Somewhat soon after being given the ruling rights in Nornandy, I believe. But like mentioned, it was not the same French as the one the King of France, for example, would have been speaking at the time Edit: King of West Francia* It wasn't quite "France" yet
Like VERY soon. The Norsemen who were given the land were most probably just that - MEN, so all of their children already had French mothers. Poof, the second generation is probably mostly french speaking already.
I noticed this myself; from listening to workmates I realised the working class' way of speaking plainly and simply is actually by use of more Germanic words, and it clicked just how much sense it actually made.
@@headlesschicken203 I got shocked the first time I heard americans say "filay" when they referenced a McDonalds burger: fillet o' fish. Americans surprisingly like fancy French pronunciations as I've heard a few others as well.
Is it certain Welsh was his first language? Would be interesting if it was the case. I did read that he could speak Welsh and write it but that he used English more.
@@historywithhilbert146 it's been a while since I studies this. His father was some tudor( I can't remember, he died in battle for against the Yorkists)-tudors were from the Welsh marches. Father dies fairly young, his mother Margaret baufort remarries (and again to Lord Stanley) but Henry Tudor eventually flees the country during Edward IV reign with Jasper Tudor ( his uncle) they are Welsh. They flee to Brittany and Henry Tudor spends a long time in exile in Brittany. As such his first language is Welsh, naturally, he was born there and his closest companion Jasper Tudor was Welsh. It is worth pointing out that Brittany and Wales ( as well as Cornish ) were very similar lingually, Brittany is names after the Bretons/Britons and the Britons were originally Welsh whereas the Englishhad their own ethnic origins (angle/Jute/Saxon etc). I think there is evidence that Henry vii spoke Welsh but you would have to dig for it.
@@Enviouskibbles Most of the noble families and the Breton court spoke Gallo at that time, not Breton. Only half of Brittany spoke Breton and it wasn't favoured by the nobles. The last Breton-speaking duke of Brittany died in 1119.
For the longest time when they had territory in France it wasn't a king of England that has lands in France is a French noble that was the king of England
doczg88 I love England but I must admit it makes me cringe everytime they deny the obvious Frenchness of the Normans. It seems they’re still salty about being conquered by a bastard French nobleman...they find the idea of being conquered by vikings less humiliating.
Fabianus educated Englishmen know better , it’s the semi educated (or completely uneducated ) masses that learn history from Facebook memes and they repeat falsities that contain a grain of truth. “Normans were Vikings” is patently false but there’s “truth “ in that the Norman aristocracy was of partial Viking ancestry. They confuse ancestry with identity. It’s just as crazy as saying “ the Visigoths and the Romans conquered Mexico “ , just because the Spaniards are of partially Roman and Visigothic origins
@@javier6926 Actually, even in terms of real ancestry by William's time the norse blood of the elite was little compared with frankish "local" blood. For example, William itself had mainly frankish blood (it's possible to check his ancestry quickly on wikipedia), since all his ancestors since Rollo's time married with french women. It's really just the "lineage" that was viking, and maybe the "spirit" for adventure and conquests.
Fun fact : If England had won the 100 years war, the whole world would probably speak French. Because the two countries, united under a single monarch, would have evolved by speaking the language of the most populated regions: in the XVth century, France had 20 million inhabitants, and England: 5 to 6 million...
Not only that but the Elites of England were French. Henry V spoke English to his Serfs but spoke French to the Plantagenet Supporters in his Ancestral Homeland/France as France was technically in a Civil War within the Valois Dynasty between the Elites of Paris and the Elites of Burgundy plus the Plantagenet had Supporters In the Western Part of the Country. Even under Plantagenet England, the Population spoke French because the Plantagenet were French themselves and knew they had to appease the Natives to maintain their Hold on France for the brief time they have.
@@jbloun911 and you totally missed the point if French became the language of England then the USA would be speaking French today therefore making French the lingua franca
Around 70 of words used in a passage will be Germanic, those numbers don’t really show a proper picture as most of the loan words are fairly obscure and not often used in English. Speaking English with only Germanic vocabulary is possible but not with French or Latin.
The answer is that they have never stopped speaking French. They did stop speaking it as a first language... But it is known that even the Hannovers and Saxe-Cobourg-Gothas speak it as a third language
@Mysterious Stranger Not really. It's more closer to Dutch than German, with Celtic, Latin, Greek, Danish, French, and later because you know, empire, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and a host of other bits and pieces of languages from all over the world thrown in for flavor. Then if you want to talk about British English as a separate thing, later words get imported from America, Australia, etc. Quite the pot of stew really.
@@hhale English imported words from French to fill in the mid-standard and Latin to cover the high-standard words put in the gaps opened by the Renaissance, followed by Industrial Revolution, followed by Modern and Postmodern eras. New words just kept being coined for the matter. However, it is still nearly completely Germanic in everyday language. And also, your hypothesis is complete bullshit. Languages like Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Danish, Celtic and "other" have nearly no contribution to the English language. In fact, it wouldn't make sense to say Portuguese, Spanish or Danish influenced English because those languages developed from Latin and Old Germanic, from which English borrowed words anyways so they basically wouldn't have "invisible" influence. If you want me to describe it, English is a house. Foundations made by Germanic, and floor made by Germanic. Furnished and regulated by French, and covered in walls of Latin. And then you've got some few Greek accessories here and there.
Conversely, the Scots called their Anglic language 'Inglis' (aka English) and what we now call Scottish Gaelic "Scottis" until a bunch of wars with England prompted a rethink of what to call their language - hence 'Inglis' became 'Scots' and 'Scottis' became 'Erse' (Irish - Gaelic).
@@Burgermeister1836 that is stupid , only bits of northern Ulster spoke Scots , the true language of Ulster was always Irish and it is still spoken there
French is still seen as a fancy pants upper class language despite France losing it's global position of prestige a long time ago. Fun fact: the Russian Nobility spoke French up until the Napoleonic wars made that become unfashionable.
French or Old French or Norman French which is vastly different from French today. However to this day the King or the Queen speak French fluently. Victoria spoke a lot of German and was told constantly to speak English to the Hoi Polloi.
Apart from a few, they didn't speak French in the first place. Norman was a separate language, a sister language if you will to French. Most of the basic vocabulary was considerably different, and then you add in the Old Norse Component. Norman developed into several varieties each with their own unique characteristics, but didn't have much in common with French. Yes, French and Norman did share a common Gallo-Romance ancestor, but Norman did not branch off of French, it branched off of Gallo-Romance. French is just one of many related Gallo-Romance languages. French wasn't the language brought over by William the Conqueror, it was Norman. Now, some kings of England did speak French, like Henry du Bois and some of the Plantagenet family, but most spoke Norman, or more accurately Anglo-Norman. Anglo-Norman only had something like 60% mutual ineligibility with French. The Norman accent was pretty damn different to that of a French one, so no Henry V would definitely not have spoken English with a French accent. We also know that Richard the Lionheart natively spoke Old Occitan, and spent a good portion of life speaking it instead of Norman or English.
@@c.norbertneumann4986 Although Norman was the prestige language of the middle and upper classes, some did speak French. However, French (which originated in the areas around Paris, and not native to Normandy or other parts of modern France), was introduced to England at least 200 years after the Norman Conquest. We don't really have any references or mentions of the French language before about 1300, and it's introduction was probably after Edward I of England married Margaret of France in 1299. Before that when the Angevins took the English throne, most of the nobility natively spoke Norman, and would have had little to no contact with French speakers. This was also around the time when some of the nobility began natively speaking English again. Norman and French were also used rather sporadically for official government business, with Latin still being the preferred language of government.
Actually it was a dialect of French 60% of the English vocabulary have a French (and Normand ,but it's a French dialects anyways) origin ,which also make the fact that 52% of the English vocabulary is of Latin origin . Fun Fact :If we don't count the other 2 langage of the Gallo-Romance family (Occitan and Franco-Provençal ,do not confound with Provençal ,which is a dialect of Occitan) ,English is the 4th closest langage to French ,here the classement : 1-Italian (89% of lexical similarities) 2-Spanish (75%) 2-Portuguese (75%) 4-English (70%) 5-German For 6th and 7th position ,I forgot which one between Romanian and Dutch is 6th . Someone speaking French can completely understand Italian (Written) ,Occitan and Franco-Provençal without ever learning anything in the langage . Someone speaking French can also do the same with Spanish and Portuguese ,but for these ,you atleast need the basics .
@@bobjoe7508 As a native Frenchman, everything you wrote is wrong. Good job really. Oh btw, have you ever, ever taken a norman french text or a parisian french text and compare them? Yhea, I bet not. Both are intelligible to me.
Interesting thing is, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle was continued up to the times of Henry II in something like late Old English. And there is at least one Norman royal charter written in Old English (and not in French or Latin). The one I mean is from the reign of Henry I. So, Old English didn't disappear from formal use immediately after the Norman conquest. It was a process. Edward III had Chaucer as court poet, so he obviously understood and even enjoyed Middle English poetry. So, maybe the lowest point of public use of any version of the English language was between Henry II and Edward III.
Could you do one on when the various barbarian invaders of the 3-400s started speaking the tongues of the common folk? I.E. when the Visigoths started speaking proto Spanish, Franks started speaking proto French, Lombards and Ostrogoths started speaking Italian or when the Eastern Roman empire's elite started speaking Greek? Or another fun one, after the Arab conquest of the Middle East and the Magreb how long did it take for the different peoples to switch from Berber, Coptic and the other languages to Arabic? Thanks, love your videos!
For Greek in Eastern Rome, it has always been the case since the conquests, as it was considered a noble language in the same way Latin is in the medieval era onwards
@MISERICORDI A Okay, should have prefaced it by saying "proto Italian" like the others. Still curious if under those hundredish years of rule if they started assimilating. And still curious how long it took for the Lombards to assimilate (if they did).
@washington gibz Well a lot of them did though, right? Now a lot of the Magreb is mostly Arab speaking right? Are those people the descendants of Berbers who assimilated into Arab culture, Arab settlers or maybe a mix of both?
