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74-422: The former municipality "Sylt-Ost" was created from five villages in 1970: The five villages are now Ortsteile of Gemeinde Sylt . Blazon : Per fess low or and azure. Above a sun rising in his splendour gules, accompanied by five eight-pointed mullets azure. Below a herring argent swimming to the left. The coat of arms was designed by a Sylt artist and granted in 2002. The five mullets (stars) in it symbolise

148-665: A Bar Gules in the Chief a demi-Eagle Sable displayed addextré of the Sun-in-splendour and senestré of a Crescent Argent in the Base seven Towers three and four Gules (for Transylvania ); enté en point Gules a double-headed Eagle proper on a Peninsula Vert holding a Vase pouring Water into the Sea Argent beneath a Crown proper with bands Azure (for Fiume ); over all an escutcheon Barry of eight Gules and Argent impaling Gules on

222-668: A Mount Vert a Crown Or issuant therefrom a double-Cross Argent (for Hungary ) . The field of a shield in heraldry can be divided into more than one tincture , as can the various heraldic charges . Many coats of arms consist simply of a division of the field into two contrasting tinctures. These are considered divisions of a shield, so the rule of tincture can be ignored. For example, a shield divided azure and gules would be perfectly acceptable. A line of partition may be straight or it may be varied. The variations of partition lines can be wavy, indented, embattled, engrailed, nebuly , or made into myriad other forms; see Line (heraldry) . In

296-525: A Norman development while chase is the French equivalent imported with a different meaning. Distinctions in meaning between Anglo-Norman and French have led to many faux amis (words having similar form but different meanings) in Modern English and Modern French. Although it is a Romance language, Norman contains a significant amount of lexical material from Old Norse . Because of this, some of

370-463: A blazon is written, and, as a verb, the act of writing such a description. Blazonry is the art, craft or practice of creating a blazon. The language employed in blazonry has its own vocabulary , grammar and syntax , which becomes essential for comprehension when blazoning a complex coat of arms. Other armorial objects and devices – such as badges , banners , and seals – may also be described in blazon. The noun and verb blazon (referring to

444-506: A chief undé and a saltire undé . Full descriptions of shields range in complexity, from a single word to a convoluted series describing compound shields: Quarterly I. Azure three Lions' Heads affronté Crowned Or (for Dalmatia ); II. chequy Argent and Gules (for Croatia ); III. Azure a River in Fess Gules bordered Argent thereon a Marten proper beneath a six-pointed star Or (for Slavonia ); IV. per Fess Azure and Or over all

518-422: A coat of arms or flag has traditionally had considerable latitude in design, but a verbal blazon specifies the essentially distinctive elements. A coat of arms or flag is therefore primarily defined not by a picture but rather by the wording of its blazon (though in modern usage flags are often additionally and more precisely defined using geometrical specifications). Blazon is also the specialized language in which

592-528: A hush sibilant not recorded in French mousseron , as does cushion for coussin . Conversely, the pronunciation of the word sugar resembles Norman chucre even if the spelling is closer to French sucre . It is possible that the original sound was an apical sibilant, like the Basque s , which is halfway between a hissing sibilant and a hushing sibilant. The doublets catch and chase are both derived from Low Latin *captiare . Catch demonstrates

666-707: A language did exist, and that it was the language descended from the Norman French originally established in England after the Conquest. When William the Conqueror led the Norman conquest of England in 1066, he, his nobles, and many of his followers from Normandy , but also those from northern and western France, spoke a range of langues d'oïl (northern varieties of Old French ). This amalgam developed into

740-583: A language of business communication, especially when it traded with the continent, and several churches used French to communicate with lay people. A small but important number of documents survive associated with the Jews of medieval England, some featuring Anglo-French written in Hebrew script, typically in the form of glosses to the Hebrew scriptures. As a langue d'oïl , Anglo-Norman developed collaterally to

814-478: A pattern of vertical (palewise) stripes is called paly . A pattern of diagonal stripes may be called bendy or bendy sinister , depending on the direction of the stripes. Other variations include chevrony , gyronny and chequy . Wave shaped stripes are termed undy . For further variations, these are sometimes combined to produce patterns of barry-bendy , paly-bendy , lozengy and fusilly . Semés, or patterns of repeated charges, are also considered variations of

