Talk:Anglo-Norman language

Duplication

Is this page not somewhat duplicating Anglo-Norman?

"K" sound

"Other words such as captain, kennel, cattle and canvas exemplify how Norman retained a /k/ from Latin that was not retained in French."

What? The word for "captain" in French is "capitan" (KAP-ee-'ten). Have I misunderstood the passage? —Casey J. Morris 05:43, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

capitaine is a Normanno-Picard form in French, i.e. non-Francien. Chef shows the French development of the head root. But the sentence in question could probably be more clearly worded. Man vyi 06:41, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Er, yeah, "capitan" is the Spanish spelling (Sans accent) isn't it? Heh heh. —Casey J. Morris 15:13, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

And we have the, no doubt Francien, form "chieftain"; so in this instance, unusually France retains the Norman form and English retains the Parisian! --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:08, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a bit of a simplification of the documentary reality: even the earliest Anglo-Norman texts and documents (e.g. Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, 1139; the Laws of William the Conqueror ca. 1150) also have "French" spellings. It's important to remember (a) that spellings aren't a reliable echo of pronunciation and (b) writers were "feeling their way" as they evolved a vernacular which was very far from standardized, anywhere. David Trotter (talk) 23:27, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

Anglo-Norman was a dialect, it was not a language. It says so in the first sentence of the article.--Mais oui! 16:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

---

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

• Support --Mais oui! 16:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose All languages are dialects by definition. For example: the English language is a Germanic dialect; the French language is a Romance dialect. Man vyi 17:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose From the article "to compile official documents, to write literature, and for commercial purposes". Norman French was the formal language of England for several centuries. It was no more a dialect than Afrikaans was a dialect of Dutch during apartheid. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose The comment that "it says so in the first sentence" is undermined by your edit two hours earlier [1] --Henrygb 10:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Indeed? How so?--Mais oui! 21:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
    • If you change the article and immediately claim that the wording of the article is the reason for your proposed page move then people may doubt your good faith. --Henrygb 01:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
      • I think it may be my edit of the first sentence that you're referring to. Sorry for any confusion caused. Man vyi 10:46, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
        • No, I believe Henrygb is referring to this edit, made only nine minutes before Mais oui! placed the move request. In those circumstances, it is highly disingenous for Mais oui! to claim that the article's language supports his suggested change. Perhaps he's been reading m:How to win an argument. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 08:20, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose --Gareth Hughes 15:53, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose —Matthew Brown (T:C) 08:22, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose Anglo-Norman clearly had both an army and a navy — Satyadasa 20:11, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Man vyi hit the nail right on the head. Most western languages are ultimately dialects of an ancient, and now lost, Indo-European mother-tongue. Rje 15:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose Continental French made changes not made in Britain (chief > chef, for instance). The older forms are well represented in English and must not be disregarded. Dajwilkinson 00:13, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

Have replaced contentious dialect with variety. Let's see how that goes; since Anglo-Norman developed into a literary and administrative standard, that may be a more helpful description to the non-linguist. Man vyi 09:57, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the logic behind this move request, but I'd prefer to see a move to Anglo-Norman, where the unnecessary term "dialect" is left out of the title. Marco79 16:09, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

'Anglo-Norman' is ambiguous: it can mean far more things than the language. --Gareth Hughes 16:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed with Gareth Hughes. Leave it here, for the same reason that most other languages have an entry at X language. Satyadasa 20:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

One possibility is to go with "Anglo-Norman (linguistics)" to avoid using either term. That's what's done with the various Chinese languages/dialects. E.g., Mandarin (linguistics), Cantonese (linguistics), Hakka (linguistics) LuiKhuntek 07:39, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Or to move it to "Anglo-Norman", and move Anglo-Norman to "Anglo-Norman (Disambiguation)". The Jade Knight (talk) 11:04, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Result

Page not moved; no consensus. Eugene van der Pijll 18:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Oïl languages

It has been proposed that Languages of Oïl be renamed and moved to Langues d'Oïl. Comments and votes on Talk:Languages of Oïl, please, if you're interested. Man vyi 09:13, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Infobox

I just added an infobox based on the one at French language. I've left the name as "Norman" for now, with the native name as "Normand". I wasn't sure how to handle the "total speakers" - I don't have time to find out numbers right now and in any case there are probably a lot more historical speakers than current ones. Please fill in missing params / correct errors as appropriate. Hairy Dude 04:58, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

first French literature in England?

