Mordechai Housman wrote:
> I do not know if this is the correct list in which to post this
> question. So please let me know (politely) if it does not belong
> here.
>
> Now, the question: I find myself wondering how it is that the
> Normans, a Germanic people, came to be speaking Old French, which I
> think is something like 95% Latin.
>
> Near as I can guess, it was from daily exposure to the Romans in
> the nearby areas.
>
> But was nothing left of their own language? How did they come to
> abandon their own roots that way, and assume completely the
language
> of the people they had conquered?
A couple of points.
We need to rethink seriously the nature of elite dominance, patronage
systems and linguistics. Our recent experience of nationalism,
insisting on a unified image of the state and its citizens, speaking
a common langauge is a very recent phenomenon, created only during
the American and French Revolutions. Prior to that, other
conceptions applied, which enabled polyethnic polities to exist. Our
models need to be less those of Modern France or Germany, and more
the situation of India, or even the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In these cases we find different languages spoken between elites and
commoners, not just differences in dialect or accent.
This was the case that happened when the Normans arrived in Normandy,
speaking their Scandinavian German tongue, they arrived as an elite
ruling over a population speaking early French in most areas, with
others speaking Breton in some areas, and possibly even minorities
speaking local dialects of Gallo-Roman or even earlier tongues,
surrounded by a landholding elite by and large also speaking early
French. As an incoming warrior society, the elite brought wives and
families with them, but the rank and file "housecarl" or Norman
infantryman did not. They sought wives amongst the local elite, and
so very quickly a new generation of Franco-Normans arose, fully
bilingual in both languages.
The children of this second generation would seek marriage alliances
with those of equal status, from their neighbours, both French and
Franco Norman. With no further arrivals of Scandinavian Normans
occurring, the third generation found that in order to communicate
with their peasantry, with the traders in the towns, with their
French peers, and often with their wives and families, French was
required rather than the Danish or Norse dialect that they had
previously spoken. Within 4 generations Romance French had
superceded Germanic as the language spoken by the Norman invaders.
I have studied a little of the genealogies of the Norman French elite
(there are some excellent genealogical resources on the web) which
show this "elite fusion" process at work, and the way in which in a
matter of less than 4 generations the Norman elite had been totally
absorbed within the majority French tradition.
It is interesting studying the way, by contrast, that English came to
replace Brythonic in Britain. There the elite language was Latin,
the common folk spoke an early version of Welsh. With the collapse
of Romano-British urban life in the 5th century, the Latin-speaking
elite was replaced by an elite who were probably bilingual in both
Latin and Welsh (people of the kind of Gildas). They found marriage
partners, and spoke to their warriors, and the cattle herders and
peasants, not in Gallo-Roman buty in Brythonic Welsh.
The Jutes who arrived in Kent, and the later Anglo-Saxons, replaced
the Romano-British elite with a Germanic one, constantly reinforced
by new arrivals from Germany. There was little need for the Germanic
elite to marry British, they had suffcient Anglo-Saxon wives from
amongst the new arrivals to chose from.
Even as late as King Alfred's reign, British was still the spoken
tongue of large numbers of peasants and even lesser nobility in the
heart of Wessex. But those of the lesser nobility who aspired to
elite status found they had to speak English to be understood. They
were bi-lingual. In most cases the elite were not. English, in
England, finished up, as a result, replacing Welsh, which survived in
Wales and Strathclyde, the areas where Germanic invaders never
managed to capture elite control.
Hope this helps
Regards
John