As a 19 year old kid I went to Italy and learned Italian in 4 months. Yes, I was highly motivated but English vocabulary is somewhere between 40 to 60% Latin due to the events below. You could say that English is really a semi-Latin language and the better educated you are and the more advanced your English vocabulary is the more Latin you know.

(It's ironic as hell that French blood runs in many Brits!) Know your history!!! Also the French Normans conquered Southern Italy! Italo Normans!

All is the same - All is changed

The Effect of 1066 on the English Language. Latin flows into English from Latin French. English would never be the same again.

But first the Battle of Hastings which changed English forever:

On October 13, William the Conquer received news that the already weakened army led by Harold the King of England was approaching from London, and at dawn the next day, William left the castle with his army and advanced towards the enemy, which was numerically similar and which had taken a defensive position atop the Senlac ridge (about seven miles from Hastings, at present day Battle, East Sussex). Harold disposed the English soldiers, over the route which connected to London.[4]

The Battle of Hastings in 1066 lasted all day. Along the ridge's border, hiding behind a large wall of shields, all English soldiers stood so effectively that, initially, William's army could not even reach the high enemy, suffering a large number of casualties. However, to pursue the many fleeing Normans, many English soldiers broke their ranks so disorderly that William, whose horse had collapsed, could lead some Norman knights who were followed by the rest of the Normans back into the battlefield. Thus, the battle was even while the English wall of shields weakened progressively, to disappearance. Then, William launched an effective wave of arrows over the shields, which decided the Norman victory irrevocably. This resulted in the deaths of Harold—who was likely killed by an arrow by a severe eye-wound—and two of his brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine Godwinson. At dusk, the English army made their last stand. By that night, the Norman victory was complete, and the remaining English soldiers fled in fear.

The English language that is spoken today is the direct result of 1066 and the French Norman Conquest.(French comes from Latin) Modern English is vastly different from that spoken by the English prior to the Conquest, both in its word-hoard and its grammar. In order to understand what happened, and why, it is necessary to look at both English and Norman Latin French before 1066, and then the Middle English that resulted from their interaction.

Old English

Old English was a highly inflected member of the West Germanic language family. It had two numbers, three genders, four cases, remnants of dual number and instrumental case, which could give up to 30 inflectional forms for every adjective or pronoun. Its syntax was only partially dependent on word order and has a simple two tense, three mood, four person (three singular, one plural) verb system. The spelling of Old English is strictly phonetic.

As a result of the Viking wars and the subsequent settlement of many speakers of Old Norse, a North Germanic language, the introduction of new words and a simplification of the grammar had already started to take place. This was more marked in those areas in the North, Midlands and East Anglia where the Danes and Norwegians settled in large numbers. Although the two languages were mutually understandable, a modern day comparison would be a Geordie talking to a Cockney with neither making any concession to the other.

The language had four major dialects: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish. As the kings of Wessex (West Saxons) gradually emerged as kings of all England, West Saxon dominated the written form of the language. As such, it gradually became less reflective of the spoken language, especially in the Danelaw.

Norman French

A legacy of the Roman Empire was the fact that the area west of the Rhine spoke Latin. The Latin they spoke, however, was not the highly inflected Classical Latin, used by the church and scholars, but the common, or Vulgar Latin of the soldiers and the market place. This Vulgar Latin, as it had no one controlling or regulating its use, brought in words from the languages of the local populace. For this reason Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and French, though similar, even by 1066 were not the same. But they still were similar.

French had brought in many words from the Gauls who originally occupied the land. In addition they had suffered conquest and settlement from various Germanic Tribes such as the Goths and Vandals, and finally the Franks, who gave the country its new name. From these peoples came additional words.

There were two major divisions in French: langue d'oil in the north; langue d'oc in the south (oil and oc being variations of 'yes'). Langue d'oc was nearer to Catalan than it was to Langue d'oil.