I heard once, the first novel in French language was written in England, since in France at this time Latin was still state of the art. Is this true? (Sorry for my English I'm German.) LanX --217.224.41.23 02:06, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

David Howlett (editor of the Dictionary of Medeval Latin from British Sources) wrote on this in The English Origins of Old French Literature (Dublin: Four Courts, 1996). It is certainly true that the majority of early "French" manuscripts (lietrary) are Anglo-Norman and Howlett suggests (to simplify his intricate argument) that the earliest texts display structural principles, utlimately Biblical, transmitted via insular authors (Celtic) and picked up by Anglo-Norman writers. David Trotter (talk) 23:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Etymology

1. wait - guetter (French)
2. war (from AN werre) - guerre (French)

AFAIK both words are of Germanic origin, so they can also derive from Anglo-Saxon. Please compare German "warten" and "Querelen" meaning "to wait" and "quarrel". Are you sure they entered English via French? Guerre comes from Frankish "werra" http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/guerre#.C3.89tymologie

also

1. garden < jardin

thats "Garten" in German! This was most likely already an Anglo-Saxon word before Norman conquest. Please referre to http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/jardin#.C3.89tymologie

Which sources do you use???

LanX --217.224.41.23 03:32, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

OK I checked it, all words originate in Germanic/Frankish but made a detour via Norman-French:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=war&searchmode=none http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=wait&searchmode=none http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=garden&searchmode=none

LanX --217.224.41.23 04:07, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Wait is clearly North French, recorded as waitier and Old French guaiter, the diphtong /ai/ before /t/ is the result of -ACT- group changing in French, so waitier / guaiter from OLFranconian *wakton > Dutch wachten, same evolution as Latin factu > fait, lactu > lait. German warten does not share the same etymology, but with ward / guard. garden is North French too : gardin / French jardin. regularly Germanic /g/ was palatized in Old English written ġ, the same root as German garten is "yard", as Auge is eye. Under ONorse influence, there are exceptions like give, German geben, but OE had ġiefan ""yive"".

Origin of the term

Does anyone have information of the origin of the term? I somewhat doubt the Norman called their language the "Anglo-Norman one". Matthieu 06:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I expect it is a term scholars invented to distinguish Anglo-Norman from other sorts of Norman, or from Anglo-Saxon (Old English). My guess (this is speculation!) is that Normans referred to their langauge as Norman, Romance, "the vernacular", or possibly even French. Modern Normans call their language "Normaund"(/Nouormand), "patois", or by the individual dialect names (such as Jèrriais). The Jade Knight 10:29, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

There was a widespread tendency in the 17th to 19th centuries - still used by those who know no better - for all English varieties of medieval and legal French to be called "Norman French". It was Maitland who pointed out that this is inaccurate: the specifically Norman dialect was only used for a century or so after the conquest, after which a form of the Parisian dialect was used instead. There is nothing Norman about the language of Britton, Littleton or most of the Year Books. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 21:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

There is a case for ditching "Anglo-Norman" too, since (a) we don't know enough about the dialect(s) brought over by William and his men (b) what we do know suggests that it wasn't just Norman but also that he had Picards and men from western France with him (c) that Anglo-Norman overstates the Norman connection right through the Middle Ages, when other French dialects also exerted influence. Tradition favours Anglo-Norman but Anglo-French, or Insular French, might be better. David Trotter (talk) 23:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Copyright Violation

I have reported this article on the copyright violations page. Whoever wrote this clearly just copied chunks of David Trotter's original article.

Yes it was. I removed the copyright violation. Garion96 (talk) 18:12, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Anglo-French neologisms/archaisms absent from Continental French

In England the phrase "double entendre" for an expression with both an innocent everyday and a risqué interpretation is in current use but has been superseded in France by "double entente".

Also, the phrase "bon viveur" has appeared in English news items in recent years but is utterly absent from Continental French, in which it is ungrammatical (bon vivant being the correct form).

