Why the Battle of Hastings in 1066 had such a profound influence on the English language?

Answer 1

Most of the time in history, a conqueror imposes his language on the conquered.

For example, if the Carthaginians had beaten the Romans instead, we would all be speaking Semitic today. However, a Roman victory over Carthage in 202 B.C. insured that Latin and its Romance daughter languages would be the predominant languages in Western Europe for centuries to come.

At Hastings, you had potentially the same kind of situation. Theoretically, French should have even replaced English entirely since the English army led by Harold Godwinson lost. .

Instead, English survived but simply replete with a lot of Old French and Norman French loanwords.

Historians have suggested at least two reasons why.One is that the Normans didn't come over to England in quite large enough numbers for French to make a big impact on English society. Nor did they get enough support from their Norman homeland. William the Conqueror began feuding with France not too long after he conquered England and even some of his own relatives in Normandy took the French side.

Another reason is that, unlike the Romans, the Vikings and the Normans had a strong tendency to go native usually intermarrying with the foreigners they came into contact with and adopting their languages as well. The heirs of William the Conqueror simply cintinued this Viking tradition in England and in a few hundered years, all of the Normans were completely absorbed into the native English population.

Answer 2

Henry and his Anglo-Saxons spoke old English which replace into nearer to German and got here from the back of the throat. William the Conqueror defeated Henry for the English Throne and introduced with him French, extra forward in the mouth and midsection English replace into the effect. there is likewise the creation of Latin words, Arabic (From Crusades) and Spanish that had there effect. Oh sure with slightly Celtic thrown in. as a effect English isn't a real language yet a melding of a number of genuine languages. This makes English tougher and uniform yet on the different hand lots extra expressive. we can elect between a number of words (all from diverse languages) to signify the comparable component finding on the area.

Answer 3

The two sides of the battle spoke two different languages: English on one side, French on the other.

What happened afrer William the Conquerer won was an intermixing of the two. French became the language of the elite, and English was the language of commoners. That's why we have so many French words and phrases in modern English, i.e., haute coture, creme de la creme, a la mode, deja vu, madam, etc.

Answer 4

William the Conqueror (Guillaime le Conquant (in french)) took the throne and incorporated some anglasised french into the language.