Battle Aftermath: Impact on English   We’ve discussed the impact on England of the Battle of Hastings, and now we’ll discuss what the impact on the English language was. After 1066, three things we mentioned earlier about superstratum and substratum languages after an invasion could have happened in England. If the Normans had yielded the Norman French language they arrived with and became absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon language and culture, we’d be communicating right now in an updated Anglo-Saxon. That didn’t happen (the substratum did not win out). If the Anglo-Saxons had yielded their language and become absorbed into the Norman French language, we’d be communicating now in a version of French. That didn’t happen, either (the superstratum did not win out). Instead, rather unusually, the two strata blended.

Probably most speakers of English are unaware of the considerable changes that took place after Hastings as these two strata blended into what we now call English. This blending of languages went parallel with those considerable changes to Anglo-Saxon society. Most people today probably picture that the only differences between Old English, Middle English, and Modern English are the changes that took place naturally over time. But comparing the three is like comparing apples and oranges, which we’ll explain in a moment.

I’m used to using words ending in O when comparing Anglo culture in the Americas with Latino culture, so somewhat unorthodoxly, I’ll use similar words to compare the situation in English. Let’s call the tradition behind what Harold spoke “Anglo”. We already know that isn’t perfectly accurate, and that “Dano-Anglo” would take into consideration the Danish influence we noted earlier, but since it’s all Germanic, let’s keep it simple and stick with Anglo to cover Germanic Dano-Anglo-Saxon. Let’s call “Franco” the tradition behind what William spoke. It, too, isn’t perfect, since he spoke Norman French based on local French dialects plus a Scandinavian strain, as opposed to Parisian, or Standard French, but to continue keeping it simple, we’ll use Franco to cover ALL French, unless further specified. (We’ll also see that all French had/has a small Germanic strain as well.)

Old English was Anglo. Middle English was Anglo/Franco, and so is Modern English Anglo/Franco. If you compare Middle and Modern English, you’re comparing apples to apples, and just have to allow for normal changes over time. That’s why we can look at Chaucer or Shakespeare, and at least follow somewhat what’s being said. But if you compare Old English with either of the other two, you’re comparing apples and oranges. We today are dependent on both Anglo and Franco vocabulary, and when we’ve looked at samples of Old English, we have the Anglo, and recognize words here and there. All the words lost when Franco replaced them are unfamiliar, and the text is hard to follow, since we thirst for these Franco words. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at the end of the previous posting, even orally you could understand much of the first sentence, plus the references later on to the deaths of Harold and his brothers, but much the other vocabulary has largely been replaced. These words of course constitute a great cultural loss.

We said Anglo and Franco strata blended, but they blended in a most unusual way, based on William’s actions after 1066. Since William obliterated the Anglo aristocracy, the remaining Anglo speakers were heavily working and middle class. Since William brought in his Norman-French speaking nobility to fill the elite vacuum, the upper, ruling class, the wealthy, the titled, the cultured, were Franco speakers. Although Latin remained the language of record in legal and other official documents, Norman French was the language of the King, his court, the upper class, as well as legal documents and trade at all levels. And so in the first century or two after 1066, society in England was two-layered, with the upper class being of Franco heritage and the working classes being of Anglo heritage. To this day we still have the affects of this.

The best parallel I can give is to the status of Spanish in the US. While the English-speaking lady of the house tends to her career and other affairs, she hires a Guatemalan nanny for the kids. Similarly, the husband hires a Mexican gardener and a Dominican poolboy. The Anglos learn enough Spanish to manage, and the Latinos enough English. While Latinos are only a part of the US workforce, perhaps the parallel to Norman England can be better understood.

As to ranking, consider this. American Anglos will understand a few basic Spanish words like “abuela” or “niño”, and will probably know what a bodega is. Still that word is not on a level with its original use. In Spain, a bodega can be any kind of shop--the word is related to the French “boutique”. But in the US a bodega is one thing, a Latino grocery store, of little prestige. This second-class status of Spanish in the US is the sort of second-class status Anglo-Saxon had in Norman England--in the eyes of many, both were what the working class spoke.