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888-488: A second language among the upper classes. Moreover, with the Hundred Years' War and the growing spirit of English and French nationalism, the status of French diminished. French (specifically Old French ) was the mother tongue of every English king from William the Conqueror (1066–1087) until Henry IV (1399–1413). Henry IV was the first to take the oath in ( Middle ) English, and his son, Henry V (1413–1422),

962-567: A velar plosive where French has a fricative : Some loans were palatalised later in English, as in the case of challenge (< Old Norman calonge , Middle English kalange, kalenge , later chalange ; Old French challenge, chalonge ). There were also vowel differences: Compare Anglo-Norman profound with Parisian French profond , soun sound with son , round with rond . The former words were originally pronounced something like 'profoond', 'soon', 'roond' respectively (compare

1036-584: A verbal description) are not to be confused with the noun emblazonment , or the verb to emblazon , both of which relate to the graphic representation of a coat of arms or heraldic device. The word blazon is derived from French blason , ' shield ' . It is found in English by the end of the 14th century. Formerly, heraldic authorities believed that the word was related to the German verb blasen ' to blow (a horn) ' . Present-day lexicographers reject this theory as conjectural and disproved. Blazon

1110-737: A very high level of development. The important Benedictine monasteries both wrote chronicles and guarded other works in Old English . However, with the arrival of the Normans, Anglo-Saxon literature came to an end and literature written in Britain was in Latin or Anglo-Norman. The Plantagenet kings encouraged this Anglo-Norman literature . Nevertheless, from the beginning of the 14th century, some authors chose to write in English, such as Geoffrey Chaucer . The authors of that period were influenced by

1184-615: 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 French as a language of record in the mid-13th century, Anglo-Norman also became a language of record in England, although Latin retained its pre-eminence for matters of permanent record (as in written chronicles ). From around this point onwards, considerable variation begins to be apparent in Anglo-Norman, which ranges from

1258-637: Is Buttevant (from the motto of the Barry family: Boutez en avant , "Push to the Fore"), the village of Brittas (from the Norman bretesche , "boarding, planking") and the element Pallas (Irish pailís , from Norman paleis , "boundary fence": compare palisade , The Pale ). Others exist with English or Irish roots, such as Castletownroche , which combines the English Castletown and

1332-402: Is drawn with straight lines, but each may be indented, embattled, wavy, engrailed, or otherwise have their lines varied. A charge is any object or figure placed on a heraldic shield or on any other object of an armorial composition. Any object found in nature or technology may appear as a heraldic charge in armory. Charges can be animals, objects, or geometric shapes. Apart from the ordinaries,

1406-459: Is evidence, too, that foreign words ( Latin , Greek , Italian , Arabic , Spanish ) often entered English via Anglo-Norman. The language of later documents adopted some of the changes ongoing in continental French and lost many of its original dialectal characteristics, so Anglo-French remained (in at least some respects and at least at some social levels) part of the dialect continuum of modern French, often with distinctive spellings. Over time,

1480-401: Is four, but the principle has been extended to very large numbers of "quarters". The third common mode of marshalling is with an inescutcheon , a small shield placed in front of the main shield. The field of a shield, or less often a charge or crest, is sometimes made up of a pattern of colours, or variation . A pattern of horizontal (barwise) stripes, for example, is called barry , while

1554-412: Is generally designed to eliminate ambiguity of interpretation, to be as concise as possible, and to avoid repetition and extraneous punctuation. English antiquarian Charles Boutell stated in 1864: Heraldic language is most concise, and it is always minutely exact, definite, and explicit; all unnecessary words are omitted, and all repetitions are carefully avoided; and, at the same time, every detail

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1628-550: Is specified with absolute precision. The nomenclature is equally significant, and its aim is to combine definitive exactness with a brevity that is indeed laconic . However, John Brooke-Little , Norroy and Ulster King of Arms , wrote in 1985: "Although there are certain conventions as to how arms shall be blazoned ... many of the supposedly hard and fast rules laid down in heraldic manuals [including those by heralds] are often ignored." A given coat of arms may be drawn in many different ways, all considered equivalent and faithful to

1702-535: Is still evident in official and legal terms where the ordinary sequence of noun and adjective is reversed , as seen in phrases such as Blood Royal, attorney general, heir apparent, court martial, envoy extraordinary and body politic. The royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom still features in French the mottos of both the British Monarch , Dieu et mon droit ("God and my right"), and

