[gatitoverde]

Anglo-Norman is most interesting to me in that it was a Romance language spoken by a Northern Germanic people as their native tongue. You see, in the year 911, a man named Charles the Simple, a descendant of Charlemagne ("Charles the Great") in the line of kings known as the Carolingian line (Carol ~ Charl ~ Charles), allowed a Viking by the name of Rollo to settle with his men in northern France. The idea was that the fierce Vikings could help protect the northern border. And it was a sound plan. Rollo's Vikings not only stayed, but integrated into the culture there, adopting Christianity as their religion, and adopting the language spoken there, a langue d'oïl ("language of oui," from Dante's classification of the early Gallo-Romance languages based upon their manner of saying "yes"), as their own. This they flavored with their distinctive Norse dialects, and the resulting dialect would susequently by flavored by a similar Gallo-Romance language, Old French, once the speakers of the last rose to supremacy. This distinctive blend, carried by the Normans into England during the Norman Invasion, would later be called Anglo-Norman by historians.

The Norman Invasion, led by William the Conqueror, took place in 1066. Whereas the earlier Danish invasions had failed to stamp out all resistance, only managing to sequester the Anglo-Saxons in southern England, the invading Normans swept through the country entire, crushing Danish and Anglo-Saxon resistance alike. Most significantly, they supplanted the ruling language with their own. Old English would still play a limited role in some negotiation and trade, and was still spoken around the hearth, but the language of law and administration became Anglo-Norman. Though it's supremacy would wane toward the latter fourteenth century, being completely re-supplanted by the coronation of Henry the V in 1413, it added some 10,000 words to the spoken language, about three quarters of which survive in some form to this day, and many of which--parliament, rule, order, court, castle--hint at the social dynamics within England at the time. Also, interestingly, the names of many of our animals in food form, if you will--beef, pork, mutton--come from the Normans, whereas the corresponding names for the field forms of these animals--cattle, pigs, sheep--are of Germanic origin.

One of the more renowned writers in the Anglo-Norman dialect went by the name Marie de France. Despite her surname, indicating a French birth, it would seem likely that she resided for much of her life in England. She wrote in the twelfth century, at the height of the Anglo-Norman supremacy there, and for these reasons and more, I've chosen one of her lays to illustrate the Anglo-Norman dialect. The translation is one I found online that I like because they stayed true to the syntax, without being too literal, or taking any liberties in order to duplicate the rhyme scheme. For example, the first line would translate "The adventure of another lay, as it was, I'll recount to you all," which sounds rather awkward to my ears. If you can read French, you should find much of it fairly easy to interpret yourself.

Much of the phonology of Anglo-Norman can be discerned from words carried over into English. If you speak French, don't be tempted to silence your final consonants. They continued to be pronounced in northern Gallo-Romance dialects. Nor would the letter G, though palatized, become the ZH sound of the modern French J, or G when followed by an I or E. To make it simple, pronounce J, and the G in gentil and damagoënt as you would the J in jump, and that of Loengre as the G in grape. Also, there are none of the distinctive nasals of modern French. EN, ENT, AN, etc. are all pronounced similarly to modern English. Anyway, it occurs to me that I could be here for awhile with all this, so let me just say that if you're that interested, check out Wikipedia, which is where I got all of this. I'll give further examples later on to illustrate the orthographical points I'll be making, largely involving the pronunciation of G, OU, the earlier mentioned Germanic CH/GH sound, and a few other phonemes. Without further adieu (pun intended):

l'aventure d'un autre lai,
cum ele avient, vus cunterai:
fait fu d'un mut gentil vassal;
en bretans l'apelent Lanval.

Kardoel surjurunot li reis,
Artur, li purz e li curteis,
pur les Escoz e pur les Pis,
que destruieient le païs:
en la tere de Loengre entroënt
e mut suvent la damagoënt.

I'll share with you all an adventure
as it went down, one more lay,
about a congenial vassal;
In Breton, they call it Lanval.

Arthur, the courtly and valiant king,
stayed for awhile at Carduel,
on account of a number of Scots and Picts,
wrecking the countryside there:
Often they'd trespass the grounds of Logres
doing great harm to the place.

And that will be adieu for now. Having given everyone some basic idea of the three orthographical systems I'll be using to make my points, I can now eat. Toodles.