FREE ESSAY ON EFFECT OF THE NORMANS ON MIDDLE ENGLISH

EFFECT OF THE NORMANS ON MIDDLE ENGLISH

Introduction
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 has been nativized by present-day
speakers, many do not realize the impact that our language took in the years following
1066. Not one aspect of English life went untouched by the Norman presence in England,
notably, its language. 
Phonology
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:
French loans English
vetch fetch
view few
vile file
The French also influenced the adoption of several new diphthongs into English.
Diphthongs are two vowel sounds which are pronounced as one. 
Diphthong Old French Old English
/eu/ neveu neveu (nephew)
/au/ cause cause
/Ui/ bouillir boille (boil)
point point
/ i/ noyse noise
choisir chois (choice)
The new English diphthongs were not exactly like they were in French - they were modified
by existing English vowels to create brand new diphthongs. 
The stress pattern of Old French words differed from that of Old English words, and often
both stress patterns were present. Germanic languages, such as English, tends to place
primary stress on the first syllable, unless that syllable is an unstressed prefix.
French, on the other hand, prefers to stress the heavy syllable (one containing a coda)
closest to the end of the word. Middle English loans from French often retained their
native stress pattern, however, in Present-Day English, the majority of these borrowed
words have conformed to the Germanic pattern. 
Lexicon
Irrefutably, the largest influence that the Normans had on the English language was on
its vocabulary. From the time William usurped the English throne until the end of the
Middle English period, our language was inundated with French vocabulary terms. In fact,
of the 2,650 words in the epic English poem "Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight," at least
750 are estimated to be of French origin. Even in Present-Day English, some of our most
commonly used words are of French origin; table, tax, religion, trouble and pray are all
derived from French words borrowed into Middle English. 
Hardly one syntactic category was left untouched by French loan-words during Middle
English, although the majority of English words borrowed from Old French tended to be
nouns, verbs and adjectives. The following is a very brief sample of some now-common
words which had recently joined English in the Middle English period:
Adjectives: inequales 'inequal,' principalis 'principal,' 
naturales 'natural'
Verbs: strive, please, waste, join, cover
Prepositions: French contributed to the constructions of 
according to and during
Interjections: gramercy 'thank you'
Nouns: ancestor, cellar, dinner, garment, kennel, 
music, noun, plague, statute
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. 
Orthography
The Present-Day English writing system is notorious for being a poor representation of
the sounds it is supposed to denote. Much of this confusion has roots in the time of
Norman rule. The onslaught of French loanwords and a few new French phonemes caused
English orthography to worsen as an accurate portrayal of English phonology. 
While Old English had used the grapheme *c* to spell the phonemes /k/ and /c/, French
loans introduced that grapheme to represent the phonemes /k/ and /s/, and the digraph
*ch* to spell /c/. In fact, the French influence was so strong in these respects, the
French *ch* replaced the English *c* even in native words, and the *c* spelling of /s/
was adapted into such indigenous English words as mice and since. 
When the French phonemes /j/ and /v/ became prevalent in English, there was no standard
method for transcribing these sounds. Most English speakers wrote them simply as
allographs of the existing /i/ and /u/. Throughout the Middle English period, both the
graphemes *i* and *j* could be used to represent /i/ and /j/, and the graphemes *u* and
*v* represented the phonemes /u/ and /v/. 
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. 
The Anglo-Norman grapheme *w* was newly borrowed into English orthography in the Middle
English period. Although this grapheme was new to the language, its phoneme was not. Old
English scribes had used the runic wynn to represent this sound. 
French introduced several new digraphs to the English orthography. A diagraph is a
two-letter combination used to represent a single sound. French introduced the
combinations *ou* and *ow* to represent the phoneme /u/, in loans such as hour and round.
This spelling was so prevalent in loan-words that it spread even to native English
words:
Old English Middle English
hu how
hus house
hlud loud
brun brown
While Old English used the diagraph *sc*, French loans used the letter combination *sh*,
and this spelling came to entirely replace the earlier spelling. Thus, OE scamu became ME
shame. The common French diagraph *ch* replaced the Old English *c* in words such as ceap
and cinn. In Middle English, those words came to be spelled cheap and chin. One more
diagraph, *gu* was introduced by the French in the form of such loan words as guard and
guide. Thus, even native English words adopted this spelling (OE gylt fi ME guilt ) as
well as non-French loans (ON guest, guild ). 
Morphology
Not only did French contribute to the words in the English language, it also contributed
to its morphology. Words in Old English were highly inflected, but these inflections were
largely lost during Middle English and the structure of words was drastically changed.
Some researchers speculate that the onslaught of French loan-words contributed to the
loss of English inflectional endings, due to the fact that it was difficult to assimilate
the new words into a highly inflected language. However, English had already lost some of
its inflections before the Normans landed on English shores, and therefore there must
have been multiple contributors to the simplification of English. 
Because French nouns were borrowed without their own native inflections, they were
adapted to English strong male declension, contributing to a more regular noun declension
system as the sheer number of loan nouns increased. French verb loans, however, entered
English as part of the existing weak verb class. Weak verbs were characterized by their
regularity of tensed forms, whereas the strong verbs were those which were irregular.
