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English before 1100For alternate uses, see Number 1100. Events William II of England dies in a hunting accident Henry I becomes King of England Baldwin I becomes King of Jerusalem. Baldwin of Bourcq becomes Count of Edessa. Dagobert of Pisa becomes Latin Patriarch of Jerusa is called Old EnglishOld English (also called Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language which was spoken in England around the year 1000. It is a West Germanic language, and is therefore similar to Frisian and Old Saxon. It is also quite similar to Old Norse (and, or Anglo-Saxon; English after 1500Events Europe's population was ~60 million. Spielvogel January 5 Duke Ludovico Sforza recaptures Milan, but is soon driven out again by the French. April 22 Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral officially discovers Brazil and claims the land for Port is called modern EnglishModern English is the term used for the contemporary use of the English language. In terms of historical linguistics, it covers the English language after the Middle English period; that is, roughly, after the Great Vowel Shift, which was largely conclude.
When the VikingViking refers in a loose sense to the North Germanic (ethnically Scandinavian) population of Northern Europe in the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, which during this time colonized, raided and traded the lengths of the coasts, rivers and islands of Eurs conquered England, they had also conquered northern FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. and became gallicized (as in English they became anglicized). In 1066, led by William the Conqueror, these gallicized Vikings, the Normans, attacked, conquered, and ruled England (and still ruled northern France). England became more closely tied politically to feudal western Europe, and became trilingual: French became the language of the king and the nobles, Latin the language of the priest and professor, and English the language of the people.
This profoundly changed the English language. This is attributable to the introduction into England not just of a new language, Norman French, but of new political structures which relied upon that language. Although it is possible to overestimate the degree of culture shock which 1066 represented (especially given the strong Anglo-Norman connections under both Edward and Harold), the removal of the top levels of an English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their replacement with a French-speaking one, both confirmed the position of French as a language of polite discourse and vernacular literature and removed the standard ( Wessex) dialect of Old English and its role in education. Although Old English was by no means as standardised as modern English, its written forms were less subject to broad dialect variations than post-Conquest English.
Even now, after a thousand years, the Norman class-system is still visible in English: the words for common things are derived from Old English, for example: pig, cow, dog, sheep, farmer, and house.
The words for things used by the rich and the ruling class are derived from middle French, for example: pork, beef, court, judge, jury, parliament, honor, courage, rich and study.
Archer and fletcher are special cases. Although there is no particular reason why we kept the English version-archer and the French word fletcher has fallen, it is more than likely the archers themselves used the word 'archer' and the generals used the word 'fletcher'.
Even the word for the less wealthy classes came from the mouth of the francophone: poor.
The triplicate vocabulary of English comes from this Norman period. For instance, English has three words meaning roughly "of or relating to a king": kingly from Old English, royal from French and regal from Latin. Each carries its own nuance.
The Old English kingly brings to mind a fabled king; the French royal, the ample pomp of a medieval court; and the Latin regal, the noble expression and manner of a king, an abstract king.
Deeper changes occurred in the grammar. Bit by bit, the wealthy and the government anglicized again, though French remained the dominant language of literature and law for several centuries. The new English didn't look the same as the old. Old English had a complex system of inflectional endings, but these were gradually lost and simplified in the dialects of spoken English. Soon the change spread to its increasingly diverse written forms. This loss of case-endings can again be traced back to the loss of written standards for English, and not just to French-speaking occupation. English remained, after all, the language of the majority. It certainly was a literary language in England, alongside Anglo-Norman and Latin from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In the later fourteenth century, Chancery Standard (or London English) - itself a phenomenon produced by the increase of bureacracy in London, and a concomitant increase in London literary production - introduced a greater deal of conformity in English spelling. While the fame of Middle English literary productions tends to begin in the later fourteenth century, with the works of Chaucer and Gower, an immense corpus of literature survives from throughout the Middle English period.