[geeks] Vocabulary and grammar (was: New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore)

[Mike Meredith]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:16:14 -0400 (EDT), Sandwich Maker wrote:
> there is probably more than a shadow of norman influence in this.
> after the norman conquest, french was the language of the ruling class
> while english was the language of the commoner.  you can see the

That's Old English. The commoner certainly didn't speak anything like
the English we have today. Apparently the Normans tried and failed to
learn the English of the time (at least William did) ... bear in mind
that the Normans had only recently switched to French from their
original Norse.

> rant: this legal practice dates from the time when formal docs had to
> be written so that both conqueror and conquered could read them, but

I'm not sure they worried too much about the conquered being able to
read legal documents considering most of them wouldn't be able to read.

> 1000 years later lawyers are still doing it!  even the english royalty
> formally abandoned french 700-odd years ago.

Who of course haven't been properly English since before the Norman
conquest. Interestingly the English aristocracy (and English royal
family) abandoned French partially because they didn't speak the French
of the French aristocracy and they were made fun of! Of course the
increasingly unrealistic claims to the French crown also had something
to do with it.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
        It's a bad idea to let third parties generate outbound mail
        traffic from your mail system to destinations of THEIR choice.