Because all of these new verbs were regular in the language they supported the form
regularity and the majority of the irregular forms were dropped from use. 
French adjective loans were borrowed into English along with their inflected endings for
number. Adjectives in Old English had also carried this distinction, however, the
singular form came to be used more regularly in the Middle English period. At the onset
of the borrowings, French adjectives were borrowed with the French noun-adjective
construction (houres inequales) but as English word order became more rigid and the
French terms were modified to fit the English adjective-noun construction, the inflected
number endings were dropped from the adjectives (dyverse langages). 
The French language contributed many new affixes to the English language during the
Middle English period. Many of PDE's most common prefixes and suffixes appeared in the
language after the Normans appeared on English soil. Prefixes such as re-, de- and in-
and suffixes like -able, -ist, -ify and -ment are all relics of the period of French rule
in England. Several less productive, but recognizable, affixes also entered English from
French during Middle English. Prefixes counter-, inter and mal-, and suffixes -age, -al,
-ery, -ess and -ity directly descend from the French. 
Syntax
Old English was characterized by a much freer word order than Present-Day English allows.
However, because of the loss of many of its inflections, Middle English was typified by a
more rigid word order. Despite the increasing regularity of English sentences, the more
prestigious French language left its mark on this aspect of the English language. For
this reason, although ME preferred the native adjective-noun construction, the French
noun-adjective pairs were acceptable in loan phrases. 
French supported the continuation of Old English constructions that were French-like. In
addition to the noun-adjective construction, Middle English continued to treat certain
adjectives as nouns, a practice that was common in Old French as well as Old English.
Although the use of adjectives as nouns has dropped out of the PDE grammar, that practice
was kept alive through Middle English by the assistance of the French influence. 
One syntactic construction that was new to Middle English was the use of the preposition
of to convey the possessive. This new usage was probably supported by the French particle
de which was already being used in a possessive sense. Yet another new construction to
Middle English was the use of the perfect infinitive tense ("to have held them under").
This construction was most likely created by influence from similar Latin and French
constructions. 
Middle English saw an emergence of polite second-person pronouns, a practice that was
influenced by and modeled from the French. For example, in Gawaine and the Green Knight,
Arthur uses one form of 'you' when addressing Guinevere and another when addressing
Gawaine. Gawaine himself uses even a third second-person pronoun when addressing the
Green Knight. 
Semantics
One of the more difficult areas to see change in is that of semantics. From the limited
set of data that remains from the beginnings of the English language, we can only surmise
about how words were used and in what contexts. Therefore, it is difficult to see where
there are shifts in denotation or connotation because records may not exist which
demonstrate the full use of certain words. However, despite the parcity of surviving
texts, researchers have been able to note several cases of semantic shifts between Old
English and Middle English that were influenced by French. For example, the OE word freo
originally had two meanings, free and noble. However, when the French word noble entered
the English language, the existing freo lost that meaning. Similarly, OE's smierwan had
the meanings of smear and anoint, but when the French anoint entered the language,
smierwan lost it's positive connotation. 
Many speakers of Present-Day English notice that English has different words for animals
when they are alive and when they are served as food. This distinction has its roots in
Middle English. In OE, an animal had the same name whether it was in the barnyard or on
the table. However, when the Normans moved in as English aristocracy, they had different
terms for their meat dishes. The English servants needed to learn the French terms for
these dishes, and these terms have survived into PDE. Several animal/meat distinctions
are due to the French:
Old English Old French Present-Day English
sheep mouton mutton
cow boeuf beef
swine porc pork
calf veal veal
fowl poulet poultry
flitch bacon bacon
Conclusion
Clearly, when the Normans invaded the Saxon shore in 1066 they influenced much more than
the existing language. Almost every aspect of English life was changed when the French
took over their rule. However, one may argue that the longest-lasting impact of the
Norman Invasion was that on the English language. 
Although The English spoken during the Middle English period may hardly resemble, to the
lay person, the language spoken today, it is not difficult to recognize the areas where
French influence still dominates the language. The most salient example is that of
vocabulary. Any student of Modern French is struck by the sheer vastness of similar
lexical terms between it and Present-Day English, despite the fact that French and
English derive historically from different sources. 
It would be impossible to speculate what the English language might look like today if
the Normans had never invaded Britain. However, suffice it to say, the present English
language has been extensively enriched by the quantity of this foreign influence. 
Bibliography
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Burrow, J.A. and Thorlac Turnville-Petre. A Book of Middle English, Blackwell Publishers;
Oxford. 1992.
Fisiak, Jacek. A Short Grammar of Middle English, Oxford University Press; London, 1968.

Millward, C.M. A Biography of the English Language, Harcourt Brace; Boston. 1996. 
Take Our Word For It, weekly online publication, available at http://www.takeourword.com
Yerkes, David. English Language, Grolier's Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1996.
Yerkes, David. Middle English, Grolier's Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1996.