Talk:Anglo-Norman language

message: This entire article uses the word “French” freely interchangeably with “Anglo-Norman.”  It’s not clear Anglo-Norman was a separate language at all by reading this article.
:That's the point. English French was nearer to Norman for about a century after the conquest, and nearer to Parisian French thereafter. I think the article makes this clear. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 17:47, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  They spoke Anglo-Norman (a French dialect) + French. Both are French, like Canadian English and British English are English. Some variants in the vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation, but still the same language. Because I can read old French, I can read Anglo-Norman too.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.91.51.235 (talk) 15:37, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: did they speak French or Anglo-Norman?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)

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

text:  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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Requested move

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

text:  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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Discussion

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

message: 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)
thread_title:  Oïl languages 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Infobox 

message: 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)
replies: text: Even the name of the language, "Franceis", was first used in England, as in France it was still called "romanz, romans, roman" / z= ts, then -s, then no sound at all; we still guess "romanz" in words like "romance, romancier".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.101.187.125 (talk) 19:36, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  first French literature in England? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: Wasn't Gallo the dominant language among the invaders who accompanied William the Conqueror? As I understand it, Gallo was the language of Maine, Anjou, eastern Brittany and most of Normandy, at least. "Norman French" is a dialect of Gallo that has some Norse words added, and it was (and is) spoken, as a collection of dialects, only in parts of the northern Cotentin, in the vicinity of Rouen, and in other variants on the Channel Isles. Zoetropo (talk) 01:21, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

text: Also, is modern standard French an Ile-de-France dialect? I thought it drew on other sources, which I think included the French of Orleans, a city that is fairly close to the Gallo speaking area and used to be near the border of Armorica, the cultural region where Gallo predominated. Zoetropo (talk) 01:21, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the term 

message: 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)
thread_title: Copyright Violation

message: 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)
thread_title: Anglo-French neologisms/archaisms absent from Continental French

message: Is it wrong to classify this variety as a French dialect? Aaker (talk) 19:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, if it is wrong to classify Old French as a Norman dialect.  The Jade Knight (talk) 07:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

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

message: "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)
thread_title:  grammar, grimoires and other glamours 

message: 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)
replies: text: Really interesting, what we can read here. Thanks. Nortmannus (talk) 20:50, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anglo-Norman ''ei''

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Standardization 

message: A few days ago I removed the following statement:
:Norman and French influence affected the English vocabulary, grammar, spelling and pronunciation. As a result, the Anglo-Saxon grammar became less flexible in the choice of the order of words in the sentence, while the verbal system of endings for adjectives, nouns and verbs became simpler.[7]
It has recently been restored as the statement was sourced, but I didn't provide a "source" for my removing it. I don't know how I am meant to reference the deletion of a statement, as it's no longer in the article. Anyway, let me do it here so it can be redeleted for good.
The claim is untrue, as the changes in inflection and word order began in Late Old English, and were not brought about by Norman French. The easiest reference to this I can give, is in Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Language, 4ed. (which is a standard textbook). In Chapter 7 they give details of how grammatical and phonological changes emerged from Old Engilsh, and specifically on page 163, they say:
:It is important to emphasize that these changes which affected the grammatical structure of English after the Norman Conquest were not the result of contact with the French language.
::The changes weren't due to the Conquest entirely. Contact across the Danelaw had already begun to erode some of the inflection in articles. On the other hand, the Beowulf MS dates from around 1000 (Kiernan's estimate) and still has heavily inflected grammar. Thus, educated people then as today retained more inflection than commoners. The word order in Beowulf is extremely flexible. Without the Norman Conquest's driving English from the courts, etc, the literate speakers of Old English might have retained a lot more inflection than we see today. 66.61.102.203 (talk) 00:51, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It is understood that deflexion has something to do with language contact. Anglo-Saxon was already an amalgam of different continental Germanic dialects. Over time there was significant contact with different Celtic languages as well as Norse. Therefore it is indeed true, and not surprising, that some of those grammatical changes had started before the French influence, and they might have had quite similar outcomes without it. On the other hand it is impossible to say that French had no influence on grammar or syntax whatsoever. It did. Especially concerning word order in which English is different from all other Germanic languages, but very similar to French. So: The influence of French should not be overestimated, it is not the reason for everything; but it is one of the reasons.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.163.110 (talk) 12:55, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourced, but untrue, statement. 

message: The translation provided is too word-for-word to render the exact thought behind the motto.
I suggest here "Reviled be whoever thinks ill", but also "Reviled be whoever has ill thoughts" or (...) vile thoughts" or "(...) abject thoughts", etc... Any other idea ?
Condor  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.196.50.33 (talk) 14:12, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation of motto "Honi soit qui mal y pense" 

message: The article starts out by defining Anglo-Norman and says it's a synonym of Anglo-Norman French. Then it suddenly starts talking about Anglo-French without explaining what that is and only indirectly(!) says it's something different (by using a verb in the plural). In addition, the first use of the undefined term is followed by a sophomoric "its" that can be interpreted as referring to two synonyms for one language or to "correspondence". Very sloppy and chaotic. --Espoo (talk) 09:45, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  chaotic intro  

message: The introduction says that Anglo-Norman had little grammatical influence on English, which is probably correct. The only example given, however, is the noun-adjective word order in certain titles like attorney general. This is a bad example. The older Germanic languages did allow this word order, though they used it rarely. Moreover, this worder occurs in English outside of titles, particularly with participles (cf. my "the example given" above). The most striking instance of a likely Anglo-Norman influence is actually that English has lost V2 word order. All Germanic languages (without exception!) do have this, as did Old English and early Middle English.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.204.115.180 (talk) 19:22, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammatical and syntactical influences 

message: 'Compare also: wage (Anglo-Norman) - gage (French)'
vs
'Mortgage, for example, literally meant death-wage in Anglo-Norman'
105.227.61.241 (talk) 13:57, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mortgage/gage/wage 

message: This article seems to mention only England and Ireland, but of course exactly the same was true of Scotland after the Norman Conquest of northern Britain nominally headed by the usurper David I on behalf of William's son Henry I.
Walter of Coventry (fl. 1290) wrote “The modern kings of Scotia count themselves as Frenchmen [i.e. Norman], in race, manners, language and culture; they keep only Frenchmen in their household and following, and have reduced the Scots [=Gaels north of the Forth] to utter servitude". Cassandra  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.7.111.241 (talk) 18:22, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Don't forget Scotland! 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: It is quite obvious that the term "Anglo-Norman" is fairly recent, since all the accounts of the era describe the language spoken by the Norman nobility in England as simply "French". I'm fairly certain this term was invented by nationalistic 19th century British historians who wanted to mark a separation between their French rivals and the foreign elites that ruled England centuries ago, but it would be great to have sourced accounts of the term's origins.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.150.142.207 (talk) 09:19, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: 18th century according to the OED: "1735   M. Shelton tr. W. Wotton Short View Hickes's Anc. Northern-lang. 30 (note)    The Anglo-Norman ing, is changed into ig, by throwing out the n."John O'London (talk) 16:55, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the term