@@caezar55 yeah but they became french by marrying the French and having half and then 3/4 and then 7/8 French descendants. It's really not hard to understand. That's how gentics work. William The conqueror was barely Scandinavian.
@@micahistory If it's not hard to understand, how come you don't understand it? The Normans who invaded England would have been close to 100% Scandinavian DNA. They mostly married among themselves in Normandy. Remember in those days it was rare for most people to leave their village their entire lives.
@@caezar55 that's not true. Most of them married French women because most of the Normans were men. And if you know something about history, you know there are always way more men who leave than women. It's the same reason why most Latin Americans have Iberian paternal ancestry but Indigenous maternal ancestry. As for William, it is well documented that his ancestors were mostly French, that isn't even speculation
@@caezar55 Ethnicity, Nationality and Origin are all different... We can trace our DNA and Origin to our ancestors, we are given our Ethnicity at birth and we can choose our Nationality Recently though all of these are just considered one same thing and it might be because of English language and western culture... My Origin is half Serbian and half Bulgarian, I am an Ethnic Serb of Serbian Nationality...
I‘m just amused that the average English person is so in awe of multilingualism, something that is totally normal for much of the rest of the world... To me, it‘s nothing special to grow up with three languages and pick up a couple more. I knew people who at 11 were starting on their seventh language when going to secondary school. I do think the development of Norse to Norman to Middle English via Anglo-Saxon is fascinating, though, so thanks!! I was never entirely sure of the time frame.
It’s because English speakers really don’t have the same need to learn other languages as non-English native speakers because English is the lingua franca.
Woeschhuesli it’s not an illusion. Practically every person under 40 in Europe speaks English, as you do. Most young people in major Asian cities speak English. In China students learn English (not German). Even international air traffic control is in English.
@@FredBTs Thats right and false, on paper it is, as french who's in his 20s, I would say 20% of people could have a conversation in english, not more, languages in France are still seen as useless since we don't really need it
Davout According to Eurobarometer nationally 39% ofFrench speak English but in the large cities the % is much higher. English is the language of science, computers, international aviation, the internet and more ,you do need it.
Many people have difficulties to ear that French was the official language of England while it was not in France. The first official writing was made in french by the Norman in their conquest of England.
You are a disingenuous Francophile. The English language was relegated to second-rate status until the 1400s, certainly; but not crushed out of existence. It was still an unofficial court language, not treated as an alien tongue.
Henry IV was the first king to make the official language be English in his court. From then on all subsequent monarchs spoke English as the official language of the realm.
They had a different causus belli or reason for war, at least long term it was german unification. Either their national ideas were to their advantage, or I have played to much Europa Universalis. Gs.
'La Reyne le veult' (Norman French for 'The Queen wills it') are still the words used in Parliament to signify Royal Assent to a Bill, that thereby becomes an Act of Parliament. So, in a sense, our laws only come into force through the use of Norman French. In the 21st century. In a country exiting the EU in just a few days. Mon dieu. #TiesThatBind.
I'm having so much fun seeing people saying norman French isn't French while it's just a dialect of French just like you always had in France per region. I have no issues reading a norman French text, it's my own language and I'm not Normand.
The Plantagenets spoke french because they were ... french basically ! They took almost 3 centuries to just start to speak the language of their obedient subjects ...
Francophile revisionism. The Normans who came to England (who I'd argue are simply the last of several people who make up the English) culturally began to assimilate in the late 1100s. Language is a different story, but the extent to which Old English was "suppressed" is overstated. 2nd class, sure, within official correspondence and court is about all.
Eleonore of Aquitaine never spoke French as a first language, she spoke the Occitan language and was a notable patron of poetry in that language. In fact her children, including Richard, grew up native speakers of both French and Occitan.
Henry Pernoix L' Occitan ( ou langues d'oc ou oui = hoc ) regroupe toutes les langues romanes parlées jadis dans le tiers sud de la France . Les langues d'Oil ( oui = hoc ille ) regroupent toutes les langues romanes parlées jadis dans les 2/3 tiers nord plus la Belgique romane et la Suisse romande ! Le Vieux Français appartient aux langues d' Oil !!!!!
I suspect that another reason for the shift was the custom of nursemaids and governesses, generally of lower rank. Such would, most likely, be speaking English and thus influencing the first words spoken by the noble youngsters.
They kept on marrying French princesses for ages and they probably brought along their nurses and friends. The language if parluament was French until the 17th century. Nobiliteit were French, and still today the higher classes have French names like Lefebvre and still look more French than Saxon. The Anglo-saxons turned into the lower classes when the Normans took their castles, land and possessions by force. It’s all in the Doomesday Book.
@@marjet2228 there's an interesting Wiki page on the subject here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_language I can recommend Melvyn Bragg's book "The adventure of English". He made an audio version which is superior to the print in that pronounciation is such an important aspect of language. I seem to remember that Norman French only lasted as a language of legal status for three hundred years after the Norman conquest. A lot of Norman's only summered in England, returning to Normandy and Picardy for the milder winters. Until they were a few generations into their occupation they could have avoided "going native". When they started having babies in England things would have changed. Hence Queen Eleanor having the right to call her son the "Prince of Wales" after giving birth to him in Caernarvon.
The legal culture may have been functionally trilingual. Testimony regarding certain matters in English, official correspondence between attorneys and the judges in Norman french, with document and records being kept in Latin. Haha imagine that as an attorney/judge. Speaking to your client/the parties in English, your peers in Norman, and then reading about what just happened in Latin :P
I remember the documentary a history of Britain in the episode Nations, Simon Schama said that Long Shanks was the first king to habitually speak English.
No the Process began during the Hundred Years War. Even Edward III and his son still spoke in Old French as a first language. Even in Occitan (Old Language of the current South of France). Perhaps since Henry IV.
Interesting how after the Normands, then Plantagenet and 2-roses war periods, you have the Tudors who declared themselves as Welsh (Owen Tudor), the Stuart who kept their number and title of Kings of Scotland independently from their English titles, and then, the German period... It's definitely hard to define an English identity according to English kings... When you think that English kings only got rid of their German titles in 1917, just because they were in war with Germany...
Yes I thought the tide turned to English when chaucer wrote the canterbury tales in english I think that was Edward III though but it shows english was understood by the royal court by then where it was first preformed
They also used to speak German as the King of England, the Kaiser of Germany, and Tsar of Russia were cousins during the early 1900s. They spoke German to each other along with their grandmother.
Wow. Finally found a channel being produced and presented by a genuinely knowledgeable historian. Not like the horrible, cumbersome narration of second-rate content that we find on other channels.
They stopped speaking French following the confusion at Crecy. The Norman officers spoke only French while foot soldiers and archers spoke only English. A decree was made that henceforth all Norman's of the upper classes had to learn English.
My friend Charles Petrie, Son of #2 at British Embassy in late 70's, spoke French and German. I would say most British aristocrats spoke French for hundreds of years after 1350 which is the real shift.
I love how they mention that Falstaff is mentioned having to fight for king Richard when they discuss it they should trust his word if it is going to rain or not. Liked the film a little more then Braveheart for being more accurate, but also being able to include bits of fiction from the play.
This should really be “when they spoke English as first language” not “when they stopped speaking French” because several English monarchs still spoke French afterwards as they were simply educated like Elizabeth I for example.
If you're a silly Francophile desperate to rewrite history, sure, you can frame it that way. The Normans began to assimilate by the late 1100s, language notwithstanding.
“Veal” is French while “calf” is English. English farmers saw the animal on the hoof hence calf while on the French nobleman saw it on the table as veal
@Treavor Alvardo William's (Duke of Cambridge) firstborn son is three quarters English. He is successor to the throne after William. His mother Kate Middleton is of English ethnicity, and so was William's mother, the Lady Diana Spencer (although she had a Norman surname and some Scots in her family tree). Only his grandfather Charles (Prince of Wales) is German-rooted.
If I can judge from my own language, from all the texts that were found from the 11th century, there was barely any difference between dialects. I assume since French is a related language, North French dialects were very similar. There was probably no significant difference between Norman and Picard.
Agree, I come from northern France, just close to Picardy, and Picard and ch'timi are basically the same languages, and my norman family are quite the same, few different words I guess
Languages were basically on a continuum in most of the European countries. So two neighboring regions' languages were probably mutually intelligible as they weren't too far apart; but the further apart two regions were, the less likely they'd be mutually intelligible.
@Guru Charan If that is taken into regard then every monarch of Europe is related to Charlemagne the Great of the Franks. Generally maternal descent is not taken into account. Henry was descended from a French count of Anjou, hence the dynasty being named as the Angevin dynasty. Later they named themselves as Plantaganets Or Les Plantagenet.
@Guru Charan The point is that matrilineal descent was not the factor behind William the Conqueror's invasion of England. Yeah you were right about the other monarchs but matrilineal descent was secondary to patrilineal descent and only applied if there was no male heir in countries which followed semi Salic law and not Salic law. The descent from Alfred the Wessex through the maternal line was not a cause for William the Conqueror invading England. Neither was it the factor behind the rise of the Angevins. Why are the Houses to which the monarchs belong named after their paternal ancestors? If maternal descent was taken into account while naming a dynasty, every English king would belong to the House of Wessex and not be named as the Plantaganet, Tudor, Stuart dynasty etc
When did the English kings start speaking French again? 1763, when Quebec became part of the British Empire. George I and George II didn't speak English either, they spoke German. George III did speak English, only to find how much his father and grandfather had been hoodwinked by the Americans.
@@c.norbertneumann4986 After losing the American colonies the king did "lose his marbles" for a while. He even suggested that he abdicate, for letting the country down during the revolution, but Parliament decided else wise. George III, called "Farmer George" for his interest in agriculture, holds the position of third longest reigning English monarch, after Victoria and Elizabeth II.
Plantagenêt house has his origins from a warrior peasant named Tertulle the Forester, also known as Tertulle of Gâtinais, son of Torquat, from Redon in Western France, which he was ennobled by king Charles II the Bald in the IX century.