As the two blended together over time, it was Franco words that prevailed for abstract concepts and for words associated with elite status, government, literature, the arts, the sciences. Anglo jurors needed to know French to understand the proceedings. Far fewer Franco words penetrated downward into everyday life. On the other hand, the Anglo words for everyday life used by the working classes prevailed, and--here’s the rub--much of the Anglo elite vocabulary fell into disuse, and died out. This is the cultural loss I’ve referred to.

The classic example used to illustrate this phenomenon in Norman England is that the nouns for meats in English are different from those for the animals for which they are produced, which is not the case in most other languages. And typically, since the farmer was Anglo, it’s the names for animals that are Germanic, and since the wealthy who could afford meat were Franco, the meats have Italic/Latinate names. This is true for the pairs deer & venison; calf & veal; swine/pig & pork; sheep/lamb & mutton; cow/ox & beef. You don’t have to know Anglo-Saxon or Norman French to be able to see this. Compare “cow/ox” with the German words “Kuh” and “Ochs”; “beef” with French “boeuf”. Similarly compare “sheep/lamb” with G “Schaf/Lamm”, but “mutton” with F “mouton”; “calf” with G “Kalb”, but “veal” with F “veau”; “swine” with G “Schwein”, but “pork” with F “porc”. And then do understand, for example that “porc” in French means “pig”, although in English pork now refers to the meat.

If that doesn’t convince the reader that what was Anglo was delegated to the everyday and what was Franco was delegated to the elite life, consider this. “House” is a Germanic word (GE Haus, DU huis, SW hus). The French word for “house” is “maison”. “Maison” entered English as well, in the form “mansion”, so consider that we distinguish to this day between an everyday Anglo house and an elite Franco mansion, as the linguistic heritage of Hastings and William.

The Anglo (Germanic) words in English are also the most basic of words in ordinary speech, the framework of the language. They include all the pronouns (me, she, him), prepositions (to, between, for), conjunctions (and, that, before), modal verbs (can, must should). It is estimated variously that Germanic words form between 50% to 80% of the vocabulary of Modern English. To break it down further, of the most frequent 7,476 English words, when you look at the first 100 words, 97% are Germanic and 3% Italic, but when you consider the first 1000 words, it changes to 57% Germanic to 36% Italic (7% other); by the second thousand, it’s 39-51-10%. Anglo is basic, but then William’s influence is felt as Franco (and Latin) words appear more and more.

The history of English is such a vast topic that we’ll limit ourselves to a few specifics. It’s worth elaborating on the differences mentioned above between Old English as being just Anglo, but Middle and Modern English being Anglo/Franco. Let’s start with Middle English and have Geoffrey Chaucer give us a hand. In 2007/11 we discussed his Canterbury Tales, which were begun in 1386-87 and never finished. We discussed the whole Prolog earlier, but here are just the first three lines as an illustration of Middle English:

Remember that everything we’ve seen (and heard) in Anglo-Saxon is pure Anglo. Here, the five items indicated in boldface are all Franco, and one Franco stem is connected to an Anglo past tense suffix. How’s that for a blending?

As we discuss Anglo versus Franco, one thing has to be made clear. In addition to French words that came directly into English, there were also Latin words that were borrowed. Since French is a descendant of Latin, you can secondarily trace many French words themselves back to Latin (also to Germanic Frankish!) but it’s important not to omit the importance of the French connection. First we’ll comment on the Franco words:

In contrast, some selected Old English words:

A similar blending of Franco into the Anglo still exists of course in Modern English. This is the first sentence of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address of 1863, as inscribed in capital letters on the 1922 Lincoln Memorial:

Lincoln added an admixture of words from Latin, which are here underlined, with two of them using Anglo past-tense suffixes. But the Franco words are in boldface:

Notice Lincoln’s style. His first dozen words are purely Anglo to create a homey, intimate introduction (thank King Harold for that), then he plunges into Franco and Latinate words as he rises into the discussion of lofty ideals. Other than for the Latin words, you can thank William for the Franco words and for the fact that there are not enough Anglo words left to describe these abstract concepts. In fairness, though, there are two Anglo-Franco paired words that English has retained: folk/nation and freedom/liberty, which leads us into our next topic.

