French Speakers

[Mags22]

Watching The Plantagenets notice that the king and nobles are all speaking French, understandable as that's where they came from, when did they finally speak English, and would the ordinary people have spoken English throughout?

[Old_Geezer]

Ordinary folk would have spoken a form of English. Won't have been the modern version though.

I'm no expert so I'm unsure of the date but we have had plenty of disagreements with those across the English Channel over the years. English would have been adopted when the court decided it wanted to differentiate itself from that lot.

[BlackadderV]

Richard II (1377 - 1399) was the first king to speak English as a first language.

[Peter Pedant]

OG is surprisingly right - Norman French lost ground during the hundred years war a bit like the king of Prussia pubs being closed in 1914-15.

1360 - first parliamentary sessions in English

1375 - Ding ding Gt vowel shift ( in English )

Chaucer writes in both *French and English - I think it is the Prioress who speaks French ( sweetly ) but with the accent of Stratford-atte-Bowe

[jno]

in one of Walter Scott's books it says meat (mutton, beef etc) had French names (mouton, boeuf) but the animals had English names: sheep, cow. That was because the English peasants had to raise the animals but the French overlords got to eat them.

I'm not sure if this is true, but it's right in saying the ordinary people kept on with English, it was just the establishment who spoke Norman French, until it eventually became unpopular because the Plantaganet kings, especially John, started losing all their French territories and those living in England started to identify as English not French.

[DTCwordfan]

Quote wiki here

"French was the language of the king and his court until the end of the 14th century. During this period, marriages with French princesses reinforced the French status in the royal family.

Nevertheless, during the 13th century, intermarriages with English people became more frequent. French became progressively a second language among the upper classes. Moreover, with the Hundred Years' War and the growing spirit of English nationalism, the status of French diminished.

French was the mother tongue of the English king until Henry IV (1399–1413). He was the first to take the oath in English, and his son, Henry V (1413–1422), was the first to write in English.

By the end of the 15th century, French became the second language of a cultivated elite."

The Queen is well-versed in royal court French and speaks it extremely well as a language - not sure about that son of hers, who stumbled over his Welsh and needed many a pint to sound half-intelligible in the lingo.

[Peter Pedant]

to be fair to her dim witted son
he was very unhappy at Trinity Cambridge
and was much happier in his year in Bangor and also learnt a bit of Welsh

his children have had a much easier time of it

[BlackadderV]

French was also the language of the Russian nobility in the 18/19C, Russian having much the same status as did English in the early middle ages; a peasants' tongue.

[Peter Pedant]

The first edition of War and Peace
was written in French and Russian ( in places )
Tolstoy - aye there was a rum one ! - later translated it all into Russian

[BlackadderV]

I remember, about the time we joined the Common Market, Edward Heath making a speech in French. It was cringeworthy in the extreme; I was embarrassed to listen to it.

[SirOracle]

Would likely have been cringeworthy in English also, Blackadder. :-)

[Peter Pedant]

Henry IV made his coronation speech in English for propaganda purposes

His difficulty was that he had usurped the obvious rightful ruler and precipitated the idea the crown was for the taking for anyone who had a right royal relation and that precipitated a hundred years of chaos

[Old_Geezer]

Surely a crown is always there for the taking, it is simply that it is difficult to remove the incumbent, who insists their heirs succeed them 'by right', and their entourage of powerful lords/ladies who are doing well from the status quo ?