Samuel Terry Short answer: They never spoke Gaelic. Long answer: Scotland as we know it formed in 843. The Irish Scotti tribe had colonised the west and dominated the Pictish kingdom in the north of Scotland, and replaced Pictish with Gaelic. This is where Scottish Gaelic comes from. It was never widely spoken by the Scottish elite, nor by royalty. Around Lothian in the south east, which was controlled by anglo-saxons until 973, Old English was still being spoken when the Scots conquered it. Lothian was the wealthiest part of the new Scottish kingdom; its Old English speakers were never assimilated into the Gaelic culture as there were so many of them, so they continued speaking Old English. King David I seized the Scottish throne in 1124. He had been raised in England speaking Old English and set up the capital city of Edinburgh in this elite Old English speaking part of the kingdom. French also would have been understood at court. In the 15th century, the Scots stopped referring to their language as ‘English’ and started calling it ‘Scots’ due to rivalry with England. Scots and French were the languages of the Scottish court. Scots later became regarded as uncivilised, much like Gaelic, especially after the union with England in 1603 when court moved to London. Scottish elites preferred to learn the middle and later modern English language that was spoken in England and Scots slowly died off. Now, Scotland speaks a dialect of Modern English called ‘Scottish English’. This is different to Scots, which is a dialect of Old English that developed separately to what is spoken in Scotland today.
Gaelic spread from Ireland into Dál Riata (north west) and from there into Pictland (north east), which was Gaelicised and together formed the Kingdom of Scotland ('Scotland' coming from the Latin name for the Irish, 'Scoti'). Scottish kings spoke Gaelic until it started to decline under Malcolm III in the mid 11th century after he married an English princess, then had a brief revival under Donald III until he was succeeded by Malcolm's children (who were raised in England) and thereafter rapidly declined (especially under David I in the mid 12th century) Not all of modern Scotland was Gaelic speaking though, the Kingdom of Scotland originally only encompassed the Highlands. Lowland Scotland spoke Old Northumbrian English ever since the Anglo-Saxons conquered Brythonic Gododdin (capital city at Edinburgh, later renamed Lothian) in the early 7th century; same as in Brythonic Strathclyde and Cumbria (though to a lesser extent than in Lothian) when they too were incorporated into Bernicia/Northumbria until the mid 9th century Viking invasions; and Lothian was part of the Kingdom of England until the Scots invaded from the north and they were all annexed into the Kingdom of Scotland in the early 11th century
@@tacosmexicanstyle7846 the Scottish kings definitely did speak Gaelic , why would there names be Gaelic then . like Macbeth , Duncan (Donnchadh ) , Donald (Domnall) Malcolm (Mael Colm) . the kingdom monarchs were originally Gaelic speaking
I have always believed that it was in the reign of Edward III that English became the language of the court. Richard was defeated by Bolingbrook because of his linguistic abilities while Richard’s was still noticeably Norman.
Very interesting. When will you be giving us a video on English spelling? I've always wanted to grow up and know how to spell 'forest'. It was a shock to find I'd got it wrong all these decades.
The statement that English aristocrats stopped using French in the 15th Century is incorrect; Anglo-Norman/English nobles continued to speak French as their first language until the 17th Century. To this day, the Queen opens Parliament in Norman. The so-called Anglo-French wars were really a conflict directed by warring noble cousins, one branch of which had invaded England that became their stronghold over three centuries. The ensuing battles were because the Anglo-Normands considered that they had residual royal claims in continental Europe. In some ways, we are speaking a language that is descended from Norman (a related dialect to old French) in that Modern English vocabulary is over 45% of French origin, and the grammar and syntax of Modern English and Modern French both also descend from Norman/Old French
No, the modern grammar and syntax of English does not reflect French. That is one area that has more closely stuck to Old English lines. In fact, you could say Old Norse has had the biggest impact on English with the lose of gender, lose of conjugation, and word order importance.
@@leod-sigefast That's wrong. Norman French is a french dialect. Just compare an Old english text and a middle english text. One sounds german, the other sounds Old French.
Whether it be French or English, Forest is spelled with one R. If you need to stop for a rest due to fatigue, then you may have the double R separated by an a.
There is of course a technical difference between Kings of England and English Kings since never mind some of them were French, we have had Danish, Welsh, German and even Dutch (cue the anthem) Kings and the next one will be half Greek.
I think it is their culture that made them adventurers and pioneers. Look at their beginnings, Vikings, Norsemen that pillaged and butchered the rest of Europe. They converted and within decades, they completely assimilated into the Frankish culture, taking up the language to a great extent, even deriving their own Norman dialect, building incredible buildings in particular churches and cathedrals of the Romanesque style, coming out of the age of late Antiquity architecture. They adopted Frankish military technology and improved upon it, from chain mail, to functional helms and the massive kite shield along with the stirrup that allowed them to tuck the lance in a couch position to literally spear through an entire man or even two with a powerful cavalry charge. The fact that they were often times just fighting each other in internal domestic competition meant that many sought to expand their territory overseas be it conquests like William or by selling their martial prowess for coin as in the de Hauteville family. The first Crusade also was the indicator of how well regarded these Normans were. In any situation that was of critical and of danger, the Frankish (French) or the East Frankish (German) crusader leaders would look to Bohemond of Taranto (Italo Norman) to find a solution to defeat their adversary. This was the famous son of the greatest de Hauteville adventurer Robert Guiscard who absolutely terrorized not just the Byzantines in Italy but also in Greece their home turf and also the Moors in Sicily and even the Pope himself and the Holy Roman Emperor. In actuality he had outdone WIlliam the Conqueror by quite a margin in terms of accomplishments and given his lowly status when first entering into Southern Italy in the earlier part of the 11th century.
Can someone from UK tell me if it’s true that the upper class in uk still give their children more French names? Emma Watson - Born: Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson Lily James - Born: Lily Chloe Ninette Thomson
I think this is true for the Netherlands as well - French names are typically upper class names. Especially for girls / women: Aurélie, Georgine, Anette, Frederique etc.
Oh... Well it seems to be true but it's the case for the whole Europe. Anne is a common name but it's a French name. The "E" is a trace of the French's ancestors which are the Franks. Normally it would be Ann or Anna and certainly not "Anne". But oh well, French's hegemony can still be seen everywhere.
You're forgetting that the gentry were deeply intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons, Norse and Celts right from the very start. These were originally the Norman soldiers of William The Conqueror, to whom the Norman nobility subinfeudated their manors (Tenant-in-chief to Tenant-in-possession) as nobility weren't in the business of farming. The manorial-owning class of the year 1065 pretty much were wiped out at the Battle of Hastings, and those who survived were dispossessed. William distributed the manors to comprise the new mesnes of the Norman nobility, who weren't all that numerous. They subinfeudated them to the Norman soldiers, so that 100 manors in the mesne of one noble might be distributed to 50-70 different Norman soldiers, who became lords of those manors as Tenant-In-Possession. Now, those new Norman lords of the English manors needed ladies of the manors. So after marrying local women they quickly became bilingual. After that first generation or two the Anglo-Norman gentry married within itself, but by then they were already bilingual. Aside for having initiated their lines by marrying local women, the gentry lived in two different worlds simultaneously. They were constantly reporting to their overlords, the Tenants-in-Chief, on the status of the manors and strategy for the future; they also had to render feudal service to their overlords in return for the manors, such as answering calls to arms. On the other hand, they were also constantly dealing directly with the English-speaking (or Celtic, or Norse, depending on region) residents of the manors, or bailiffs, or estate managers, etc. So they were perfectly bilingual. Most likely the nobility picked up English during their meetings with their vassals, the gentry who were lords of their manors. It probably didn't take all that long for the nobility to learn a smattering of English, and by the early 14th C. the nobility was perfectly fluent in English; there is no lack of documents supporting that. The deep intimacy between the nobility and the gentry who were their vassals can scarcely be overestimated. No, a gentry could never marry a noble's child (although it was common for the gentry to marry illegitimate children of the nobles and to consider that a great privilege). But it's been shown that gentry families had a very close affinity to their overlords that would go on for generations, often sharing in the nobles' rise or fall. Occasionally you can even see this in Shakespeare. Although his historical plays revolve around the nobility as the main characters, you can sometimes see how Shakespeare's nobles interact with their retainers in the gentry. A fine example is the opening of Henry IV Part 2, where MORTON rushes in to bring encouraging news to the Earl of Northumberland of the rebellion of the Archbishop of York. While literary scholars claim this MORTON character is made up, in fact historians know perfectly well who he was. He was the lord of Morton Manor in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in youth had been shown great favor by Richard II including marrying one of the queen's ladies in waiting. Henry IV restored Robert Morton Jr. upon the latter's swearing a loyalty oath, which he then broke by joining the Archbishop of York's rebellion. Morton justified his participation in the rebellion as forced upon him by being summoned by his overlord. Henry IV didn't buy it (feudal service does NOT include treasonous calls by the overlord to overthrow the monarch!), and sentenced him to death and seized his property; Robert barely escaped with his life thanks to the intervention of Prince Hal, whom Robert had befriended back during the years when Henry IV was in exile and Hal's life hung by a thread. Back to the point (sorry about the need for the historical background), Shakespeare treats this minor member of the gentry (with probably no more than half a dozen manors) as a close friend of the great Earl, treated as practically an equal among the Yorkist nobility, and who speaks to the earl very informally as a peer and co-conspirator. (He even says "we" knew the risks when we made these dangerous plans.) This perfectly exemplifies the close relationship that the gentry and nobility had: they worked hand in hand, strategized together, and were on friendly terms. It's very hard to believe that such a relationship could be carried on in exclusively in French, which by 1300 was demonstrably a language in which the Anglo-Norman gentry were less and less skilled.
I'm a linguist and I teach Romance languages (Italian, Spanish, French) to English speakers. One of the things that makes the process less painful is the Latin-ization of English by Norman French which gave English its Latinates: most of the "--ty" words: society, personality, activity, community, creativity, which can be EASILY translated into French, Italian, Spanish as true cognates ("true friends"). If old English had remained purely Germanic from its old Frisian origins, it would be a lot harder for English-speakers today to learn Romance languages. So, thank God for the Norman Conquest and the French 🇫🇷 forays into England 🇬🇧! 😁 👍
Chaucer's English has alot of writing in accent and often un-stranded spelling. "a draughte of londoun ale" or "a draught of London ale" one is the modern spelling.
