E-mail is not French

Setanta,
I don't know what your sources are, but they are incorrect. Chaucer was born in London of a London wine merchant. John Wycliffe was a Saxon, born in Hipswell, England.

As to the Latin in English, it comes mostly from the French of the invading Normans, and not just from its clerics and monastics. It comes also from its aristocracy, and the classes were distinguishable by the language they spoke.

Hence, the peasants, largely English natives, who labored for the aristocracy raised the pigs [Middle English pigge, young pig, probably from Old English picga.], and the cows [probably of Scandinavian origin.] so that their French aristocratic conqueror lords could have their pork [Middle English, from Old French porc, pig, from Latin porcus.] and beef [Middle English, from Old French buef, from Latin bos, bov-.].

The Old English texts that are now extant show little or no Latin, despite the fact that they were written by monastics of the Roman church. They kept the language largely intact, even when applying the Latin alphabet to their transliterations of the pagan English epics and oral traditions.

About John Wycliffe's birthplace,
there is disagreement, but most scholars have it at Hipswell of Yorkshire. Some have it in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Yorkshire is in Northern England. Yours is the first I've come across that has it in East Anglia. Where in East Anglia, and what is your source?

You are correct in noting that neither Wycliffe nor Chaucer were born East Anglia, but i continue to contend that they wrote in the English current in East Anglia in the 14th Century. In the case of Wycliffe, this likely resulted from his having been educated at Oxford. I don't know why this was true of Chaucer, other than that he was a page in the house of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and undoubtedly learned his letters there--from Oxford educated clerics. I know of no records that his father, John, a vintner in London, paid for an education for him. Absent such a record, and absent Chaucer attending a clerical school, there is no reason to assume that he learned to write before he made good as a page--quite above the station in life he would have occupied in following his father's trade. Given that his birth cannot be exactly identified to within a period of less than four years (1340-1344), i don't know that you can categorically state that he was born in London. The evidence that this is likely true is only that his father pursued his trade during that period of time in London.

So let me rephrase that in a manner with which you will have some more difficulty in disagreeing, by simply "googling" the names (you give yourself away when the text of what you write so exactly mirrors the links which google provides--the rest of us are smart enought to check your work in the same manner). The East Anglian dialect of English, in which Wycliffe was educated, and in which William Caxton printed most, although not alll, of the approximately one hundred works he printed, is the ancestor of modern english.

Your contentions about the introduction of Latin into English suffer one serious flaw--many members of the aristocracy were illiterate, and even when able to read and write, they retained clerics (hence the word clerk) to do their writing for them. I can see nothing in what you've written to convince me of your argument that clerics and monks are not responsible for the introduction of latin roots into English. I don't know where your comment about pre-Norman use of Latin comes form, i did not contend that Latin much entered the language at that time.

So, you're correct that neither of them were born in East Anglia, although the exact date and place of Chaucer's birth cannot be stated with certainty. This does not alter that both of them wrote in the East Anglian dialect.

In case you don't get the Caxton reference--Chaucer became widely read, and his works popular in England because Caxton printed so many of them--in the dialect of East Anglia.

As usually, you are correct, Setanta :wink:

InfraBlue

Both, history and linguistic science, have a different opinion than you.
(In the Middle Ages, Westminster spoke East Saxon, London old town West Saxon.)

Actually, I got the reference of Chaucer's and Wycliffe's births from Norton's Anthology of English Literature. I then corroborated that information with what is available through google. Chaucer's London birth is largely agreed upon. So is Wycliffe's Yorkshire birth.

You assume my contention about the introduction of Latin into English is about written English. My contention is that the introduction of Latin into English was largely through the interaction of populations, the conquering Normans with the English natives, and the confluence of the SPOKEN languages. These languages were spoken before they were written. You also assume my contention is that clerics and monks are not responsible for the introduction of Latin roots into English. I said the introduction of Latin into English comes NOT ONLY from its clerics and monastics.

You are referring, specifically, to the written language. I am referring to the language in general.

Your point about the predominance of the East Anglian dialect is well taken.

One thing in favor of InfraBlue: speakers tend to change language more rapidly and more thoughly than writers.
Often writers change the standard written language, because the spoken language has already changed.
Even if know little about the origin of English (and learn in this thread), I can assume that in those ages, spoken language had the stronger leverage (at least, it did in the Romance languages).

Actually, I meant more the spoken than written language :wink:

The import of Latin was both verbal and written. The verbal exchange came mostly with invasion but the rest of the change was almost entirely due to scribes and monks (up to a certain point).

Setanta is right on with that. I cite many examples over on the english forum but to give just one:

Debt used to be dette. Then the folks who went and studied in Rome came home thinking the english language was barbaric in comparison.

They changed the word to "debt" to look more like the latin "debitum".

Many many other changes were brought by those bastards, they go off and study and come home thinking their language barbaric!

Well, "dette" was of French origin already. (Wyclif [1384] and the translators of the King James Version [1611] chose to use debt to translate Matthew's opheilemata.)

The Germanic word for it was 'syn' (= sin). (Dating to c. 825, it has cognates in other Germanic languages and is related to the Latin sons [= guilty].)

source: 'Word origins', 'Grimms Wörterbuch'.

Yes yes, the Norman invasion brought a lot. but my point is that there was not much in way of verbal comunication being done.

unless there was an invasion there was little verbal contact between vastly different languages.

It was mostly people who travelled to study.

there are interesting links between celtic languages and French.

The welsh for bridge is pont or bont (there are complex rules whereby consonants change in welsh) and of course it is pont in french.

Egliws is the welshf for church - eglise in French - there are many other linked words.

Vivien -- since eglise is obviously derived from Latin, I suspect that the Welsh egliws may well be a loan-word, dating only to the time of the influx of Christianity. The Druidic Celts probably had no comparable word as they worshipped outdoors, not in a confined indoor space.

could be - though the Romans weren't too successful in conquering the celts were they?

eglesia is the greek for church--obviously it is different in the greek alphabet than the roman, but Vivien provides a good example of what i meant in saying that many of the latin and greek roots in our language came to us via french; ecclesiastic, episcopal--these are good examples of the evolution of words from the ancient languages through french and into english.

Allow me here to take a page from Steven Martin:

"Those French have different word for everything!"

Well, and regarding that the Celts lived originally in France/Germany ...

(I must admit that just a very teeny weeny bit of Celtic languages survived in German :wink: )

Actually, we, the Keltoi, were bent on world conquest . . . but, loving as we do the wearing of brightly colored clothing, singing, dancing and lieing about in the warm sunshine, we got easily distracted. The next thing you know, those squirrelly little runts from Rome were running around conquering and subjugating and conjugating and whatnot . . . we couldn't be arsed to get involved . . .

the french have always defended their language and even have a council that preserves it. It has existed since the 1700's and I doubt it would change now. Anyway whether that is a blessing or a curse i dont know... it sure makes for a stagnant language.

also merry andrew has a point about the church thing