1776-425: Is to adhere to the feminine singular form, for example: a chief undée and a saltire undée , even though the French nouns chef and sautoir are in fact masculine. Efforts have been made to ignore grammatical correctness, for example by J. E. Cussans , who suggested that all French adjectives should be expressed in the masculine singular, without regard to the gender and number of the nouns they qualify, thus

1850-589: The Order of the Garter , Honi soit qui mal y pense ("Shamed be he who thinks evil of it"). Dieu et mon droit was first used by Richard I (who spoke Anglo-Norman, but cannot be proved to have been able to speak English) in 1198 and adopted as the royal motto of England in the time of Henry VI . The motto appears below the shield of the Royal Coat of Arms. Though in regular use at the royal court, Anglo-French

1924-434: The inescutcheon , the orle , the tressure, the double tressure, the bordure , the chief , the canton , the label , and flaunches . Ordinaries may appear in parallel series, in which case blazons in English give them different names such as pallets, bars, bendlets, and chevronels. French blazon makes no such distinction between these diminutives and the ordinaries when borne singly. Unless otherwise specified an ordinary

1998-524: The 19th century, but these words are probably linguistic traces of Saxon or Anglo-Scandinavian settlements between the 4th and the 10th centuries in Normandy. Otherwise the direct influence of English in mainland Norman (such as smogler "to smuggle") is from direct contact with English in later centuries, rather than Anglo-Norman. When the Normans conquered England, Anglo-Saxon literature had reached

2072-673: The Anglo-Norman of medieval England. Many of the earliest documents in Old French are found in England. In medieval France , it was not usual to write in the vernacular : Because Latin was the language of the Church , education , and historiography , it was also used for records. In medieval England, Latin also remained in use by the Church, the royal government, and much local administration in parallel with Middle English , as it had been before 1066. The early adoption of Anglo-Norman as

2146-482: The French form is used, a problem may arise as to the appropriate adjectival ending, determined in normal French usage by gender and number. "To describe two hands as appaumées , because the word main is feminine in French, savours somewhat of pedantry. A person may be a good armorist, and a tolerable French scholar, and still be uncertain whether an escallop-shell covered with bezants should be blazoned as bezanté or bezantée". The usual convention in English heraldry

2220-419: The French language used in England changed from the end of the 15th century into Law French , that was used since the 13th century. This variety of French was a technical language, with a specific vocabulary, where English words were used to describe everyday experience, and French grammatical rules and morphology gradually declined, with confusion of genders and the adding of -s to form all plurals. Law French

2294-642: The House of Commons to endorse them during their progress to becoming law, or spoken aloud by the Clerk of the Parliaments during a gathering of the Lords Commissioners , to indicate the granting of Royal Assent to legislation. The exact spelling of these phrases has varied over the years; for example, s'avisera has been spelled as s'uvisera and s'advisera , and Reyne as Raine . Though

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2368-453: The Norman or French word supplanted the original English term, or both words would co-exist but with slightly different nuances. In other cases, the Norman or French word was adopted to signify a new reality, such as judge , castle , warranty . In general, the Norman and French borrowings concerned the fields of culture, aristocratic life, politics and religion, and war whereas the English words were used to describe everyday experience. When

2442-596: The Normans (Norsemen) and was then brought over after the Conquest and established firstly in southern English dialects. It is, therefore, argued that the word mug in English shows some of the complicated Germanic heritage of Anglo-Norman. Many expressions used in English today have their origin in Anglo-Norman (such as the expression before-hand , which derives from Anglo-Norman avaunt-main ), as do many modern words with interesting etymologies. Mortgage , for example, literally meant death-wage in Anglo-Norman. Curfew (fr. couvre-feu ) meant cover-fire , referring to

2516-407: The Normans arrived in England, their copyists wrote English as they heard it, without realising the peculiarities of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon pronunciation and spelling and so the spelling changed. There appeared different regional Modern-English written dialects, the one that the king chose in the 15th century becoming the standard variety. In some remote areas, agricultural terms used by

2590-532: The arms small and inconspicuous marks called brisures , similar to charges but smaller. They are placed on the fess-point , or in-chief in the case of the label. Brisures are generally exempt from the rule of tincture . One of the best examples of usage from the medieval period is shown on the seven Beauchamp cadets in the stained-glass windows of St Mary's Church , Warwick. Anglo-Norman French Anglo-Norman ( Norman : Anglo-Normaund ; French : Anglo-normand ), also known as Anglo-Norman French ,