I read a couple of Chaucer's poems(?). I really liked the rhythm of it, the language & the spellings & could, with great brain strain, grasp the gist of it. It made me laugh quite a few times... so the humour came through! My head felt quite weird after... like it had strained my brain & forced it to expand! 😂 I would def have a go at trying to read some more.
The name gives it away? He wrote in middle English even if he was no doubt fluent in middle French. Very few would be able to watch a film in middle English without subtitles
Having a French name doesn't make someone a native French speaker, while I've no doubt he was able to speak Anglo-Norman there had been immigration from France since the Norman conquest so plenty of time to integrate linguistically. Many English names are derived from French
English did borrow words from Norman French; these are the ones that are pronounced/spelled differently from Modern French, like chief/chef and castle/chateau. After the Normans had settled in England, Parisian French became more prestigious, so the Anglo-Normans preferred English over their "embarrassing" French. "Forest" has one r;"Forrest" is a name, like Forrest Griffin the fighter.
1:45 there was no « french » french at that time. Ok there was the french of Paris, the french of the king of France that you could take as a reference. But the french language was only standardized as THE french with the creation of the French Academy by Richelieu in the mid 17th century.
Yorkshire would have had a fair amount of Scandinavian(Danish) as part of its language; for example, York, itself, was "anglicized" from the Danish name Jarvik(or Yorvik). After all, most of northern England was part of the Danelaw for quite some time English STILL has many loanwords from Danish, the word for a village, THORP, being one
@@mikegrossberg8624 The Anglian name of York was Eoforwic. Since the Angles had already arrived in the fifth century, it is more likely that the Danes "danicized" the Anglian name of the city.
They haven't ! Story says, on her first official visit to France in the early 1950's, HM Elizabeth II met with then-President Vincent Auriol and after talking around, the latter told the former : "your French is much better than mine !"
I always wondered this, so thanks for the video. I always wondered which language Henry VIII, the most fascinating English king, spoke natively- and I did think it was English as he would write notes and letters in English, and legislation would be drafted in English.
Great video, though I would have loved to hear as the final plot twist : when did the English kings stop speaking French ? - They never did, French is still one of the only two languages (with English, obviously), that you are allowed to address the queen in.
Kuuba Kuugel as Elizabeth is the queen of a French speaking people, (the Québécois) it would make sense that it would be okay for them to be able to address their queen in their own language.
Well.. this language shift could certainly go either way. The house of Plantagenet is of French origin, so much so that the chance of them being francophone is even higher than their early predecessors (I.e. William the Conqueror as he may be raised in a mixed Franco-Norse background). Also since they, at least during the earlier half of the Hundred Years War claimed legitimacy to the French throne (Thus, considered himself to be the king of the French as much as the king of England) made it necessary for him to speak French in order to communicate to his francophone allies (eg. Kings of Arles, duke of burgundy).
Wait was he the one who's allegedly born as a product of his mom cheating on his dad? Or is that another one I forgot? I saw a documentary first saying that one of the kings in the same period should neve be the king because of that, hence legally the British crown should belong to someone else, and then interestingly they traced to some Australian Republican (who moved from the UK)
Indeed, and in the more northern parts of England it is "wold". Our wealds and wolds aren't quite as wooded as they used to be, though. Now "wold" is thought of as moorland, and the Weald is very pastoral. I say we make the Weald a weald again. Though as I work in forestry, I am biased.
It should be noted that the Normans were not Capetians, were not French outside of language and dress, and began to assimilate to/consider themselves English, in opposition to French, by the 1200s. I despise Francophiles, how anyone could love the snail-lickers is beyond me.
When did english kings stop speaking french? When they started speaking german of course
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Wait werent the windsors from like the 1700s, (im assuming thats who you mean when u say german)
@Jim Hope dude not correct, they spoke spanish before that smh
Or Dutch. Jeez everyone has been on the English throne.
@EnglishXnXproud Phillip was Spanish, if you count jure uxoris kings
Question should be: When did the Norsemen stop speaking Norse and start speaking French?
Somewhat soon after being given the ruling rights in Nornandy, I believe. But like mentioned, it was not the same French as the one the King of France, for example, would have been speaking at the time
Edit: King of West Francia*
It wasn't quite "France" yet
@@iteachyou1575 didnt french revolution already start language unification
Like VERY soon. The Norsemen who were given the land were most probably just that - MEN, so all of their children already had French mothers. Poof, the second generation is probably mostly french speaking already.
@@chingizzhylkybayev8575 Exactly. It doesn't take long for languages/dialects/accents to develop.
Quickly. They were quite few next to the population of Normandy and instantly started mixing with the locals, especially the nobility.
The upper class,, upper middle class still use more frenchified English words as a mark of superiority.
I noticed this myself; from listening to workmates I realised the working class' way of speaking plainly and simply is actually by use of more Germanic words, and it clicked just how much sense it actually made.
Like superiority
@@headlesschicken203 I got shocked the first time I heard americans say "filay" when they referenced a McDonalds burger: fillet o' fish. Americans surprisingly like fancy French pronunciations as I've heard a few others as well.
@@mikespearwood3914 yes Filay for fillet, cafay for café. But in French in real, it is pronounced filé café.
It is an interesting little experiment to do to see how class is related to the etymology of the words they use.
henry vii is interesting, English was possibly his 3rd language after Welsh (1st) and breton (2nd).
Henry Tudor, in spite of his heritage, usually favoured English.
@EnglishXnXproud Wouldn't their language be closer to Cornish though?
Is it certain Welsh was his first language? Would be interesting if it was the case. I did read that he could speak Welsh and write it but that he used English more.
@@historywithhilbert146 it's been a while since I studies this. His father was some tudor( I can't remember, he died in battle for against the Yorkists)-tudors were from the Welsh marches. Father dies fairly young, his mother Margaret baufort remarries (and again to Lord Stanley) but Henry Tudor eventually flees the country during Edward IV reign with Jasper Tudor ( his uncle) they are Welsh. They flee to Brittany and Henry Tudor spends a long time in exile in Brittany. As such his first language is Welsh, naturally, he was born there and his closest companion Jasper Tudor was Welsh. It is worth pointing out that Brittany and Wales ( as well as Cornish ) were very similar lingually, Brittany is names after the Bretons/Britons and the Britons were originally Welsh whereas the Englishhad their own ethnic origins (angle/Jute/Saxon etc). I think there is evidence that Henry vii spoke Welsh but you would have to dig for it.
@@Enviouskibbles Most of the noble families and the Breton court spoke Gallo at that time, not Breton. Only half of Brittany spoke Breton and it wasn't favoured by the nobles. The last Breton-speaking duke of Brittany died in 1119.
For the longest time when they had territory in France it wasn't a king of England that has lands in France is a French noble that was the king of England
Yep, a real can of worms making something like the Hundred Years War inevitable.
doczg88 I love England but I must admit it makes me cringe everytime they deny the obvious Frenchness of the Normans. It seems they’re still salty about being conquered by a bastard French nobleman...they find the idea of being conquered by vikings less humiliating.
Marchese di Montevecchio If England was France and France was England we wouldn’t have this problem of massive misinformation
Fabianus educated Englishmen know better , it’s the semi educated (or completely uneducated ) masses that learn history from Facebook memes and they repeat falsities that contain a grain of truth. “Normans were Vikings” is patently false but there’s “truth “ in that the Norman aristocracy was of partial Viking ancestry. They confuse ancestry with identity. It’s just as crazy as saying “ the Visigoths and the Romans conquered Mexico “ , just because the Spaniards are of partially Roman and Visigothic origins
@@javier6926 Actually, even in terms of real ancestry by William's time the norse blood of the elite was little compared with frankish "local" blood. For example, William itself had mainly frankish blood (it's possible to check his ancestry quickly on wikipedia), since all his ancestors since Rollo's time married with french women.
It's really just the "lineage" that was viking, and maybe the "spirit" for adventure and conquests.
Those Picard speakers....."make it so."
I believe fine sire that thou are meaning to say,. " Make it thou so"
Not to mention, "Tea, Earl Grey, hot"
Ah the Picard. The people who discovered a device for measuring chickens: "Hen gage."
“Captain’s log!”...kids innuendo 🤣 (we’re a bit low-brow in my house!)
@@arcanics1971 I want to give you infinity thumbs up for that! *chef's kiss* top quality pun.
Sadly the French CUISINE did not influence the English very much...
Yep lol we still eat like peasants with our pies and stews and everything with potatoes 😂
Potatoes come from the new world not something a peasant from middle age Europe would of been munchin
@@stevshaboba7476 came in the 1500's
Jim Bob potatoes weren’t widely adopted in Europe until the early 1800s otherwise, french women wouldn’t have been scouring Versailles for grain.
@@armorsmith43 But, but the Google just told me that it was the 1500s 😂
Fun fact : If England had won the 100 years war, the whole world would probably speak French. Because the two countries, united under a single monarch, would have evolved by speaking the language of the most populated regions: in the XVth century, France had 20 million inhabitants, and England: 5 to 6 million...
@Raynil Dralas Great comment. You deserve a peanut.
Not only that but the Elites of England were French. Henry V spoke English to his Serfs but spoke French to the Plantagenet Supporters in his Ancestral Homeland/France as France was technically in a Civil War within the Valois Dynasty between the Elites of Paris and the Elites of Burgundy plus the Plantagenet had Supporters In the Western Part of the Country. Even under Plantagenet England, the Population spoke French because the Plantagenet were French themselves and knew they had to appease the Natives to maintain their Hold on France for the brief time they have.
English is only the de facto business language because of the US. Even so Spanish is used in more countries
@@jbloun911 and you totally missed the point if French became the language of England then the USA would be speaking French today therefore making French the lingua franca
@@gjfkhvjzjsxbq should've, could've, would've
English vocabulary: 39% French/ 29% Latin/ 26% Germanic/ 6% Greek/ 4% other/ 3% Derived from place names.