Do these count as Anglo-Norman/Anglo-French neologisms or archaisms? If not, what are they? Dajwilkinson 00:01, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

No, these represent far later borrowings from French, probably from the nineteenth century. Another example is the use of "Ooh la la" to show that something is naughty or risqué: in French "oh la la" is a purely innocent phrase meaning "oh dear". --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 21:21, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

My query stems more from the idea found in the article on the Japanese language page regarding what is known as wasei-eigo, translatable as "English made in Japan". We instinctively know what a "salaryman" is but without the people of Japan this word would never have appeared. Is there a similar term for this kind of false French? Dajwilkinson 00:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

French dialect

Is it wrong to classify this variety as a French dialect? Aaker (talk) 19:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if it is wrong to classify Old French as a Norman dialect. The Jade Knight (talk) 07:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Anglo-Norman is a "French dialect" if by that is meant: "a dialect of northern Gallo-Romance", in other words, if "French" is used as shorthand for that rather cumbersome formulation, and as long as we don't forget that modern French is a derivative of (mainly) one dialect and thus implies reduction of that dialectal diversity. Anglo-Norman is however not a "French dialect" if by "French" in that context, is meant only that form of northern Gallo-Romance (broadly, Ile-de-France French) which would (with some admixture of other forms) in due course become modern standard French. David Trotter (talk) 23:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

This being a longer, more complicated, and more accurate summation of what I said. The Jade Knight (talk) 21:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Anglo-Norman v Norman

The article says Anglo-Norman and Norman were different languages. In what ways were they different? For example, the article has some words showing some differences between Anglo-Norman and French, and some words showing some differences between Norman and French, but nothing showing any differences between Anglo-Norman vocabulary and Norman vocabulary. Dab14763 (talk) 19:13, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

First, it is important to understand that "Norman" may mean two things linguistically: First it used to refer to the entire Norman "family" of languages/dialects. In this sense, all forms of Norman, including Old Norman, Anglo-Norman, Jèrriais, and continental Norman are all "Norman". This is what we mean when we talk about "the Norman dialects/languages". The other meaning of the term "Norman" refers specifically to the collection of Norman dialects currently spoken on the continent (in Normandy). These are generally grouped together as a single language (which may include the insular dialects, or may exclude them—frequently, in Norman, one speaks of three "languages": continental "Norman", Jèrriais (which would include Sèrtchais), and Guernésiais. Norman in this sense refers only to the modern Norman dialects, and sometimes only to the continental dialects.

So, to answer your question: Anglo-Norman is an extinct, and very old, dialect of Norman, and the differences between it and the modern Norman dialects would probably be quite similar to the differences between Old Norman and modern Norman (just a guess). A comparison of the Dictionnaire Jèrsiais-Français, the OED, and perhaps a good Anglo-Norman dictionary would probably help tease out the exact distinctions between these languages/dialects. I am ignorant of whether or not any work has been done drawing up the historical linguistics of Norman, however. The Jade Knight (talk) 10:57, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed split to Anglo-French

I propose the sections detailing specifically Anglo-French (and not discussing Anglo-Norman) be split and used to create an article at Anglo-French (currently being used as a disambiguation page). In particular, the lengthy parts in "Use and development" seem appropriate for this shift. The Jade Knight (talk) 10:46, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I, for one, would be extremely grateful if someone would create an article about the Anglo-French language. I know nothing about it (which is why I'm here), so whether splitting it off from this article is the solution I don't know. But the current disambiguation page results in useless circular references back to this article, making it impossible for a non-expert to determine what Anglo-French actually is. Is it the same as Anglo-Norman? Evidently not, because many articles (including its disambiguation page) assert that it is not, but nowhere is Anglo-French even defined—much less described—in any way that's intelligible to a layman. If I'm overlooking it somewhere, somebody please set me on the right path.--Jim10701 (talk) 21:16, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

