Anglo-Norman Language - Trilingualism in Medieval England

Trilingualism in Medieval England

Much of the earliest recorded French is in fact Anglo-Norman French. In France, almost nothing was at that time being recorded in the vernacular because Latin was the language of the nobility, education, commerce, and the Roman Catholic Church and was thus used for the purpose of records. Latin did not disappear in medieval England either: it was used by the Church, the royal government and much local administration, as it had been before 1066, in parallel with Anglo-Saxon. The early adoption of Anglo-Norman as a written and literary language probably owes something to this history of bilingualism in writing.

Around the same time as a shift took place in France towards using Parisian French as a language of record in the mid-13th century, Anglo-Norman French also became a language of record in England, though Latin retained its pre-eminence for matters of permanent record. From around this point onwards, considerable variation begins to be apparent in Anglo-French, which ranges from the very local (and most Anglicized) to a level of language which approximates to and is sometimes indistinguishable from varieties of continental French. So, typically, local records will be rather different from continental French, with diplomatic and international trade documents closest to the emerging continental norm. English remained the vernacular of the common people throughout this period.