Yeah but English is mostly Germanic, all the base vocabulary is Germanic
@@iain3713 "Germanic", "base", "vocabulary", might be very germanic, but very french also. ^^
Around 70 of words used in a passage will be Germanic, those numbers don’t really show a proper picture as most of the loan words are fairly obscure and not often used in English. Speaking English with only Germanic vocabulary is possible but not with French or Latin.
Riff Raff Latin doesn’t come from Greek, they only borrowed their alphabet
Riff Raff Germanic languages have nothing to do with Latin apart from loan words and shared indo european ancestry
Given William 1's reign began in 1066 and Henry IV's reign began in 1399, that means English Kings spoke Norman French for 333 years.
Thank you. That was the answer I was looking for.
"Dieu et mon droit" the motto of all English monarchs so far.
Ni shit, it was semper eadem
god and my right? also rlly glad i could translate that without looking it up lmao
@@thatb1h855 I think it is God and my Law. Not sure. Droit means both right and law.
Shantonu Basu yea im assuming french uses it interchangeably
@@thatb1h855 Spanish does. Derecho means both right and law.
The answer is that they have never stopped speaking French. They did stop speaking it as a first language... But it is known that even the Hannovers and Saxe-Cobourg-Gothas speak it as a third language
Wasnt that the point of the question?Which language they speak as a first.İ think you forgot that
I mean yes but as Poké says this was about their first language and the language they used in government etc.
Queen Elizabeth II is fluent in French, she speaks it beautifully.
The Hanoverian king George I could not speak English. He therefore communicated with the ministers of his English cabinet in French.
Did the """younger""" Windsors still speak German at least as a second language? (the generation of Elizabeth II)
When you're talking about a bunch of trees, it's spelled "forest." "Forrest" is usually someone's name.
I'm just an idiot who doesn't check my videos haha
@@historywithhilbert146 Forrest Gump
@@vincentjennings6347 Forest Gum
“Run Hilbert, run”
“Box a chocolates.” He he😉
All I know is that you folks had a hell of a lot of Henrys to keep straight.
Unfortunately Richard lost it's popularity. ;)
Not compared to the French and their Louis kings.
Or worst, Egypt and Ptolemy
@stephen noonan actually, 8 of each.
Germans with their Williams and Fredericks
They didn't stopped speaking French though, right? They started speaking both French and English.
You can think of it as when did they stop speaking French as a first language and started speaking English as a first language
Queen Victoria's brood were raised in German.
@@christopherellis2663 The current Queen speaks French.
@Mysterious Stranger Not really. It's more closer to Dutch than German, with Celtic, Latin, Greek, Danish, French, and later because you know, empire, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and a host of other bits and pieces of languages from all over the world thrown in for flavor. Then if you want to talk about British English as a separate thing, later words get imported from America, Australia, etc. Quite the pot of stew really.
@@hhale English imported words from French to fill in the mid-standard and Latin to cover the high-standard words put in the gaps opened by the Renaissance, followed by Industrial Revolution, followed by Modern and Postmodern eras. New words just kept being coined for the matter. However, it is still nearly completely Germanic in everyday language.
And also, your hypothesis is complete bullshit. Languages like Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Danish, Celtic and "other" have nearly no contribution to the English language. In fact, it wouldn't make sense to say Portuguese, Spanish or Danish influenced English because those languages developed from Latin and Old Germanic, from which English borrowed words anyways so they basically wouldn't have "invisible" influence.
If you want me to describe it, English is a house. Foundations made by Germanic, and floor made by Germanic. Furnished and regulated by French, and covered in walls of Latin. And then you've got some few Greek accessories here and there.
Conversely, the Scots called their Anglic language 'Inglis' (aka English) and what we now call Scottish Gaelic "Scottis" until a bunch of wars with England prompted a rethink of what to call their language - hence 'Inglis' became 'Scots' and 'Scottis' became 'Erse' (Irish - Gaelic).
Did you just make this up?
Lothian and Ulster are just Greater Northumbria change my mind
@@Burgermeister1836 that is stupid , only bits of northern Ulster spoke Scots , the true language of Ulster was always Irish and it is still spoken there
I only know a little bit of French but I can pick out modern French alot better than I can old English.
French is still seen as a fancy pants upper class language despite France losing it's global position of prestige a long time ago. Fun fact: the Russian Nobility spoke French up until the Napoleonic wars made that become unfashionable.
French or Old French or Norman French which is vastly different from French today. However to this day the King or the Queen speak French fluently. Victoria spoke a lot of German and was told constantly to speak English to the Hoi Polloi.
Because the British royal family is originally from Germany, and Victoria spoke German with her family, too
Apart from a few, they didn't speak French in the first place. Norman was a separate language, a sister language if you will to French. Most of the basic vocabulary was considerably different, and then you add in the Old Norse Component. Norman developed into several varieties each with their own unique characteristics, but didn't have much in common with French. Yes, French and Norman did share a common Gallo-Romance ancestor, but Norman did not branch off of French, it branched off of Gallo-Romance. French is just one of many related Gallo-Romance languages. French wasn't the language brought over by William the Conqueror, it was Norman. Now, some kings of England did speak French, like Henry du Bois and some of the Plantagenet family, but most spoke Norman, or more accurately Anglo-Norman. Anglo-Norman only had something like 60% mutual ineligibility with French. The Norman accent was pretty damn different to that of a French one, so no Henry V would definitely not have spoken English with a French accent. We also know that Richard the Lionheart natively spoke Old Occitan, and spent a good portion of life speaking it instead of Norman or English.
How did William Chaucer express it in his Canterbury Tales? -
"She spoke the French of Stratford- atte-Bowe
for French of Paris was to her unknowe."
@@c.norbertneumann4986 Although Norman was the prestige language of the middle and upper classes, some did speak French. However, French (which originated in the areas around Paris, and not native to Normandy or other parts of modern France), was introduced to England at least 200 years after the Norman Conquest. We don't really have any references or mentions of the French language before about 1300, and it's introduction was probably after Edward I of England married Margaret of France in 1299. Before that when the Angevins took the English throne, most of the nobility natively spoke Norman, and would have had little to no contact with French speakers. This was also around the time when some of the nobility began natively speaking English again. Norman and French were also used rather sporadically for official government business, with Latin still being the preferred language of government.
Actually it was a dialect of French
60% of the English vocabulary have a French (and Normand ,but it's a French dialects anyways) origin ,which also make the fact that 52% of the English vocabulary is of Latin origin .
Fun Fact :If we don't count the other 2 langage of the Gallo-Romance family (Occitan and Franco-Provençal ,do not confound with Provençal ,which is a dialect of Occitan) ,English is the 4th closest langage to French ,here the classement :
1-Italian (89% of lexical similarities)
2-Spanish (75%)
2-Portuguese (75%)
4-English (70%)
5-German
For 6th and 7th position ,I forgot which one between Romanian and Dutch is 6th .
Someone speaking French can completely understand Italian (Written) ,Occitan and Franco-Provençal without ever learning anything in the langage .
Someone speaking French can also do the same with Spanish and Portuguese ,but for these ,you atleast need the basics .
Norman French was French.
Just stop trying to deny.
@@bobjoe7508 As a native Frenchman, everything you wrote is wrong.
Good job really.
Oh btw, have you ever, ever taken a norman french text or a parisian french text and compare them?
Yhea, I bet not. Both are intelligible to me.
magnifique vidéo
Continuez ce bon travail
Σωτήρης λιδακης How ironic
Merci!
Interesting thing is, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle was continued up to the times of Henry II in something like late Old English. And there is at least one Norman royal charter written in Old English (and not in French or Latin). The one I mean is from the reign of Henry I. So, Old English didn't disappear from formal use immediately after the Norman conquest. It was a process.
Edward III had Chaucer as court poet, so he obviously understood and even enjoyed Middle English poetry. So, maybe the lowest point of public use of any version of the English language was between Henry II and Edward III.
Could you do one on when the various barbarian invaders of the 3-400s started speaking the tongues of the common folk? I.E. when the Visigoths started speaking proto Spanish, Franks started speaking proto French, Lombards and Ostrogoths started speaking Italian or when the Eastern Roman empire's elite started speaking Greek?
Or another fun one, after the Arab conquest of the Middle East and the Magreb how long did it take for the different peoples to switch from Berber, Coptic and the other languages to Arabic?
Thanks, love your videos!
For Greek in Eastern Rome, it has always been the case since the conquests, as it was considered a noble language in the same way Latin is in the medieval era onwards
@MISERICORDI A Okay, should have prefaced it by saying "proto Italian" like the others. Still curious if under those hundredish years of rule if they started assimilating. And still curious how long it took for the Lombards to assimilate (if they did).
@washington gibz Well a lot of them did though, right? Now a lot of the Magreb is mostly Arab speaking right? Are those people the descendants of Berbers who assimilated into Arab culture, Arab settlers or maybe a mix of both?
@@MaxArturo Isn't he majoring in Anglo-Saxon studies?
Yes, I'm just saying he prefers it, but he has do what he is passionate about.
It's good that you pointed out that not only did they speak French but most of them were ethnically French as well
What is "ethnically French"?...The Normans were of Scandinavian origin, who are a Germanic people, just like the Anglo-Saxons...
@@caezar55 yeah but they became french by marrying the French and having half and then 3/4 and then 7/8 French descendants. It's really not hard to understand. That's how gentics work. William The conqueror was barely Scandinavian.
@@micahistory If it's not hard to understand, how come you don't understand it? The Normans who invaded England would have been close to 100% Scandinavian DNA. They mostly married among themselves in Normandy. Remember in those days it was rare for most people to leave their village their entire lives.
@@caezar55 that's not true. Most of them married French women because most of the Normans were men. And if you know something about history, you know there are always way more men who leave than women. It's the same reason why most Latin Americans have Iberian paternal ancestry but Indigenous maternal ancestry.
As for William, it is well documented that his ancestors were mostly French, that isn't even speculation
@@caezar55 Ethnicity, Nationality and Origin are all different...
We can trace our DNA and Origin to our ancestors, we are given our Ethnicity at birth and we can choose our Nationality
Recently though all of these are just considered one same thing and it might be because of English language and western culture...