Langue d'oil had three major dialects, namely those of Picardy, Ile de Paris and Norman. The Northmen (Danes and some Norwegians) who had taken the land and settled there influenced Norman French. Its proximity to England had also allowed some English words to slip in, noticeably nautical terms.

Middle English

By 1100 English had changed sufficiently to be classed as a 'new' version of English, descended from, but quite different to, Old English.

Middle English had five major dialects, Northern, West Midland, East Midland, Southwesterm and Kentish. It was characterised by the extreme loss of inflections, almost complete standardisation of the plural to 's' and the introduction of a large number of Norman French and Low German words. The French came, of course, from the French speakers who now controlled the government, the law and the church. The Low German from the large number of Flemish the Normans had first hired as mercenaries and then used to settle those parts of the country they had harried and depopulated.



So, how had the changes come about? When the Norse had settled in England they brought with them a language that was from the same linguistic family, and indeed enabled them to be understood by their English neighbours. The culture was also similar, not surprising considering that the original English had come from Scania, Denmark and the North Sea coast bordering Denmark. In addition the new comers supplemented, rather than replaced, both the aristocracy and the commons. As a result assimilation was very quick and easy even before the fighting stopped. The Normans brought with them an alien culture and language. Add to this their social status as the new ruling class, and it is no shock to find that assimilation was slower, and the new society and language that emerged was so radically changed from that which they found when they arrived uninvited in 1066.

English, which had been a written language since the conversion to Christianity, was rapidly dropped as the language for royal and legal charters and proclamations, not reappearing until Simon De Montfort's Parliament issued the Provisions of Oxford in 1258. The replacement language was usually Latin, though often duplicated in French. French was the language of the royal court, the legal system and the church. The use of French was reinforced by the fact that many of the new aristocracy and religious houses had extensive holdings in France. This state of affairs changed slightly in 1204 when King John lost Normandy, but did not really end until after the English were finally expelled from France at the end of the Hundred Years War in 1453.

The result of English disappearing as a written language was the removal of any restraints on language development. This assisted the simplification of the grammar as the folk strove to find the simplest way to communicate with people who did not speak English as their first language. The process that had started with the compromises needed to allow English and Norse to understand each other better gathered speed as the Anglo-Scandinavians sought to communicate with both their linguistic cousins, the Flems, and the alien Normans and French. This development was not dissimilar to that of Vulgar Latin as it changed into the various Romance languages as mentioned earlier. By the time the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle stopped being written at its last stronghold in Peterborough in 1154, its West Saxon English was already obsolete.

The ruling classes spoke French, as did the many merchants that flocked to England following the Conquest. Those that dealt with them, or had ambitions to join them, had to learn at least some of the language. However, it cannot be assumed that the ruling classes and the merchants did not quickly come to at least understand English if not speak it. It would have been very difficult to oversee an estate or buy and sell unless you could communicate, though it was noted at the time that there was a flourishing job market for translators. This may have sufficed for many of those who arrived with William the Bastard, but surely not for their children, brought up by an English wet nurse and with English servants. It is hard to imagine that those children did not absorb the language at the same time as they supped the milk. It should also be borne in mind that many of the Normans married English wives, often the widows or daughters of the previous English landholder. In such a household both parties would need to learn at least a smattering of the others native language. At a lower level, the need to learn at least simplified English was essential. Many a Norman or Frenchman was granted a holding (which he would re-name a manor) as reward for services rendered during the Conquest. With a totally English workforce and possibly an English wife and no French speakers for miles learning English would have been the number one priority.