Paired Words: Anglo-Saxon/French   While words with elevated meanings are usually Franco and words with everyday meanings are usually Anglo, very often English has retained one of each, forming pairs with similar meanings, like the two just mentioned. Still, the elevated/everyday pattern still often holds. “Folk” art is, well, folksy, while the “nation” is a much loftier concept. There’s even a stronger difference in meaning in the pair folksy/national yet both continue to refer to the people. (Compare German “Volkswagen” with “Volk” (pronounced FOLK) meaning “people”.)

To someone unused to this distinction, the comparison with other languages can be astounding. English has the pair come/arrive, similar in meaning, but with the second being perhaps a bit elevated in use; German has “kommen” and French has “arriver”, and in each case, there’s no distinction of an elevated form. Also, English has sight/vision; German has “Sicht” and French has “vision”.

Including words from Latin, the occasional three-way cluster exists in English: oversee/survey/supervise. Compare German “übersehen”, French “surveiller”, Latin “supervisus” (from “supervidere”). But notice a very important distinction. The Anglo word is always the easiest to figure out, because it’s made up of immediately recognizable Anglo roots. Which of the three in this grouping would you imagine a young child would recognize most easily?

This brings us to an very important point, the concepts of “long words” and “plain English”. English speakers call “long words” those that are more difficult to understand. Without realizing it, they don’t see that length has nothing to do with it. “Long words” are almost always Franco or Latinate, because their meaning isn’t obvious. “Oversee” is just as long as the others, but it’s not a “long word” because it’s so easily understandable. Saying that someone uses long words is code meaning that the person’s vocabulary is heavily Franco and Latinate. It’s the same with “plain English”. Saying “Speak plain English” is unwitting code for “use Anglo words and limit your Franco and Latinate words”.

I’ve put together a sentence which attempts to show this difference: “As the play commences, they discover a prop is missing, which is hard to conceal.” It includes three somewhat loftier Franco words, which we can replace with paired Anglo words: “As the play begins, they find a prop is missing, which is hard to hide”. It’s all English today, but the first includes more Franco “long-word” elegance, while the second is more Anglo “plain English.”

All we can do here is list some pairs. Following the concept of “age before beauty”, we’ll list the Anglo first, since they were in English before 1066, and Franco second. In some cases, we’ll also give parallels with German or French, in that order, to emphasize the Germanic and Italic/Latinate connections:

There are so many more, but we’ll end with two that are now my favorites:

FOE/ENEMY: “Foe” is from OE fah “hostile”, and is related to “feud”, which I find an interesting connection. “Enemy” is early 13C, from 12C OF enemi which in turn is from a 9C OF form inimi. The syllables of “enemy” are related to “un-” and French ami (ultimately from Latin), so your en-emy is your “un-friend”. What a delightful derivation.

FALL/AUTUMN: I always thought all English speakers had two names for this season. I now learn that in Britain “fall” has become obsolete in favor of “autumn”, while in North America, “fall” is the favored term of the two. Consulting an Australian-American dictionary (you can find anything online), the Aussies are in the “autumn” camp as well, no surprise, since they frequently follow British language leads.

“Autumn” is Franco, entering English in the late 14C as autumpne, which is how it had appeared in OF since the 13C. English altered it to “autumn” in the 16C, and the modern French term is “automne”. (Ultimately from Latin to French.)

By pure accident of my choosing a certain OE passage, we learned in 2012/13 that the season after summer was called “hærfest(e)” in OE (F=V), in other words “harvest”, one of the delightful, folksy namings coming down from the period. The same “harvest” root still applies in Dutch “herfst” and German “Herbst” as names for the season, while “harvest” today is DU “oogst” and GE “Ernte”.

