After a while, the Norman colonisers found that their children were
losing their "mother" language to this low-Germanic dialect. I see
Kipling's childhood as a parallel, where he speaks his nurse's
language before his own. Hence the need to teach French to the
colonists, hence the need to codify the language.
Roger
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 11:50 PM, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Presumably the French already knew the language.
>
>
>
> At 06:33 PM 4/4/2008, you wrote:
>
> > The first French grammar book was written by an Englishman.
> >
> > Roger
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:33 PM, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > both of which are parts/aspects of language. Just reminding that
> much
> > > > > of English . . . okay, English vocabulary etc. . . . comes from
> romance
> > > not
> > > > > teutonic languages.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Um ... Depends on how much you count as "much", and how you count it,
> and
> > > which parts of the vocabulary, and a whole host of things.
> > > >
> > > > It's possible to construct a full sentence today (I can't be bothered,
> but
> > > perhaps dave will help me out) without *any Romance elements (Latin,
> > > post-Latin [French, Italian, etc.]), but I'd bet a damn sight more
> difficult
> > > if not impossible to do the obverse.
> > > >
> > > > Robin
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > To add a level of complexity, Romance vocabulary has been adopted at
> > > different epochs, from medieval latin to norman french to learned late
> > > medieval borrowings to modern. Most of the borrowings have been
> processed
> > > over time, so that tho they differ from anything protogermanic but the
> forms
> > > by which they've been transformed might be recognizable to a protogerman
> but
> > > not a protolatin--the former might not know what the root means but he
> would
> > > understand its syntactic value, the reverse for the latter. So, going
> over
> > > the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in my head, I come to the first
> romance
> > > word (ignoring the proper nouns April and March), the past participle
> > > "perced," pierced, French root with germanic ending, as opposed to the
> very
> > > recent borrowing "décolleté." Has the older borrowing become germanic
> while
> > > the second is available to trot out whenever the germanic "low-cut"
> isn't
> > > impressive enough.
> > >
> > > I know this is pretty elementary, Robin. All languages borrow and
> > > transform. As with cultures in general, the differences that resist
> change
> > > are the patterns by which information is assimilated. Those patterns
> > > constitute a big part of their identity.
> > >
> > > Back to Chaucer. In the first 15 lines of the preface there are 16
> > > naturalized French words.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
> > "She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
> > She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
> > The Go-Betweens
> >
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
The Go-Betweens
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