the
Early Modern period.