2664-560: The blazon, just as the letter "A" may be printed in many different fonts while still being the same letter. For example, the shape of the escutcheon is almost always immaterial, with very limited exceptions (e.g., the coat of arms of Nunavut , for which a round shield is specified). The main conventions of blazon are as follows: Because heraldry developed at a time when English clerks wrote in Anglo-Norman French , many terms in English heraldry are of French origin. Some of

2738-554: The central Old French dialects which would eventually become Parisian French in terms of grammar , pronunciation and vocabulary . Before the signature of the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539, French was not standardised as an administrative language throughout the kingdom of France. Middle English was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman and, later, Anglo-French. W. Rothwell has called Anglo-French 'the missing link ' because many etymological dictionaries seem to ignore

2812-483: The central langue d'oïl dialects that developed into French. English therefore, for example, has fashion from Norman féchoun as opposed to Modern French façon (both developing from Latin factio, factiōnem ). In contrast, the palatalization of velar consonants before /a/ that affected the development of French did not occur in Norman dialects north of the Joret line . English has therefore inherited words that retain

2886-570: The continent, English sometimes preserves earlier pronunciations. For example, ch used to be /tʃ/ in Medieval French, where Modern French has /ʃ/ , but English has preserved the older sound (in words like chamber, chain, chase and exchequer ). Similarly, j had an older /dʒ/ sound, which it still has in English and some dialects of modern Norman, but it has developed into /ʒ/ in Modern French. The word mushroom preserves

2960-548: The contribution of that language in English and because Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French can explain the transmission of words from French into English and fill the void left by the absence of documentary records of English (in the main) between 1066 and c.  1380 . Anglo-Norman continued to evolve significantly during the Middle Ages by reflecting some of the changes undergone by the northern dialects of mainland French. For example, early Anglo-Norman legal documents used

3034-399: The details of the syntax of blazon also follow French practice: thus, adjectives are normally placed after nouns rather than before. A number of heraldic adjectives may be given in either a French or an anglicised form: for example, a cross pattée or a cross patty ; a cross fitchée or a cross fitchy . In modern English blazons, the anglicised form tends to be preferred. Where

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3108-470: The early days of heraldry, very simple bold rectilinear shapes were painted on shields. These could be easily recognized at a long distance and could be easily remembered. They therefore served the main purpose of heraldry: identification. As more complicated shields came into use, these bold shapes were set apart in a separate class as the "honorable ordinaries". They act as charges and are always written first in blazon. Unless otherwise specified they extend to

3182-422: The edges of the field. Though ordinaries are not easily defined, they are generally described as including the cross , the fess , the pale , the bend , the chevron , the saltire , and the pall . There is a separate class of charges called sub-ordinaries which are of a geometrical shape subordinate to the ordinary. According to Friar, they are distinguished by their order in blazon. The sub-ordinaries include

3256-414: The field per pale and putting one whole coat in each half. Impalement replaced the earlier dimidiation  – combining the dexter half of one coat with the sinister half of another – because dimidiation can create ambiguity. A more versatile method is quartering , division of the field by both vertical and horizontal lines. As the name implies, the usual number of divisions

3330-405: The field. The Rule of tincture applies to all semés and variations of the field. Cadency is any systematic way to distinguish arms displayed by descendants of the holder of a coat of arms when those family members have not been granted arms in their own right. Cadency is necessary in heraldic systems in which a given design may be owned by only one person at any time, generally the head of

3404-417: The great mass of ordinary people spoke forms of English, French spread as a second language due to its prestige, encouraged by its long-standing use in the school system as a medium of instruction through which Latin was taught. In the courts, the members of the jury , who represented the population, had to know French in order to understand the plea of the lawyer. French was used by the merchant middle class as

3478-426: The judge, the lawyer, the complainant or the witnesses. The judge gave his sentence orally in Norman, which was then written in Latin. Only in the lowest level of the manorial courts were trials entirely in English. During the late 14th century, English became the main spoken language, but Latin and French continued to be exclusively used in official legal documents until the beginning of the 18th century. Nevertheless,

3552-468: The king in 1275. With effect from the 13th century, Anglo-Norman therefore became used in official documents, such as those that were marked by the private seal of the king whereas the documents sealed by the Lord Chancellor were written in Latin until the end of the Middle Ages. English became the language of Parliament and of legislation in the 15th century, half a century after it had become