So it would seem that a Franco word suppressed a charming Anglo image. Well, it did, until the 16C, when an Anglo word reasserted itself. The Anglo noun “fall”, as in a fall from a height, began in the 1540’s to be used in the imagery describing “the fall of the leaf”, which was then reduced to “the fall”, so “autumn” had a companion word. I had honestly never associated the season “fall” with so literal a meaning as the falling of leaves. Anyway, it seems that now only we North Americans have the choice of the two words, with the Franco “autumn” still having, like many Franco words, an uppity feeling here. Now that it’s September and the season is upon us in the northern hemisphere (sorry Aussies, you have six months to wait) I’m going to particularly enjoy reasserting the use of the name “fall”.

Differences Between Norman & Parisian French   Both Norman French (NF) and Parisian (Standard) French (PF) have the same origins. Both varieties are primarily derived from Latin, but do remember that the Franks were the ones who settled in France and were Germanics adopting a Latinate language. Therefore, don’t be surprised to see Germanic elements throughout French, such as the vowels Ö (spelled in French as EU) and Ü (spelled U). In vocabulary items, you’ll note what happened to Frankish words below.

We’ll first discuss NF words that entered English (EN) on their own, WITHOUT a doublet entering from PF as well. It explains why some English words are different from their PF counterparts, such as these:

Frankish gave all French dialects certain words starting in W. NF was conservative, kept the W, and transferred it to English. However, fickle PF developed new forms in G, of all things.

Similarly, Latin passed down words in C. NF kept the C sound and passed the words on to English. Changeable PF developed it into CH, such as what we just saw in the center of wicket/guichet. Also:

That last one has always been a favorite of mine, because of a later development. Presumably “candle holder” in Norman French would have been something like “*candelier”. If that was the word, it never entered English. However, later on, English took from PF “chandelier”, leaving us with a candle/chandelier mismatch. Because the words don’t sound alike, probably most people today don’t see the connection, understanding a chandelier to be a (hanging) light fixture--which it is--and not literally a candle holder. If it had been called a candelier, the connection to candles would be obvious.

On the other hand, there’s always the odd exception to the rule. NF “calenge” never caught on in English, and instead, PF “challenge” was borrowed.

Doublets in English from Norman & Parisian French   We talked earlier about paired words, words having similar meanings (usually) but from different sources. But two paired words that come from the SAME source have a special name, doublets. We’ve seen one earlier when we found that the same French word entered English twice, once to form “liquor” and then to form “liqueur”. Another pair of French doublets in English are “frail” and “fragile”, both from the same French word entering English at two different times. Do you see how doublets tend to get specialized? Liquor and liqueur refer to two related, but different things, and we apply “frail” to people and “fragile” to things.

You can also have triplets, and here’s an example from Anglo-Saxon: shadow/shade/shed, all three of which derive from Anglo-Saxon sceadu. It’s easy to see how the first two have become specialized; a shadow is darkness from something smaller, including a person, while shade is darkness from something larger, such as a tree. But the inclusion of “shed” in that group is a surprise. Apparently a shed, especially an open-sided one, was originally meant to shade its contents. Consider this sentence with the three related words: “There’s no shadow from a shed in the shade.”

But the most interesting of these doublets are the ones that entered English from Norman French, which later entered English again through Parisian French. Sometimes the meanings are similar, but are often quite different. Rather than continuing full derivations, I’ll just list the doublet in the order NF/PF. In this first group, NF gave us words with S’s, which PF regularly dropped, giving us pairs such as hostel/hotel, feast/fête, paste/pâté. (Much later, Spanish gave us “fiesta” and Italian gave us “pasta”, making two sets of triplets.)

In the C/CH group, we have castle/château, car/char(iot), cavalier/chevalier, cattle/chattel, pock(et)/pouch, catch/chase (opposite meanings!). [Note that English almost everywhere continues to preserve a historic CH pronunciation as T+SH, while French, which historically makes many changes, has lost the first element of the T sound, and pronounces CH simply as SH. This accounts for the English pronunciation of “pouch”, “chase”, and “chamber” and the French pronunciation of “poche”, “chasse’, and “chambre”. Similarly, J in English also maintains an older pronunciation of D+ZH, while French has again dropped the first element, the D sound, and pronounces J as just ZH. This accounts for the English pronunciation of “gentle” and the French pronunciation of “gentil”. This matter was misstated in reverse in the last posting and has since been corrected there.]

