Difference between revisions 75217663 and 80897918 on enwiki

{{Infobox Language
| name = Norman
| familycolor = Indo-European
| nativename = Normand
| region = [[Channel Islands]] and historically in [[England]]
| fam2 = [[Italic languages|Italic]]
| fam3 = [[Romance languages|Romance]]
| fam4 = [[Italo-Western languages|Italo-Western]]
(contracted; show full)

==Use and development==
The written records from the conquest onwards display certain striking features. In the first place, they are early: the first [[medi
eæval]] [[French literature]] appears in England in this langue d'oïl, and some of the first non-literary [[document|documents]] in [[Old French]] (charters, etc.) are also in Anglo-Norman. The most likely explanation for this is that there was a long-standing insular tradition of vernacular writing of religious, literary and historical texts, which the newly-arrived Normans adopted.

(contracted; show full)

On the other hand, [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] suggests that significant differences existed between the French of England and the French of France; introducing the character of the [[Prioress]] in the [[General Prologue]] of ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'', Chaucer writes:

:''And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly,<br>After the scole of [[
BowStratford, London|Stratford]] atte [[Bow, London|Bowe]],<br>For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.'' 

Yet as well as continuing as a written language of record for all sorts of purposes right through the Middle Ages (and in the case of ''[[Law French]]'', beyond), in a determinedly multilingual context, it is clear that Anglo-Norman must also have penetrated sufficiently into all social classes to ensure numerous borrowings into various English [[dialect]]s. On the one hand the bulk of the Anglo-Norman influence on the lexis of English can probably be attributed to the [[trilingual]] [[scribe]]s in charge of records of all sorts from the late [[thirteenth century]] onwards; on the other, there is a layer of vocabulary (of lower status) not so readily explained by this process.

==Characteristics==
As a langue d'oïl, Anglo-Norman had developed collaterally to the central [[Gallo-Romance]] dialects that would eventually become [[Paris]]ian French, in terms of [[grammar]], [[pronunciation]], and [[vocabulary]] - it being also important to remember that before the [[15th century]] French had not been standardised as an official administrative language of the kingdom(contracted; show full)*[http://www.anglo-norman.net/ The Anglo-Norman hub - a project to produce an AN dictionary.]  Contains articles and corpus texts.

[[Category:Norman language]]
[[Category:Medieval languages]]
[[Category:Extinct Romance languages]]

[[de:Anglonormannisch]]
[[fr:Anglo-normand (langue)]]