From documentary evidence we know that by 1160 an English knight had to retain a Norman to teach his son French. Around 1175 a noble woman warns her husband of danger in English, not French as might have been expected. In 1191 one of four knights in a legal dispute cannot speak French when appearing at a court where the proceedings were still conducted in that language. By 1200 phrase books teach French as a foreign language are being produced. In the same year the poet Brut's 'The Owl and the Nightingale' appears and signals the rebirth of English (now Middle English) as a literary language. By the end of the thirteenth century a poet can write:

Lewde men cunne Ffrensch non,

Among an hundryd unneþis on

(Lewd [common] men ken [(understand] French not

Among a hundred only one)

This Middle English was the basis for the Modern English we speak and write today. The number of words used had expanded greatly, with the French normally supplementing rather than replacing the English, allowing shade of meaning not available to other languages. Thus we can either deem or judge a matter to be right or wrong, with to deem being a personal opinion whilst to judge is a formal declaration. Cattle become beef and swine pork when killed and dressed for the table, yet conversely a flower is a bloom when put on display. Hopefully it will have a pleasant French odour, aroma or scent rather than a Middle English smell or worse, an Old English stench! Also adding to the store of words were French words that had been given and English beginning or ending. For example, the French 'gentle' joins the English man/woman to give gentleman/woman, or gets an English ending to become gently, or even more bedecked with English as ungentlemanly.

The habit of using words from other languages rather than creating our own has continued until this day so that it has been claimed that in The Concise Oxford Dictionary there are words from 87 languages, great small, and often dead. The total number of words in Modern English is estimated to be between 400,000 and 600,000, and many of them have more than one meaning! The nearest language in word count is French with a mere (as in 'a restricted amount', rather than a lake) 150,000.

Despite this the language is still basically Germanic and most basic words are still derived from Old English. Taking the body as an example, whilst we may have French 'spirit', our body still has English arms, legs, hands, feet, head, eyes, ears, nose and mouth, plus brain, liver, lungs, arse, and men bollocks.

Many folk when seeing Old English are totally confused and fail to see the commonality. Much of this is caused by the changes in spelling convention, in addition to the fact that Modern English is not spelt phonetically (with the many different versions of English in use today an impossibility).

The Lords prayer is an example:

Thu ure Fæder þe eart on heofunum, Sy þin nama gehalgod. Cume þin rice, Sy þinne wille on eorðan swaswa on heofonum. Syle us todaeg urne daeghwamlican hlaf. Ond forgyf us ure gyltas, swaswa we fogyfaþ þampe with us agyltaþ. Ond ne lae thu na us on constnunge, ac alys us of yfele. Soðlice

Phonetically this reads:

Thu our Father, thee art on heavenum, say thine nama ge-holyod. Come thine rich, say thine will on earth swas-wa on heavenum. Sell us today ourne day-ge-wham-lick hloaf. And forgive us our guiltas swas-wa we forgiv-ath themp with us a-guilt-ath. And no lay thu nah us on costnun-ya, ahsh all-lays us from evil. Soothlike.

Which is quite easy to understand.

Another reason we find Old English so hard to understand is that Modern English (as opposed to dialectal English which is still alive, kicking and confusing to this day) is derived from the East Midland dialect of Middle English, rather than from the West Saxon in which most of the original sources is written.

Just how English would have developed if there had been no Norman Conquest is a matter of conjecture. No doubt it would have continued the simplification that had started with the arrival of the Norse, but it is doubtful if it would have become the wonderful tool it is today.

Normans in Italy

The early Norman castle at Adrano.See also: Norman conquest of southern Italy and Italo-Norman
Opportunistic bands of Normans successfully established a foothold far to the south of Normandy. Probably the result of returning pilgrims' stories, the Normans entered the Mezzogiorno as warriors in 1017 at the latest. In 999, according to Amatus of Montecassino, pilgrims returning from Jerusalem called in at the port of Salerno, when a Saracen attack occurred. The Normans fought so valiantly that Prince Guaimar IV begged them to stay, but they refused and instead offered to tell others back home of the prince's request. William of Apulia tells that, in 1016, pilgrims to the shrine of the Archangel Michael at Monte Gargano were met by Melus of Bari, a Lombard freedom-fighter, who persuaded them to return with more warriors to help throw off the Byzantine rule, and so they did.