In the Frankish W/G group, note these pairs, many with strikingly different meanings: wallop/gallop, reward/regard, wile (as in wily)/guile, wardrobe/garderobe (archaic, still used in FR and GE), warranty/guaranty, warden/guardian, ward/guard.

It’s particularly interesting that the Frankish word *warding entered French and came to EN from NF as “warden” and from PF as “guardian”, which have different, yet very similar meanings involving supervision (oversight?), yet their short forms appeared as “ward” and “guard” which have totally opposite meanings. Look at this mélange: The warden and his guards are in charge of the prison, and Daddy Warbucks is the guardian of his ward, Little Orphan Annie!

French Remnants in English   The Anglo and Franco elements have blended, yet French has left some conspicuous trace remnants in English.

WORD ORDER One remnant we come across often is the word order of certain legal terms. Germanic (and Russic/Slavic) languages put adjectives before nouns, so we talk about the White House (GE Weißes Haus; DU Witte Huis; SW Vita Huset), but the Italic/Latinate languages uniquely do it the other way, so we have FR Maison Blanche, SP Casa Blanca, IT Casa Bianca, PO Casa Branca. Nevertheless, Norman French, as it affected our legal systems, left us with “backwards” expressions such as “notary public”, “attorney general”, “heir apparent”, “court martial”, “body politic, “Prince Regent”, “Princess Royal”. The words are English but the word order is French. This is the cause of some confusion. If we called the person a public notary, it would be entirely clear, while “notary public” is awkward (and non-English). We know what a notary is, and that he serves the public, but we don’t make sense of the words. This is particularly true when it comes to plurals. Strictly speaking, since you would say, if it were normal, “public notaries”, the plural should be “notaries public”, something most people refuse to say, favoring a more-normal sounding “notary publics”. What a mess.

It would also be simpler if the chief legal officer were called the “General Attorney”, and also make that plural form simpler. Referring to an “apparent heir” would be quite straightforward. While “martial” means “military (=of Mars)”, and “court martial” should refer to the court itself as a Military Court, such confusion has existed that instead, the term “court martial” refers to a decision by that court, specifically a negative one. Mess again. It would also be simpler to talk about a group working together politically as a “politic(al) body” rather than a body politic. These are all striking remnants from William, and are not helpful to the language, but muddy the waters.

OYEZ In French, “to hear” is today “entendre”, yet there remains remnants of an older word that looks like Spanish “oír”, and that is the verb “ouïr” (sounds like “we’re”). It’s disappearing, has lost most of its tenses, and has few uses left. For instance, “inouï” (in.WI) means “unheard of, preposterous”, “ouï-dire” is “hearsay” (ouï is pronounced like oui “yes”). One of its few verb forms remaining though, is the plural command form “Oyez”, and in Norman times, this word moved into English along with other words used governmentally. In both French and English, it’s pronounced like “Oh, YAY!”), and is the Franco form for the Anglo “Hear ye!”. Of course, both terms are now archaic in English. (I wonder why the English form includes “ye” [=you]?)

One use of “Oyez” (also “Hear ye”) traditionally was for town criers to call attention to what they had to say, but that still exists only in reenactments. The other use was in official situations, such as to introduce the opening of a session of a court of law, where it was called out three times for silence and attention. It still is, at least in a number of US state and federal courts (I don’t know about elsewhere), including the Supreme Court, where every session is opened by the marshal of the Court (Court Crier) with: “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”

VOIR-DIRE We’ve also inherited the Norman French legal phrase “voir-dire” (vwar.DIR), which is the name used in court trials for a preliminary examination of prospective jurors under oath to determine their competence or suitability. However, those who know French will be perplexed to understand why it should mean anything. They’ll note, correctly, that “dire” means “to say”. They’ll also assume that “voir” means “to see”, which is true, but elsewhere. They’ll then misconclude that the phrase means “to see [them] say” which really doesn’t make any sense.

