Norman French

[Phyrebrat]

Hello,

I've been reading up on Norman french (what a lovely guy ) today as I wanted to have a phrase in the present day timeline of my wip. From what I can tell it's more to do with the g's and w's being reversed (e.g war and guerre). I've found an online network called the Anglo-Norman text society but before I bother them I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about:

He will feed His flock like a shepherd

and

Be still, Be silent.

The former I'm probably going to end up using in latin as it will be in a stained glass window.

Any ideas?

Thank you

pH

 

[sknox]

There are unexpected subtleties in dialect. I recommend you ask the experts.

 

[Dan Jones]

Pardón, Ph, mais j'ai rien.

 

[The Judge]

I agree it's best to go to the likely experts, but in the meantime, a few thoughts off the top of my head.

Whatever the mottoes should have been in the language of the time may be very different from what they are now allowing for a lack of common standards of spelling originally so the words were mangled from the get-go, and of mutability/failures of copying/understanding through the centuries since.

As far as Latin is concerned, how it is written and used today isn't necessarily the same as it was used in the C11th and later, so using a modern translation service there might not give you exactly what it should be.

For the shepherd phrase, have you thought about using an actual biblical quote? You could then marry it up with a bible of the relevant period which would give you the precise Latin used.

I love the "Be still, be silent" motto, but there's a potential problem in that you've conceived it in English, where it reads wonderfully, and you're trying to translate it into a different language where it's not likely to read as well -- eg something like "Soyez tranquil, soyez silencieux" hardly trips off the tongue. The originator, of course, would have conceived it in his own language with no regard for how it would sound to us.

A few hours sifting through Burke's Peerage might throw up some Anglo-French mottoes which could shed light on word use and spelling, and also when the aristocracy first used a recognizable English motto which might allow you to keep it in English.

 

[Ursa major]

as I wanted to have a phrase in the present day timeline

In which variety of modern-day Norman French are you specifically interested?

There are a number just in the Channel isles:

• Jèrriais (Jèrriais - Wikipedia)
  
• Guernésiais (Guernésiais - Wikipedia),
• Jersey Legal French (Jersey Legal French - Wikipedia)
• Sercquiais (Sercquiais - Wikipedia)

and probably as many, or more, on the mainland.

Given this, sknox's advice -- "I recommend you ask the experts" -- is probably the one to follow.

 

[sknox]

Yeah, it's not merely variations in spelling and accent. It's that different regions will have different ways of saying the same thing. What makes this still more difficult is that rendering the saying in one dialect simply isn't going to resonate the same way with a different dialect. Same goes with Latin, for that matter. What sounds pithy in Latin might sound clumsy in English and vice versa (hah! Latin!).

 

[Montero]

I remember a documentary on the evolution of language in the UK and how within a couple of generations the Norman French were starting to lose their language - this idea being based on the data that there were then books being written to teach Norman French to the Normans. @sknox - is that accurate?

 

[sknox]

@Montero, I'm not sure how I would reconcile that information with the fact that French was spoken at the English court for over two hundred years, which is a lot longer than a couple of generations. Now that I think about it, I've never wondered which sort of French that was. I have Eleanor in mind, for example.

Anyway, books being written to teach Norman French to the Normans. Do they mean those living in Normandy? When it says the Norman French were starting to lose their language, in what sense? Losing it to what? How the heck would we even know? There were no schools, outside of maybe a cathedral school here or there, and I don't think any of those would date prior to 1150 or so. And why would there be a desire to teach something that was being lost? Normandy was firmly in the English orbit--is it proposed that the Norman French was losing ground to Anglo-Saxon English?

Color me skeptical but willing to listen to evidence.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Hi all,

Many thanks for the responses and apologies for the delay in my reply. I spent a long time researching this on Thursday, saw all the different concerns that have been mentioned here so Im aware of that side of things; I was hoping there might be an expert here, as there so often is.

pH

 

[The Big Peat]

I remember a documentary on the evolution of language in the UK and how within a couple of generations the Norman French were starting to lose their language - this idea being based on the data that there were then books being written to teach Norman French to the Normans. @sknox - is that accurate?

This sounds dubious to me. Asbridge's biography of William Marshall (born 80 years after the conquest) states that a lot of south-westerners were regarded as having amusing Norman-French accents at court, but not that they were regarded as losing the language - which would have been surprising given that Marshall was partially raised in Normandy. Which I don't think was unusual.

I'd be curious to hear more evidence but everything I've read points at the shift coming later.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Also the use of books then was not something every grunt and their mate would have access to. If there was a change I think it would have started with the monks and filtered down to nobility slowly.

On the other hand... if Le Livre de Visage was popular at the time, new language coulda gone viral.

pH

 

[Montero]

The documentary was talking about books teaching Norman French to Normans living in England - vaguely remember it as being roughly grandchild of the conquerers sort of time. Can't remember any more of it than that. It was a documentary about the development of English. They were citing said book as evidence that the Normans in England were drifting out of speaking Norman French. It might be of course that they were speaking their own dialect of Norman French - based on what Big Peat and SKnox are saying - so not evidence of them speaking a proto-English.

I once chatted with an East German who was commenting on linguistic drift of East and West German during the cold war era - he said West German was gaining American derived vocabulary, East German was gaining Russian derived vocabulary.

 

[The Big Peat]

The documentary was talking about books teaching Norman French to Normans living in England - vaguely remember it as being roughly grandchild of the conquerers sort of time. Can't remember any more of it than that. It was a documentary about the development of English. They were citing said book as evidence that the Normans in England were drifting out of speaking Norman French. It might be of course that they were speaking their own dialect of Norman French - based on what Big Peat and SKnox are saying - so not evidence of them speaking a proto-English.

I once chatted with an East German who was commenting on linguistic drift of East and West German during the cold war era - he said West German was gaining American derived vocabulary, East German was gaining Russian derived vocabulary.

I really could be wrong on this - it's something I've touched, not something I'm an expert on.