My Origin is half Serbian and half Bulgarian, I am an Ethnic Serb of Serbian Nationality...
Richard II's bodyguard not only spoke to him in English, they called him 'Dickon' to his face (source: the Yale history of the reign of Richard II).
I‘m just amused that the average English person is so in awe of multilingualism, something that is totally normal for much of the rest of the world... To me, it‘s nothing special to grow up with three languages and pick up a couple more. I knew people who at 11 were starting on their seventh language when going to secondary school.
I do think the development of Norse to Norman to Middle English via Anglo-Saxon is fascinating, though, so thanks!! I was never entirely sure of the time frame.
It’s because English speakers really don’t have the same need to learn other languages as non-English native speakers because English is the lingua franca.
@@AWOL401 something of an illusion in 2020...
Woeschhuesli it’s not an illusion. Practically every person under 40 in Europe speaks English, as you do. Most young people in major Asian cities speak English. In China students learn English (not German). Even international air traffic control is in English.
@@FredBTs Thats right and false, on paper it is, as french who's in his 20s, I would say 20% of people could have a conversation in english, not more, languages in France are still seen as useless since we don't really need it
Davout According to Eurobarometer nationally 39% ofFrench speak English but in the large cities the % is much higher. English is the language of science, computers, international aviation, the internet and more ,you do need it.
Many people have difficulties to ear that French was the official language of England while it was not in France. The first official writing was made in french by the Norman in their conquest of England.
You are a disingenuous Francophile. The English language was relegated to second-rate status until the 1400s, certainly; but not crushed out of existence. It was still an unofficial court language, not treated as an alien tongue.
Henry IV was the first king to make the official language be English in his court. From then on all subsequent monarchs spoke English as the official language of the realm.
"It's probably not a good idea... to speak the same language as the people you're fighting..." Never stopped the Prussians
They had a different causus belli or reason for war, at least long term it was german unification. Either their national ideas were to their advantage, or I have played to much Europa Universalis. Gs.
Neither did with the many hispanic countries lol, (Poor Bolivia the Poland of South America)
True but Prussia was fighting to unify Germany, which most Germans viewed as a 'nation' in some sense.
Laughs in Yugoslavian
or the Americans (the Civil War)
A fascinating video. As a student of French history, this is extremely useful.
'La Reyne le veult' (Norman French for 'The Queen wills it') are still the words used in Parliament to signify Royal Assent to a Bill, that thereby becomes an Act of Parliament. So, in a sense, our laws only come into force through the use of Norman French. In the 21st century. In a country exiting the EU in just a few days. Mon dieu. #TiesThatBind.
I'm having so much fun seeing people saying norman French isn't French while it's just a dialect of French just like you always had in France per region. I have no issues reading a norman French text, it's my own language and I'm not Normand.
Eh ben, Dieu est ton droit. Ou pas, que la reyne le veuille ou non
Funny how readable this is with modern french. "La reine le veut"
The Plantagenets spoke french because they were ... french basically ! They took almost 3 centuries to just start to speak the language of their obedient subjects ...
Francophile revisionism. The Normans who came to England (who I'd argue are simply the last of several people who make up the English) culturally began to assimilate in the late 1100s. Language is a different story, but the extent to which Old English was "suppressed" is overstated. 2nd class, sure, within official correspondence and court is about all.
Eleonore of Aquitaine never spoke French as a first language, she spoke the Occitan language and was a notable patron of poetry in that language. In fact her children, including Richard, grew up native speakers of both French and Occitan.
Aliénor d'Aquitaine parlait le Poitevin , le plus proche du Français des langues occitanes !
Occitan is old French
Henry Pernoix L' Occitan ( ou langues d'oc ou oui = hoc ) regroupe toutes les langues romanes parlées jadis dans le tiers sud de la France . Les langues d'Oil ( oui = hoc ille ) regroupent toutes les langues romanes parlées jadis dans les 2/3 tiers nord plus la Belgique romane et la Suisse romande ! Le Vieux Français appartient aux langues d' Oil !!!!!
Éléonore d'Aquitaine was a perfect French speaking French women who married the French king of england.
Le Capetien tu peux l'écrire en Français sans te soumettre ainsi à l'impérialisme globalisée anglo-saxon !
I suspect that another reason for the shift was the custom of nursemaids and governesses, generally of lower rank. Such would, most likely, be speaking English and thus influencing the first words spoken by the noble youngsters.
Gulf Arabs today tend to speak Tagalog because they are raised by Filipinos maids!
The hand that rocks the cradle.
Or it could just be a case of language skills getting diluted over the generations after immigration.
They kept on marrying French princesses for ages and they probably brought along their nurses and friends. The language if parluament was French until the 17th century. Nobiliteit were French, and still today the higher classes have French names like Lefebvre and still look more French than Saxon. The Anglo-saxons turned into the lower classes when the Normans took their castles, land and possessions by force. It’s all in the Doomesday Book.
@@marjet2228 there's an interesting Wiki page on the subject here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_language
I can recommend Melvyn Bragg's book "The adventure of English".
He made an audio version which is superior to the print in that pronounciation is such an important aspect of language.
I seem to remember that Norman French only lasted as a language of legal status for three hundred years after the Norman conquest.
A lot of Norman's only summered in England, returning to Normandy and Picardy for the milder winters.
Until they were a few generations into their occupation they could have avoided "going native". When they started having babies in England things would have changed.
Hence Queen Eleanor having the right to call her son the "Prince of Wales" after giving birth to him in Caernarvon.
What about Henry III? I think that he was the first to have switched from French (spoken by his father John Lackland?)
Gérard Jacquemier
Everyone knows they were speaking an ancient form of Chinese since the Great Britain was a part of China since ancient times.
The legal culture may have been functionally trilingual. Testimony regarding certain matters in English, official correspondence between attorneys and the judges in Norman french, with document and records being kept in Latin. Haha imagine that as an attorney/judge. Speaking to your client/the parties in English, your peers in Norman, and then reading about what just happened in Latin :P
I remember the documentary a history of Britain in the episode Nations, Simon Schama said that Long Shanks was the first king to habitually speak English.
No the Process began during the Hundred Years War. Even Edward III and his son still spoke in Old French as a first language. Even in Occitan (Old Language of the current South of France). Perhaps since Henry IV.
Interesting how after the Normands, then Plantagenet and 2-roses war periods, you have the Tudors who declared themselves as Welsh (Owen Tudor), the Stuart who kept their number and title of Kings of Scotland independently from their English titles, and then, the German period... It's definitely hard to define an English identity according to English kings... When you think that English kings only got rid of their German titles in 1917, just because they were in war with Germany...
I’d say the beginning was Edward longshanks. He supposedly “habitually spoke English.”
Yes I thought the tide turned to English when chaucer wrote the canterbury tales in english I think that was Edward III though but it shows english was understood by the royal court by then where it was first preformed
It took over 3 centuries before English kings actually became English
They also used to speak German as the King of England, the Kaiser of Germany, and Tsar of Russia were cousins during the early 1900s. They spoke German to each other along with their grandmother.
Thank you so much for your very interesting video, Hilbert. I love History .
Thank you Daisy glad you enjoyed it!
@@historywithhilbert146 Hilbert, sure you 're most welcome always here. Blessings and peace to you.
@@daisypeters3216 Likewise Daisy! Hope you have a fab weekend!
@@historywithhilbert146 Hilbert, have a nice and blessed weekend too. Sure I always want to watch your amazing videos. 😘💖👍🌟🌟🌟
Wow. Finally found a channel being produced and presented by a genuinely knowledgeable historian. Not like the horrible, cumbersome narration of second-rate content that we find on other channels.
They stopped speaking French following the confusion at Crecy. The Norman officers spoke only French while foot soldiers and archers spoke only English. A decree was made that henceforth all Norman's of the upper classes had to learn English.
My friend Charles Petrie, Son of #2 at British Embassy in late 70's, spoke French and German. I would say most British aristocrats spoke French for hundreds of years after 1350 which is the real shift.
I love how they mention that Falstaff is mentioned having to fight for king Richard when they discuss it they should trust his word if it is going to rain or not.
Liked the film a little more then Braveheart for being more accurate, but also being able to include bits of fiction from the play.
@Owen Lee
I am actually not a Shakespeare expert quite yet, but I know many parts were taken from Henry IV Parts II, III and Henry V.
This should really be “when they spoke English as first language” not “when they stopped speaking French” because several English monarchs still spoke French afterwards as they were simply educated like Elizabeth I for example.
The irony is that all the monarchs since the Glorious Revolution have spoken German as their native language. Prince Charles doesn't, though.
@stephen noonan According to what I read, the royal family switched to English in the 1930's.
Since you attend Cambridge, do you plan on ever making a video on the old Anglo-Saxon church right across from the _Eagle_ pub?
I passed it just this morning actually - maybe I should.
@@historywithhilbert146 Do it...do it...do it !!! (Serious football attitude)
Strictly speaking it, the hundred years was not England fighting France.
It was a French duke, also king of England versus the king of France.
If you're a silly Francophile desperate to rewrite history, sure, you can frame it that way.
The Normans began to assimilate by the late 1100s, language notwithstanding.
“Veal” is French while “calf” is English. English farmers saw the animal on the hoof hence calf while on the French nobleman saw it on the table as veal
Correction: Richard II most likely died in Pontrefact Castle in Yorkshire, pretty far away from the Tower of London.
Summary: why did English Kings stop speaking French? Because King Henry the lV's first language was English.
@Treavor Alvardo what do you consider to be English?
@Treavor Alvardo then the royal family can easily be said to be English
@Treavor Alvardo William's (Duke of Cambridge) firstborn son is three quarters English. He is successor to the throne after William. His mother Kate Middleton is of English ethnicity, and so was William's mother, the Lady Diana Spencer (although she had a Norman surname and some Scots in her family tree). Only his grandfather Charles (Prince of Wales) is German-rooted.
@Treavor Alvardo First almost full English king since Harold II.
@Treavor Alvardo All kings of england were foreigners.