In reality, this “voir (also voire)” is another word, unrelated to the “voir” that means “to see”. It means “truth” and the V-R is the same as in “verity”, so voir-dire actually means something like checking if prospective jurors “ tell the truth”. A voir-dire examination is then literally a truth-telling session.

MOTTOES A couple of well-known royal mottoes in Britain are totally French. The motto of the British Monarch is “Dieu et mon droit”, or “God and my right”, a reference to a once-perceived divine “right” to rule. The motto of the prestigious Order of the Garter is “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (modern French would spell it “honni”), which results in numerous translations that are absolutely rubbish. To investigate, we have to see what that garter is all about.

There is more than one legend as to how the Order of the Garter got its name when it was founded in 1348, but the most popular is that King Edward III was at a court ball 1) dancing with a lady or 2) saw a lady dancing, whose garter slipped down 1) to her ankle or 2) to the floor, causing the courtiers around her to snigger at her embarrassment. In an act of chivalry to rescue her from the situation, the King, as the most prestigious person in the room, picked up the garter and 1) returned it to her or 2) put it on his own leg, saying to all assembled “Honi soit qui mal y pense”.

What he was saying was that “Each of you should be ashamed for sniggering at this lady’s embarrassment”, further implying that the event took place during the heightened situation of a court ball and in the presence of the King--so it was the King who dissipated the situation. But how to translate what he said? People like to translate “mal” as “evil”, which in this case is rubbish; much better is “badly” or “wrong”--there’s no evil involved. And some even translate the first word as “evil” as well, coming up with incomprehensible nonsense like “Evil to him who evil thinks”.

But actually, the only unusual word is that first one. “Honnir” in French is once again one of those Germanic words that came down from Frankish. Just as Frankish *honjan gave German the verb “höhnen” (to scorn, jeer, mock, laugh at), it gave French the noun “honte” (shame), and the verb “honnir” (to disgrace, shame). It’s a normal -ir verb, so just like “fini” is “finished” and “choisi” is “chosen”, “honni” is “disgraced, shamed”.

The literal translation, word by word, of “Honi soit qui mal y pense” is “Disgraced / Shamed be whoever badly of it thinks”, “it” being the dropping of the garter. Although I’m tempted to rephrase it as “You’re a disgrace for laughing at what happened”, perhaps it should be more elegantly poetic as “Disgraced be anyone who thinks something wrong happened”.

Vulgarisms   All languages have vulgarisms, including both Norman French and Anglo-Saxon. I’m sure when a Norman knight stubbed his toe in the middle of the night, he let loose with a string of Norman French vulgarisms that would have curled his Lady’s hair. Equally, when the Anglo-Saxon farmer did the same thing, he spouted a choice number of Anglo-Saxon vulgarisms to help lessen his pain. But I’m tired of hearing speakers of Modern English defame Old English by referring to vulgarisms as “Anglo-Saxon words”. Of course most English vulgarisms are Germanic! It follows the entire pattern of what happened after Harold versus William.

The Latin word “merda” is the same in Italian and Portuguese, “mierda” in Spanish, and “merde” in French. I’m sure “merde” is one of the words used by the knight stubbing his toe. But it never made its way to Modern English. Of course not. NF was used by upper classes, whose behavior tends to be more staid, so such words remained in the background.

But look today at a rugby team going for a pint in a pub, or hard-hat construction workers eating lunch and making comments at passersby. Constraint of language is not the first thing that comes to mind. I’m sure that the Anglo-Saxon farmer not only used his native word “shit” when he stubbed his toe, he also used it on a regular basis in his daily life. And so, vulgarisms follow the general rule. Anglo-Saxon words for the most part formed the everyday vocabulary of Modern English, including vulgarisms, but there’s no reason to denigrate Anglo-Saxon because of it. And you can follow the word in other Germanic languages to German “Scheiße” and Swedish “skit”. And if you’re linguistically inclined, you’ll notice the SK/SH difference here.

