To the outside observer, the English language must appear impossibly
complex. Unlike the strict morphology and syntax of Spanish, Italian,
or Japanese, English is a labyrinthine trip into strange etymological
dead-ends, seemingly random rules of pronunciation, and enough
homonyms to leave even the most accomplished ESL student scratching
their head. The reason for English's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink
approach is tied inexorably to its history, and nowhere is that more
apparent than in the Norman Conquest of 1066 AD, an event that
rewrote the English book from top to bottom.
Even
before William of Normandy set his sights on the English throne, the
isles which we now know as Britain were in a constant state of
identity crisis. Centuries of invasions from the Celts, the Welsh,
the Angles, the Saxons, and finally the Danes had left the isles
culturally and linguistically schizophrenic, and yet William the
Bastard's invasion still represents a total shift from what came
before it; a lingual modernism at the edge of a sword. This is
immediately evident in comparing the opening lines of the two most
famous English works of the time, Beowulf,
written around the 8th
century AD, and The
Canterbury Tales,
from the 14th.
Beowulf's
opening lines are incomprehensible to the modern layperson, in a
language that looks more German or Scandinavian than English, which
betrays the Saxons and Danes Germanic presence: “Hwæt,
we gardena in geardagum/þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon/hu ða æþelingas
ellen fremedon!” (Anonymous 1) Despite this, in just a few hundred
years Chaucer's Canterbury Tales offers
us a piece that is recognizably English to the modern eye, if
old-fashioned: “Whan
that aprill with his shoures soote/The droghte of march hath perced
to the roote/And bathed every veyne in swich licour/Of which vertu
engendred is the flour” (Chaucer 1). 700 years is a long time, to
be sure, but it's almost too quick for a language to completely
change, as English did, and the proof is in the change of the ruling
class when William gave positions to all his French-Norman followers
and ousted the Anglo-Saxon elite the deposed House of Wessex
supported. English became inundated with French language conventions,
from the previously-unused sibilant C, to the new distinction between
the Anglo-Saxon-derived words 'cow' and 'pig' (since the Saxon
lower-class were the farmhands) and the French-derived words 'beef'
and 'pork' (since the French nobility were the ones doing the
eating). The Norman conquest also put the wheels in motion for
another significant linguistic shift some time later; English tongues
attempted to make sense of foreign French accents and pronunciations,
which led to the eventual effect of the so-called Great Vowel Shift,
where vowels were moved up further in the mouth, playing more off of
the lips and blade of the tongue than the soft palate in Saxon and
early post-Conquest language. The effect was startling; Chaucer's
'hu' (pronounced 'hoo') became Shakespeare's 'how' and words began to
become more expressive with the whole of the mouth opened to their
pronunciation.
So
here we are, a thousand years removed from William of Normandy
striking down the last Saxon king on the fields of Hastings and 700
years removed from The
Canterbury Tales,
and modern English is still rooted in what Chaucer spoke and wrote,
whereas the Old English of the Anglo-Saxons is all but dead and gone.
Of course imperialism will alter a language and a culture, but much
like the way the Normans Norse lineage differentiated them from the
French, so did the Normans blend with the Anglo-Saxons and create an
uniquely English people with a identity removed from their
conquerors. Whether it initially seemed good or ill, the conquest of
England by the cosmopolitan French thrust the island's inhabitants
out of the Dark Ages, and its appropriation of French and Latin
linguistic practices was but one part of its modernization that
allowed Britain to become truly Great.
Works cited
Al
Shamari, A. (n.d.). The
Influence of the Norman Conquest on English.
Iraqi Academic Science Journals.
Chaucer,
G., & Coghill, N. (2003). The General Prologue. In The
Canterbury Tales
(p. 1). London: Penguin Books.
Heaney,
S. (2001). Beowulf:
A new verse translation
(p. 1). New York: W.W. Norton &.
Loyn,
H. (1980, April).
The Norman Conquest of the English Language.
History Today.