The two most prominent families to arrive in the Mediterranean were the descendants of Tancred of Hauteville and the Drengots, of whom Rainulf Drengot received the county of Aversa, the first Norman toehold in the south, from Duke Sergius IV of Naples in 1030. The Hautevilles achieved princely status when they proclaimed Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno "Duke of Apulia and Calabria". He promptly awarded their elected leader, William Iron Arm, with the title of count with his capital of Melfi. Soon the Drengots had attained unto the principality of Capua and the Emperor Henry III had legally ennobled the Hauteville leader, Drogo, as dux et magister Italiae comesque Normannorum totius Apuliae et Calabriae in 1047.


La Cuba, a Siculo-Norman palace in PalermoFrom these bases, the Normans were eventually able to capture Sicily and Malta from the Saracens under the famous Robert Guiscard, a Hauteville, and his young brother Roger the Great Count. Roger's son, Roger II, was crowned king in 1130 (exactly one century after Rainulf was "crowned" count) by Pope Anacletus II. The kingdom of Sicily lasted until 1194, when it fell to the Hohenstaufens through marriage.

The Normans left their mark however in the many castles, such as the Iron Arm's fortress at Squillace, and cathedrals, such as Roger II's at Cefalù, which dot the landscape and give a wholly distinct architectural flavour to accompany its unique history. Institutionally, the Normans combined the administrative machinery of the Byzantines, Arabs, and Lombards with their own conceptions of feudal law and order to forge a completely unique government. Under this state, there was great religious freedom, and alongside the Norman nobles existed a meritocratic bureaucracy of Jews, Moslems, and Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox.


[edit] Normans in Byzantium
Soon after the Normans first began to enter Italy, they entered the Byzantine Empire and soon thereafter Armenia against the Pechenegs, Bulgars, and especially Seljuk Turks. The Norman mercenaries first encouraged to come to the south by the Lombards to act against the Byzantines were soon fighting in Byzantine service in Sicily. They were prominent alongside Varangian and Lombard contingents in the Sicilian campaign of George Maniaches of 1038-40. There is some debate concerning whether the Normans in Greek service were mostly or at all from Norman Italy and it now seems likely that only a few came from there. It is also unknown how many of the "Franks", as the Byzantines called them, were Normans and not other Frenchmen.

One of the first Norman mercenaries to serve as a Byzantine general was Hervé in the 1050s. By then however there were already Norman mercenaries serving as far away as Trebizond and Georgia. They were based at Malatya and Edessa, under the Byzantine duke of Antioch, Isaac Comnenus. In the 1060s, one Robert Crispin led the Normans of Edessa against the Turks. Roussel de Bailleul even tried to carve out an independent state in Asia Minor and had the support of the local population, but he was stopped by the Byzantine general Alexius Comnenus.

Some Normans joined Turkish forces and aided in the destruction of the Armenians vassal-states of Sassoun and Taron in far eastern Anatolia. Later, many took up service with the Armenian states further south in Cilicia and the Taurus Mountains. A Norman named Oursel led a force of "Franks" into the upper Euphrates valley in northern Syria. From 1073 to 1074, 8,000 of the 20,000 troops of the Armenian general Philaretus Brachamius were Normans — formerly of Oursel — led by Raimbaud. They even lent their ethnicity to the name of their castle: Afranji, meaning "Franks." The known trade between Amalfi and Antioch and between Bari and Tarsus may be related to the presence of Italo-Normans in those cities while Amalfi and Bari were under Norman rule in Italy.

Several families of Byzantine Greece were of Norman mercenary origin during the period of the Comnenian Restoration, when Byzantine emperors were seeking out western European warriors. The Raoulii were descended from an Italo-Norman named Raoul, the Petraliphae were descended from a Pierre d'Aulps, and that group of Albanian clans known as the Maniakates were descended from Normans who served under George Maniaches in the Sicilian expedition of 1038.