3626-468: The language of the king and most of the English nobility. During the 11th century, development of the administrative and judicial institutions took place. Because the king and the lawyers at the time normally used French, it also became the language of these institutions. From the 11th century until the 14th century, the courts used three languages: Latin for writing, French as the main oral language during trials, and English in less formal exchanges between

3700-572: The late 14th century onwards. Although Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French were eventually eclipsed by modern English , they had been used widely enough to influence English vocabulary permanently. This means that many original Germanic words, cognates of which can still be found in Nordic , German , and Dutch , have been lost or, as is more often the case, exist alongside synonyms of Anglo-Norman French origin. Anglo-Norman had little lasting influence on English grammar, as opposed to vocabulary, although it

3774-409: The left hind foot). Another frequent position is passant , or walking, like the lions of the coat of arms of England . Eagles are almost always shown with their wings spread, or displayed. A pair of wings conjoined is called a vol . In English heraldry the crescent , mullet , martlet , annulet , fleur-de-lis , and rose may be added to a shield to distinguish cadet branches of a family from

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3848-420: The most frequent charges are the cross – with its hundreds of variations – and the lion and eagle . Other common animals are stags , wild boars , martlets , and fish . Dragons , bats , unicorns , griffins , and more exotic monsters appear as charges and as supporters . Animals are found in various stereotyped positions or attitudes . Quadrupeds can often be found rampant (standing on

3922-401: The most important sector prior to the arrival of the tourist business, agriculture today plays a minor role. Blazon In heraldry and heraldic vexillology , a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms , flag or similar emblem , from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image. The verb to blazon means to create such a description. The visual depiction of

3996-442: The phrase "del roy" (of the king), whereas by about 1330 it had become "du roi" as in modern French. Anglo-Norman morphology and phonology can be deduced from its heritage in English. Mostly, it is done in comparison with continental Central French. English has many doublets as a result of this contrast: Compare also: The palatalization of velar consonants before the front vowel produced different results in Norman to

4070-961: The rural workers may have been derived from Norman French. An example is the Cumbrian term sturdy for diseased sheep that walk in circles, derived from étourdi meaning dizzy. The Norman invasion of Ireland began in 1169, on the first of May in Bannow Bay , and led to Anglo-Norman control of much of the island. Norman-speaking administrators arrived to rule over the Angevin Empire 's new territory. Several Norman words became Gaelic words, including household terms: garsún (from Norman garçun , "boy"); cóta ( cote , "cloak"); hata ( hatte , "hat"); gairdín ( gardin , "garden"); and terms relating to justice (Irish giúistís , bardas (corporation), cúirt (court)). Place-names in Norman are few, but there

4144-500: The senior line of a particular family. As an armiger 's arms may be used "by courtesy", either by children or spouses, while they are still living, some form of differencing may be required so as not to confuse them with the original undifferenced or "plain coat" arms. Historically, arms were only heritable by males and therefore cadency marks had no relevance to daughters; in the modern era, Canadian and Irish heraldry include daughters in cadency. These differences are formed by adding to

4218-417: The senior line. These cadency marks are usually shown smaller than normal charges, but it still does not follow that a shield containing such a charge belongs to a cadet branch. All of these charges occur frequently in basic undifferenced coats of arms. To marshal two or more coats of arms is to combine them in one shield. This can be done in a number of ways, of which the simplest is impalement : dividing

4292-463: The settlers who came with William the Conqueror, but also the continued influence of continental French during the Plantagenet period . Though it is difficult to know much about what was actually spoken, as what is known about the dialect is restricted to what was written, it is clear that Anglo-Norman was, to a large extent, the spoken language of the higher social strata in medieval England. It

4366-423: The similarly denasalised vowels of modern Norman), but later developed their modern pronunciation in English. The word veil retains the /ei/ (as does modern Norman in vaile and laîsi ) that in French has been replaced by /wa/ voile , loisir . Since many words established in Anglo-Norman from French via the intermediary of Norman were not subject to the processes of sound change that continued in parts of

4440-458: The time in the evening when all fires had to be covered to prevent the spread of fire within communities with timber buildings. The word glamour is derived from Anglo-Norman grammeire , the same word which gives us modern grammar ; glamour meant first "book learning" and then the most glamorous form of book learning, "magic" or "magic spell" in Medieval times. The influence of Anglo-Norman

