《闲话英伦》特辑：English的前世今生－2.从古英语到中古英语

The last episode we met the Anglo-Saxons who came from Denmark and North Germany.

In 1066 – everything changes at the Battle of Hastings with the Norman Conquest.

The Normans conquered England and William the Conqueror became king.

The Normans spoke a type of French and this became the language of government and law.

28% of English vocabulary comes from French – mainly vocabularyabout government, the Church, fashion.

The influence of French is why English has two words for most things as lots of new words were added to English (E.g. Commence=start/terminate=finish).

Formal (more written) words normally come from French, while informal (more spoken) words come from Old English – including most English swearwords!

English has two words for animals and their meat (e.g.pig=pork/sheep=mutton/cow=beef). This is because the peasants who looked after the animals spoke Old English but the nobles who ate the food spoke French.

This mixture of French and Old English becomes Middle English. English only became a language of government in 14th Century.

It was around this time that Geoffrey Chaucer started to write in Middle English

Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales – pilgrims about going to Canterbury and they told each other stories to entertainthemselves

Middle English is one of the reason why English spelling is so strange. In 15th Century, printing came to England and English spelling became standard but pronunciation has changed a lot since then.

But at this time English is only a language spoken by a few peasants on the edge of Europe. In the next episode, we will talk about how English started to become a world language.