Danes, French, Welsh, Scotish, Dutch, Germans, Germans again (lol)
If you watch Inside the commons, a bbc doc from 2015, they still use a line written in Norman Norman French in that place.
If I can judge from my own language, from all the texts that were found from the 11th century, there was barely any difference between dialects. I assume since French is a related language, North French dialects were very similar. There was probably no significant difference between Norman and Picard.
True, all were mutually intelligible...
Agree, I come from northern France, just close to Picardy, and Picard and ch'timi are basically the same languages, and my norman family are quite the same, few different words I guess
As a Frenchman I agree.
The normans spoke French just like other regions with regional dialects: all intelligible even to a XXIth century man.
Languages were basically on a continuum in most of the European countries. So two neighboring regions' languages were probably mutually intelligible as they weren't too far apart; but the further apart two regions were, the less likely they'd be mutually intelligible.
We have NEVER had English kings (or queens) since the death of Harold Godwinson.
@Guru Charan If that is taken into regard then every monarch of Europe is related to Charlemagne the Great of the Franks. Generally maternal descent is not taken into account. Henry was descended from a French count of Anjou, hence the dynasty being named as the Angevin dynasty. Later they named themselves as Plantaganets Or Les Plantagenet.
@Guru Charan The point is that matrilineal descent was not the factor behind William the Conqueror's invasion of England. Yeah you were right about the other monarchs but matrilineal descent was secondary to patrilineal descent and only applied if there was no male heir in countries which followed semi Salic law and not Salic law. The descent from Alfred the Wessex through the maternal line was not a cause for William the Conqueror invading England. Neither was it the factor behind the rise of the Angevins. Why are the Houses to which the monarchs belong named after their paternal ancestors? If maternal descent was taken into account while naming a dynasty, every English king would belong to the House of Wessex and not be named as the Plantaganet, Tudor, Stuart dynasty etc
@Guru Charan Yeah you were right about Charlemagne. The great is redundant but I do see it used sometimes.
The Normans were English by the late 1100s. Godwinson was a usurper anyway, he invented his claim.
C’est vraiment dommage !😔
When we speak several languages, we are open minded !
Oh! Is that how all my matière grise fell out?
When did the English kings start speaking French again? 1763, when Quebec became part of the British Empire.
George I and George II didn't speak English either, they spoke German. George III did speak English, only to find how much his father and grandfather had been hoodwinked by the Americans.
The fools deserved it! :P Live free or die!
Wasn't King George III mentally ill?
@@c.norbertneumann4986 After losing the American colonies the king did "lose his marbles" for a while. He even suggested that he abdicate, for letting the country down during the revolution, but Parliament decided else wise. George III, called "Farmer George" for his interest in agriculture, holds the position of third longest reigning English monarch, after Victoria and Elizabeth II.
Plantagenêt house has his origins from a warrior peasant named Tertulle the Forester, also known as Tertulle of Gâtinais, son of Torquat, from Redon in Western France, which he was ennobled by king Charles II the Bald in the IX century.
When did Scottish kings stop speaking Gaelic?
Samuel Terry .... Well when did they shunned being Picts in the first place?
Samuel Terry
Short answer: They never spoke Gaelic.
Long answer:
Scotland as we know it formed in 843. The Irish Scotti tribe had colonised the west and dominated the Pictish kingdom in the north of Scotland, and replaced Pictish with Gaelic. This is where Scottish Gaelic comes from. It was never widely spoken by the Scottish elite, nor by royalty.
Around Lothian in the south east, which was controlled by anglo-saxons until 973, Old English was still being spoken when the Scots conquered it. Lothian was the wealthiest part of the new Scottish kingdom; its Old English speakers were never assimilated into the Gaelic culture as there were so many of them, so they continued speaking Old English.
King David I seized the Scottish throne in 1124. He had been raised in England speaking Old English and set up the capital city of Edinburgh in this elite Old English speaking part of the kingdom. French also would have been understood at court.
In the 15th century, the Scots stopped referring to their language as ‘English’ and started calling it ‘Scots’ due to rivalry with England. Scots and French were the languages of the Scottish court.
Scots later became regarded as uncivilised, much like Gaelic, especially after the union with England in 1603 when court moved to London. Scottish elites preferred to learn the middle and later modern English language that was spoken in England and Scots slowly died off. Now, Scotland speaks a dialect of Modern English called ‘Scottish English’. This is different to Scots, which is a dialect of Old English that developed separately to what is spoken in Scotland today.
Gaelic spread from Ireland into Dál Riata (north west) and from there into Pictland (north east), which was Gaelicised and together formed the Kingdom of Scotland ('Scotland' coming from the Latin name for the Irish, 'Scoti'). Scottish kings spoke Gaelic until it started to decline under Malcolm III in the mid 11th century after he married an English princess, then had a brief revival under Donald III until he was succeeded by Malcolm's children (who were raised in England) and thereafter rapidly declined (especially under David I in the mid 12th century)
Not all of modern Scotland was Gaelic speaking though, the Kingdom of Scotland originally only encompassed the Highlands. Lowland Scotland spoke Old Northumbrian English ever since the Anglo-Saxons conquered Brythonic Gododdin (capital city at Edinburgh, later renamed Lothian) in the early 7th century; same as in Brythonic Strathclyde and Cumbria (though to a lesser extent than in Lothian) when they too were incorporated into Bernicia/Northumbria until the mid 9th century Viking invasions; and Lothian was part of the Kingdom of England until the Scots invaded from the north and they were all annexed into the Kingdom of Scotland in the early 11th century
When the Tudors ended and they moved to London
@@tacosmexicanstyle7846 the Scottish kings definitely did speak Gaelic , why would there names be Gaelic then . like Macbeth , Duncan (Donnchadh ) , Donald (Domnall) Malcolm (Mael Colm) . the kingdom monarchs were originally Gaelic speaking
Henry Bolingbroke’s first language was English, as Henry IV he was the first English king to have English as a first language in 1399.
“about Henry the 7th”
me: wha-
“nope that’s wrong”
me: ah
I have always believed that it was in the reign of Edward III that English became the language of the court. Richard was defeated by Bolingbrook because of his linguistic abilities while Richard’s was still noticeably Norman.
When the actor that plays English king is a French, and the French king is played by an English😂
Very interesting. When will you be giving us a video on English spelling? I've always wanted to grow up and know how to spell 'forest'. It was a shock to find I'd got it wrong all these decades.
The statement that English aristocrats stopped using French in the 15th Century is incorrect; Anglo-Norman/English nobles continued to speak French as their first language until the 17th Century. To this day, the Queen opens Parliament in Norman.
The so-called Anglo-French wars were really a conflict directed by warring noble cousins, one branch of which had invaded England that became their stronghold over three centuries. The ensuing battles were because the Anglo-Normands considered that they had residual royal claims in continental Europe.
In some ways, we are speaking a language that is descended from Norman (a related dialect to old French) in that Modern English vocabulary is over 45% of French origin, and the grammar and syntax of Modern English and Modern French both also descend from Norman/Old French
No, the modern grammar and syntax of English does not reflect French. That is one area that has more closely stuck to Old English lines. In fact, you could say Old Norse has had the biggest impact on English with the lose of gender, lose of conjugation, and word order importance.
@@leod-sigefast That's wrong.
Norman French is a french dialect.
Just compare an Old english text and a middle english text. One sounds german, the other sounds Old French.
Look, an insecure Frenchman (or worse, a Francophile) spreading misinformation!
Whether it be French or English, Forest is spelled with one R. If you need to stop for a rest due to fatigue, then you may have the double R separated by an a.
Forrest Gump comes with two rs.
@@thierrydesu Right on! :)
Keep doing it, this was quality. Much better than what the tv channels could make.
Thank you so much! I'll be uploading more on Friday :)
History With Hilbert awsome, i just subbed your channel now
There is of course a technical difference between Kings of England and English Kings since never mind some of them were French, we have had Danish, Welsh, German and even Dutch (cue the anthem) Kings and the next one will be half Greek.
And Don't Forget Scottish,The Stuarts(Stewarts).
Neat. Hilbert is reading all the comments. Hi Hilbert!
Hi Jacinto! Thanks for getting involved ;) For once I'm getting involved as I should!
Who is the black kid at 5:25 ?
A servant, they were rare then and therefore in demand from ladies who were prone to fashion in clothes and accessories.
I think it is their culture that made them adventurers and pioneers. Look at their beginnings, Vikings, Norsemen that pillaged and butchered the rest of Europe. They converted and within decades, they completely assimilated into the Frankish culture, taking up the language to a great extent, even deriving their own Norman dialect, building incredible buildings in particular churches and cathedrals of the Romanesque style, coming out of the age of late Antiquity architecture. They adopted Frankish military technology and improved upon it, from chain mail, to functional helms and the massive kite shield along with the stirrup that allowed them to tuck the lance in a couch position to literally spear through an entire man or even two with a powerful cavalry charge.
The fact that they were often times just fighting each other in internal domestic competition meant that many sought to expand their territory overseas be it conquests like William or by selling their martial prowess for coin as in the de Hauteville family. The first Crusade also was the indicator of how well regarded these Normans were. In any situation that was of critical and of danger, the Frankish (French) or the East Frankish (German) crusader leaders would look to Bohemond of Taranto (Italo Norman) to find a solution to defeat their adversary. This was the famous son of the greatest de Hauteville adventurer Robert Guiscard who absolutely terrorized not just the Byzantines in Italy but also in Greece their home turf and also the Moors in Sicily and even the Pope himself and the Holy Roman Emperor. In actuality he had outdone WIlliam the Conqueror by quite a margin in terms of accomplishments and given his lowly status when first entering into Southern Italy in the earlier part of the 11th century.
Can someone from UK tell me if it’s true that the upper class in uk still give their children more French names?
Emma Watson - Born: Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson
Lily James - Born: Lily Chloe Ninette Thomson
I think this is true for the Netherlands as well - French names are typically upper class names. Especially for girls / women: Aurélie, Georgine, Anette, Frederique etc.
Oh...
Well it seems to be true but it's the case for the whole Europe.
Anne is a common name but it's a French name. The "E" is a trace of the French's ancestors which are the Franks.
