Not quite - they spoke Norman French which was a bit different. They were after
all, North Men, Vikings who had settled there some 150 years before over the
top of the Bretons (Amorican Celts) and France itself was home to many dialects
so variable as to be almost different languages.
England pre-1066 was home to equally variable dialects such as Wessex and
Northumbrian, based on layered incomings of different Teutonic tribes. That
doesn't include remnant Celtic languages like Cornish close to Breton). The
language wasn't codified and standardised until around 1400 and then more so
with the emergence of the printing press. Even so, there were dialects that
were difficult to understand within my lifetime - pure D.H. Lawrencian
Nottingham for instance - although that was more due to local idiom and
tortured vowels than actual linguistic features.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.soultheft.com
Author/Publisher:
The SLR Compendium:
revised edition -
http://blur.by/19Hb8or
The TLR Compendium
http://blur.by/1eDpqN7
On 21/03/2014, at 8:02 AM, Chris Crawford wrote:
> In the middle ages, the nobility and kings of England did not speak
> English; they spoke French, a result of England's conquest by William the
> Bastard (that's what he was called in France, because he was born to his
> father's mistress, not his wife). Many of them never learned to speak
> English at all.
--
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