You also would find that the word has a rather noble heritage. It comes from the Old English verb “scitan”, and noun “scitte”, which describe a purging. One step back brings us to Proto-Germanic *skit- and then all the way back to Proto-Indo-European *skheid-, which gets really interesting, since that means “to separate, divide”. A related word deriving from the same source is “to shed” (as hair) which also describes a separation from the body. (But remember the noun “shed” is unrelated, and is connected to “shade”.) These words have other cousins. Related to both and descending from the same source is “science”, which originally meant “to separate one thing from another”. Even though it’s pronounced quite differently, “conscience” is related, and is formed as “with-science” in the sense of “with knowledge” of that inner voice talking to you. Another splitting or separation is in the Greek root “schizo-“ as in “schizophrenia”, literally a splitting of the mind, or a separation into parts. When you start tracing, a large number of words are related. Well, it’s like genealogy, isn’t it?

Countering Cultural Loss of Anglo-Saxon Terms   We must sit back and accept what happened after Hastings to history in general and to the language. But can anything be salvaged? Losing Anglo-Saxon abstract vocabulary is a cultural loss more harmful to the language even than losing ash, thorn, and edh as useful letters. Losing letters only affects transcription, where losing valuable vocabulary affects actual expression of thought. Norman French never grew legs sufficiently to enter the everyday world that Anglo-Saxon then encompassed, but that’s not a loss, it’s just something that was never added. But Anglo-Saxon had it’s head cut off, when so many of its conceptual words, its literary, and scientific words, were just discarded as they atrophied. Perhaps some of these lost words can be updated and revived. In addition, since this type of word is so clearly understood (as “oversee”), perhaps some new words can be coined in that style.

First let’s look at the simple structure of several out of the many Anglo-Saxon words that did survive, and how readily understandable they are: from isceald we get ice-cold; from heortece we get heartache; from handgeweorc we get handiwork; from regnboga we get rainbow (German has Regenbogen); from streawberige we get strawberry; from neahgebur we get neighbor.

[It’s odd what happened with OE “neah” (like German “nah”). Alone, it developed to the now rarely-used “nigh”, but as the above prefix, it appears as “neigh-”. In Old English, the progression was “neah, near, niehsta”, which became later regularized as “nigh, nigher, nighest”, which we never use any more. But it’s interesting to see how “nigher” had been “ne+ar”, which is the origin of today’s “near”, and “nighest” had been “nieh+st(a)”, which is the origin of today’s nek+st, or next. We no longer realize that that’s where “near” and “next” come from, and consider them today to be separate words.]

[As another aside, we really have to bring up one more word. OE “wif” became “wife”, but also shifted in meaning. The original word simply meant “woman” (like German “Weib”), but in its changed form now means “married woman”. Still the original, general meaning still survives in words like “fishwife”, “midwife”, and “old wives’ tale”. Even “housewife” originally referred to a woman managing a household, and not necessarily married.

[The OE word “mann” had an irregular plural in “menn”, which we still see today in man/men, and in other Germanic languages as well (SW man/män, GE Mann/Männer). Then there was an interesting development. The word “wif” became a prefix, yielding the word wifmann, plural wifmenn, which is the origin of the words woman/women. Etymologically, then, a woman is a “woman-man” or perhaps a “female man”.

[I have one trick question, which is based upon the fact that there are words in English with such spelling anomalies as to be unbelievable. Think WAY outside the box to answer this. If you form the plural of “man” by changing A to E, how do you form the plural of “woman”. Trick question. Be careful.

[The problem is that the words woman/women are so historically spelled, and that spelling no longer reflects the facts, that you’ll be tempted to give the very simplistic answer that they also change A to E. Not so. Write the words logically and update their spelling to reflect the facts, as “wummin” and “wimmin”, and you’ll realize that there’s no A or E involved. There is a highly irregular vowel change in this pair, but it’s a U that changes to an I! Be careful you know the facts before you dare to teach English to a non-English speaker. Ah, English spelling.]