A brief definition is provided at the Anglo-French disambig page: "Linguistic - may be used to refer to the dialect of French that developed in England following the decline of the Norman language there." The Jade Knight (talk) 23:05, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Are there any sources for that definition? I work mainly on Japanese version of Wikipedia and I translated this article into Japanese. But there is a controversy about the term "Anglo-French". The article is no doubt based on the definition mentioned above (and the next "It may also be used erroneously to describe the Anglo-Norman language, the dialect of Old Norman used in medieval England", at the Anglo-French page) but no reliable sources are cited. One Japanese editor insists that it may be original research to say without sources that using Anglo-French as Anglo-Norman is erroneous. The editor also says the article sounds strange in parts such as, "Middle English was heavily influenced by both Anglo-Norman and, later, Anglo-French" because they are the same or much the same. I can't find sources appropriately endorsing the above definition in The Anglo-Norman On_Line Hub(They advocate using Anglo-French instead of Anglo-Norman for the language even before the decline of the Norman). Are there any good sources that explicitly describe Anglo-French is the dialect of French developed in England after the decline of the Norman?--Ryota7906 (talk) 13:25, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I currently don't have access to most academic publications, so we may have to wait on academic sources. I'll try to add some references as soon as I'm able. In the meantime, borrowings in English make it obvious enough that Anglo-French and Anglo-Norman were distinct. I suppose it could be argued that "Anglo-Norman" and "Anglo-French" simply refer to two distinct stages of the same language continuum, but the former was distinctly Norman in character, where the latter was distinctly French in character. The issue is complicated by the fact that many in the English-speaking world seem unaware that Norman is (and has been for a thousand years) distinct from French. The Jade Knight (talk) 21:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

grammar, grimoires and other glamours

"The word glamour is derived, unglamorously, from AN grammeire, the same word which gives us modern grammar. Apparently glamour meant magic or magic spell in Medieval times" The word "grimoire", a book of magic spells, jumped to my mind reading this sentence, should it also be part of the discussion?

Quite exact. According to T. H. Hoad's English Etymology, OUP. AN Grammarye, gramarie would have given AN *glomerie > glamour. AN grammere would have given grammar. Grimoire is the same kind of change, but in French and borrowed from French. Only in French ei can become oi, Anglo-Norman like all the Western Oil dialects kept ei intact. The /gri/ is probably the result of an influence from grimuche, Old French word for grimace. Nortmannus (talk) 19:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Anglo-Norman ei

The article currently reads: "The words veil and leisure retain the /ei/ (as does modern Norman in vaile and laîsi) that in French has been replaced by /wɑː/ voile, loisir."

This is strictly incorrect, if it intends to suggest that the Modern English diphthong [eɪ] descends without change from the Anglo-Norman sound represented by ei.

In fact, English [eɪ] is a fairly new sound, arising around 1800 (or only slightly earlier). Anglo-Norman ei was not retained, having merged with ai, which became English ai (presumably [aɪ] or something similar), which in turn merged with English long a, whose sound rapidly mutated (by raising and fronting) from [aː] to [æː] to [ɛː] to [eː] (as it still is in Scottish Standard English) and thence to [eɪ]. The spelling ai is seen in the very old borrowing faith (early Norman feid, feit, fait). With secondary destressing we see e (e.g. power from poeir, later pooir, MF pouvoir and endeavo(u)r, formerly endever, from en+deveir, later devoir).

What would be more correct is to simply note that the Modern English sounds descended in some cases from Anglo-Norman ei prior to the French change of ei to oi (which was, of course, originally pronounced something like [ɔɪ]). But many words were borrowed in the Middle Ages after the change: anoint, boil, cloister, coin, coy, enjoy, join, joint, joy, loin, loyal, moist, noise, oil, ointment, royal, soil (n. and v.), voice, void; and in these cases the diphthong has been preserved with minimal change since the Middle Ages.RandomCritic (talk) 04:05, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Really interesting, what we can read here. Thanks. Nortmannus (talk) 20:50, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Standardization

Do we want to use accents like féchoun (é) and caundèle (è) even though they didn't exist yet? Such accents are added by modern editors to help the reader understand. These sort of accents didn't appear until around 1780 according to the TLFi. Also, does Norman refer to the Norman language or to Anglo-Norman, in sentences like "English therefore, for example, has fashion from Norman féchoun as opposed to Modern French". Finally, AN and PF should be written out (WP:PAPER) but I'll do that now. --Mglovesfun (talk) 12:17, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The words provided (with accents) are examples of Modern Norman, strictly speaking, the English words did not derive from those forms, but the Norman forms are given for comparison (just as the modern French forms are given for comparison). Either way, it would be incorrect to remove the accents from those words. Again, strictly speaking, the article is in error in stating that "fashion" derives from féchoun; technically, they both derive from a common Old Norman stem. The Jade Knight (talk) 21:35, 13 May 2011 (UTC)