Normally it would be Ann or Anna and certainly not "Anne". But oh well, French's hegemony can still be seen everywhere.
@@BastiaanvandeWerk
Well, if you spell them in a French way...
You're forgetting that the gentry were deeply intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons, Norse and Celts right from the very start. These were originally the Norman soldiers of William The Conqueror, to whom the Norman nobility subinfeudated their manors (Tenant-in-chief to Tenant-in-possession) as nobility weren't in the business of farming.
The manorial-owning class of the year 1065 pretty much were wiped out at the Battle of Hastings, and those who survived were dispossessed. William distributed the manors to comprise the new mesnes of the Norman nobility, who weren't all that numerous. They subinfeudated them to the Norman soldiers, so that 100 manors in the mesne of one noble might be distributed to 50-70 different Norman soldiers, who became lords of those manors as Tenant-In-Possession. Now, those new Norman lords of the English manors needed ladies of the manors. So after marrying local women they quickly became bilingual. After that first generation or two the Anglo-Norman gentry married within itself, but by then they were already bilingual.
Aside for having initiated their lines by marrying local women, the gentry lived in two different worlds simultaneously. They were constantly reporting to their overlords, the Tenants-in-Chief, on the status of the manors and strategy for the future; they also had to render feudal service to their overlords in return for the manors, such as answering calls to arms. On the other hand, they were also constantly dealing directly with the English-speaking (or Celtic, or Norse, depending on region) residents of the manors, or bailiffs, or estate managers, etc. So they were perfectly bilingual.
Most likely the nobility picked up English during their meetings with their vassals, the gentry who were lords of their manors. It probably didn't take all that long for the nobility to learn a smattering of English, and by the early 14th C. the nobility was perfectly fluent in English; there is no lack of documents supporting that.
The deep intimacy between the nobility and the gentry who were their vassals can scarcely be overestimated. No, a gentry could never marry a noble's child (although it was common for the gentry to marry illegitimate children of the nobles and to consider that a great privilege). But it's been shown that gentry families had a very close affinity to their overlords that would go on for generations, often sharing in the nobles' rise or fall.
Occasionally you can even see this in Shakespeare. Although his historical plays revolve around the nobility as the main characters, you can sometimes see how Shakespeare's nobles interact with their retainers in the gentry.
A fine example is the opening of Henry IV Part 2, where MORTON rushes in to bring encouraging news to the Earl of Northumberland of the rebellion of the Archbishop of York. While literary scholars claim this MORTON character is made up, in fact historians know perfectly well who he was. He was the lord of Morton Manor in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in youth had been shown great favor by Richard II including marrying one of the queen's ladies in waiting. Henry IV restored Robert Morton Jr. upon the latter's swearing a loyalty oath, which he then broke by joining the Archbishop of York's rebellion. Morton justified his participation in the rebellion as forced upon him by being summoned by his overlord. Henry IV didn't buy it (feudal service does NOT include treasonous calls by the overlord to overthrow the monarch!), and sentenced him to death and seized his property; Robert barely escaped with his life thanks to the intervention of Prince Hal, whom Robert had befriended back during the years when Henry IV was in exile and Hal's life hung by a thread.
Back to the point (sorry about the need for the historical background), Shakespeare treats this minor member of the gentry (with probably no more than half a dozen manors) as a close friend of the great Earl, treated as practically an equal among the Yorkist nobility, and who speaks to the earl very informally as a peer and co-conspirator. (He even says "we" knew the risks when we made these dangerous plans.) This perfectly exemplifies the close relationship that the gentry and nobility had: they worked hand in hand, strategized together, and were on friendly terms. It's very hard to believe that such a relationship could be carried on in exclusively in French, which by 1300 was demonstrably a language in which the Anglo-Norman gentry were less and less skilled.
"Should I speak French or English?"
Both, pal.
Good video, sticking to the facts for those of us who have wondered about this. I'm a subscriber from this. Thanks.
I'm a linguist and I teach Romance languages (Italian, Spanish, French) to English speakers. One of the things that makes the process less painful is the Latin-ization of English by Norman French which gave English its Latinates: most of the "--ty" words: society, personality, activity, community, creativity, which can be EASILY translated into French, Italian, Spanish as true cognates ("true friends"). If old English had remained purely Germanic from its old Frisian origins, it would be a lot harder for English-speakers today to learn Romance languages. So, thank God for the Norman Conquest and the French 🇫🇷 forays into England 🇬🇧! 😁 👍
The word English means Angle. So the Anglo-Saxons generally never spoke French. The Norman nobles were often of French decent and yes spoke French.
Would have needed subtitles if in the English of the age, Chaucer is incomprehensible today and sounds to my ear like Flemish in parts
Hearing Chaucer's work is like listening to a drunk old man from northern England tell you a story.
You sort of understand... but not very much
Chaucer's English has alot of writing in accent and often un-stranded spelling.
"a draughte of londoun ale" or "a draught of London ale" one is the modern spelling.
I read a couple of Chaucer's poems(?). I really liked the rhythm of it, the language & the spellings & could, with great brain strain, grasp the gist of it. It made me laugh quite a few times... so the humour came through! My head felt quite weird after... like it had strained my brain & forced it to expand! 😂 I would def have a go at trying to read some more.
The name gives it away? He wrote in middle English even if he was no doubt fluent in middle French. Very few would be able to watch a film in middle English without subtitles
Having a French name doesn't make someone a native French speaker, while I've no doubt he was able to speak Anglo-Norman there had been immigration from France since the Norman conquest so plenty of time to integrate linguistically. Many English names are derived from French
English did borrow words from Norman French; these are the ones that are pronounced/spelled differently from Modern French, like chief/chef and castle/chateau. After the Normans had settled in England, Parisian French became more prestigious, so the Anglo-Normans preferred English over their "embarrassing" French. "Forest" has one r;"Forrest" is a name, like Forrest Griffin the fighter.
You should do a video about Anglo-Norman French there’s actually a dictionary that exist be interesting if you could talk about that.😬
They still do. Just not daily. The Queen of the UK still speaks fluent French and has no problem talking to the French president.
1:45 there was no « french » french at that time. Ok there was the french of Paris, the french of the king of France that you could take as a reference. But the french language was only standardized as THE french with the creation of the French Academy by Richelieu in the mid 17th century.
*Henry delivers epic St. Crispin’s day speech*
His soldier: “Ayo, what’s this French bloke going on about?”
5:04 Actually Hilbert Richard died in Pontefract Castle not the Tower of London. Great video anyway.
Good point! "In the tower" just slipped out but you're absolutely right! Thanks!
Good stuff sir , I'm wondering if you would be able to make a video about Berbers in North Africa and the conquest of the Arabs
1:56 "Forest" is not spelled with two "r's"
:D
Forêt is not spelled with any s...😂
@@srfrg9707 The "^" indicates that there was an S before meaning it was : "Forest" in old french.
@@wertyuiopasd6281 "was"
What about the Occitan of Richard the Lionheart.
An English dialect vid would be cool, especially Yorkshire 😁
Greatest dialect goin 😉
Tha knows
P't wood int'ole.
Yorkshire would have had a fair amount of Scandinavian(Danish) as part of its language; for example, York, itself, was "anglicized" from the Danish name Jarvik(or Yorvik). After all, most of northern England was part of the Danelaw for quite some time
English STILL has many loanwords from Danish, the word for a village, THORP, being one
@@mikegrossberg8624 The Anglian name of York was Eoforwic. Since the Angles had already arrived in the fifth century, it is more likely that the Danes "danicized" the Anglian name of the city.
They haven't ! Story says, on her first official visit to France in the early 1950's, HM Elizabeth II met with then-President Vincent Auriol and after talking around, the latter told the former : "your French is much better than mine !"
Forrest lol. Great vid
I know I saw that back and thought ffs Hilbert if I employed myself I would've been fired xD
I always wondered this, so thanks for the video. I always wondered which language Henry VIII, the most fascinating English king, spoke natively- and I did think it was English as he would write notes and letters in English, and legislation would be drafted in English.
Great video, though I would have loved to hear as the final plot twist : when did the English kings stop speaking French ? - They never did, French is still one of the only two languages (with English, obviously), that you are allowed to address the queen in.
Kuuba Kuugel as Elizabeth is the queen of a French speaking people, (the Québécois) it would make sense that it would be okay for them to be able to address their queen in their own language.
Well.. this language shift could certainly go either way. The house of Plantagenet is of French origin, so much so that the chance of them being francophone is even higher than their early predecessors (I.e. William the Conqueror as he may be raised in a mixed Franco-Norse background). Also since they, at least during the earlier half of the Hundred Years War claimed legitimacy to the French throne (Thus, considered himself to be the king of the French as much as the king of England) made it necessary for him to speak French in order to communicate to his francophone allies (eg. Kings of Arles, duke of burgundy).
Henry the 4th?
Pretty much!
Wait was he the one who's allegedly born as a product of his mom cheating on his dad? Or is that another one I forgot? I saw a documentary first saying that one of the kings in the same period should neve be the king because of that, hence legally the British crown should belong to someone else, and then interestingly they traced to some Australian Republican (who moved from the UK)
@@davidfreeman3083 The King you're thinking of is Edward IV and it's likely the rumour is false anyway.
As far as we know Edward 1 was the first English king who probably spoke English. He may well have considered himself to be an Englishman.
Interesting that “Weald” is cognate with (and originally identical in meaning to) German “Wald”.
Indeed, and in the more northern parts of England it is "wold".
Our wealds and wolds aren't quite as wooded as they used to be, though. Now "wold" is thought of as moorland, and the Weald is very pastoral.
I say we make the Weald a weald again. Though as I work in forestry, I am biased.
Edric of the Weald May the Major Oak endure!
it should be noted that the angevin empire was ruled by French nobles who also happened to be the kings of England not the other way around.
It should be noted that the Normans were not Capetians, were not French outside of language and dress, and began to assimilate to/consider themselves English, in opposition to French, by the 1200s.
I despise Francophiles, how anyone could love the snail-lickers is beyond me.
They never did. HM speaks French better than the French President