Back to the topic. You counter this cultural loss of Old English vocabulary by reviving useful words and coining new ones in their style. I’ve been digging around in the online Old English Dictionary, and have some suggestions. You will note that I got stuck in the W’s, particularly around the word “word”.

WORD-HOARD We’ll start with a word that has had a head start, since, if you google it, you’ll find it being used already. Anglo-Saxon “wordhord” has been modernized as “word-hoard”, referring to a supply of words to be delved into, a verbal treasure to be unlocked by a wise speaker. Actually, right now, we’re trying to dig into a word-hoard. (The German word for “vocabulary” is “Wortschatz” which means literally “word-treasury”, and is of a similar nature.)

WORDFUL This form can be used unchanged today, as “talkative”. “He’s so wordful, he’ll put you to sleep.”

WORDCRAFT It was spelled with ash as “wordcræft”. It’s the poetic art, or eloquence. “She’s so good at wordcraft that she’ll be a poet.”

WORDFAST It was also spelled with ash as “wordfæst”. It means “holding fast to one’s word, being true to one’s word”. “She’s a wordfast person, and if she says she’ll get it done, she will.”

ONEGANGER This was OE “angenga”. “An” was the number one, so now you know how we got the indefinite article an/a. It was also used as a prefix, but it sounds better to modernize it to “one”. “Angenga” meant “lone walker” or “solitary traveler”, and we could make it “onegoer”. But why not dip into the German word we also use in English, Doppelgänger. It’s literally “double goer” and refers to a person’s “double”. On the model of that word, I suggest we make it “oneganger”.

YEARDAY It started out in OE as the plural geardagas (gear+daga+s), (G=Y) literally “year days”, perhaps “yore days”, and meant “olden days, days of yore”. (So now we know that “yore” is a version of “year”.) The singular was *geardæg and we’ll modernize it as “yearday”, as in “tomorrow is the yearday of when we met”. You might say it’s the same as “anniversary”, but in “December 6 is the yearday of Saint Nicholas”, that would correspond to feastday, so “yearday” has a variety of uses. (While in our triplets feast/fete/fiesta, “feast” usually implies food, in “feastday” it just implies celebration.) “Yearday” already has a Dutch equivalent in “jaardag” and in German it’s Jahrestag.

WEAPONHOUSE In OE it was wæpenhus, and we can update it to “weaponhouse”, which would be an alternate, and more descriptive, name for an armory or arsenal. There are those who would argue that a house is only a dwelling for people, possibly extended to birdhouse and doghouse, but they don’t realize the extent to which “house” means nothing more than “building” as in: bathhouse, clubhouse, courthouse, firehouse, greenhouse, schoolhouse, jailhouse, lighthouse, storehouse, warehouse, Houses of Parliament, and many more. So why not weaponhouse?

I was glad to see that there were others espousing revival of words such as these when I found the following video on YouTube. A certain D. Cowley wrote a book called HOW WE’D TALK if the English had WON in 1066 . Listen to what he has to say, and read some of the comments written below the video. Also see if you recognize where he got his cover picture.

I’m very pleased by some of Crowley’s resurrections and updates, less so with others. I’ll mention my favorites, which should be fully understandable without explanation, since Anglo-Saxon words are composed of their own native elements.

While UPNESS is Crowley’s, DOWNNESS is mine, with a nod to Crowley. Another possible sentence that would blend real history with a proposed updated Anglo-Saxon word is “Edward the Confessor’s AFTERFOLLOWER was Harold”. To give an idea of how very Germanic words like these are, compare AFTERFOLLOWER with Danish efterfølger, Norwegian etterfølger, Swedish efterföljande, Dutch obvolger, German Nachfolger. But at the moment, AFTERFOLLOWER is unfortunately not a genuine English word.

In closing this topic of Norse invasions of England, Hastings in 1066, and of the effects of the Norman invasion on the English language, I’ll quote Crowley’s last sentence in the video: “The loss of so many words in the wake of 1066 and its long aftermath is a wrong that should be righted. Isn’t it time we should think about claiming some of our words back?