4514-414: The unique insular dialect now known as Anglo-Norman French, which was commonly used for literary and eventually administrative purposes from the 11th until the 14th century. The term "Anglo-Norman" harks back to the time when the language was regarded as being primarily the regional dialect of the Norman settlers. Today the generic term "Anglo-French" is used instead to reflect not only the broader origin of

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4588-437: The use of Anglo-French expanded into the fields of law, administration, commerce, and science, in all of which a rich documentary legacy survives, indicative of the vitality and importance of the language. By the late 15th century, however, what remained of insular French had become heavily anglicised: see Law French . It continued to be known as "Norman French" until the end of the 19th century even though, philologically, there

4662-477: The very local (and most anglicised ) to a level of language which approximates to and is sometimes indistinguishable from varieties of continental French. Typically, therefore, local records are 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. The resulting virtual trilingualism in spoken and written language

4736-479: The villages of the municipality. The herring is meant to depict the former importance of fishery for the area, it was already used as the seal of the Sylt bailiffs in the 17th century. The colours are the traditional North Frisian colours which are also reflected in the island's national costume. The most important factor of income in the area is tourism , which nowadays completely dominates the Sylt economy. Having been

4810-680: The words introduced to England as part of Anglo-Norman were of Germanic origin. Indeed, sometimes one can identify cognates such as flock (Germanic in English existing prior to the Conquest) and floquet (Germanic in Norman). The case of the word mug demonstrates that in instances, Anglo-Norman may have reinforced certain Scandinavian elements already present in English. Mug had been introduced into northern English dialects by Viking settlement. The same word had been established in Normandy by

4884-471: The works of contemporary French writers whose language was prestigious. Chaucer - himself of Norman origin - is considered to be the father of the English language and the creator of English as a literary language. The major Norman-French influence on English can still be seen in today's vocabulary. An enormous number of Norman-French and other medieval French loanwords came into the language, and about three-quarters of them are still used today. Very often,

4958-633: Was a dialect of Old Norman that was used in England and, to a lesser extent, other places in Great Britain and Ireland during the Anglo-Norman period. According to some linguists, the name Insular French might be more suitable, because "Anglo-Norman" is constantly associated with the notion of a mixed language based on English and Norman. According to some, such a mixed language never existed. Other sources, however, indicate that such

5032-650: Was banished from the courts of the common law in 1731, almost three centuries after the king ceased speaking primarily French. French was used on moots in the Inner Temple until 1779. Anglo-Norman has survived in the political system in the use of certain Anglo-French set phrases in the Parliament of the United Kingdom , where they are written by hand on bills by the Clerk of the Parliaments or Clerk of

5106-461: Was not the main administrative language of England: Latin was the major language of record in legal and other official documents for most of the medieval period. However, from the late 12th century to the early 15th century, Anglo-French was much used in law reports, charters, ordinances, official correspondence, and trade at all levels; it was the language of the King, his court and the upper class. There

5180-480: Was nothing Norman about it. Among important writers of the Anglo-Norman cultural commonwealth is Marie de France . The languages and literature of the Channel Islands are sometimes referred to as Anglo-Norman, but that usage is derived from the French name for the islands: les îles anglo-normandes . The variety of French spoken in the islands is related to the modern Norman language , and distinct from

5254-492: Was one of medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English. From the time of the Norman Conquest (1066) until the end of the 14th century, French was the language of the king and his court. During this period, marriages with French princesses reinforced the royal family's ties to French culture. Nevertheless, during the 13th century, intermarriages with English nobility became more frequent. French became progressively

5328-513: Was spoken in the law courts, schools, and universities and, in due course, in at least some sections of the gentry and the growing bourgeoisie. Private and commercial correspondence was carried out in Anglo-Norman or Anglo-French from the 13th to the 15th century though its spelling forms were often displaced by continental French spellings. Social classes other than the nobility became keen to learn French: manuscripts containing materials for instructing non-native speakers still exist, dating mostly from

5402-411: Was the first to write in English. By the end of the 15th century, French became the second language of a cultivated elite. Until the end of the 13th century, Latin was the language of all official written documents. Nevertheless, some important documents had their official Norman translation, such as Magna Carta of 1215. The first official document written in Anglo-Norman was a statute promulgated by

5476-491: Was very asymmetrical: very little influence from English was carried over into the continental possessions of the Anglo-Norman kings. Some administrative terms survived in some parts of mainland Normandy: forlenc (from furrow , compare furlong ) in the Cotentin Peninsula and Bessin , and a general use of the word acre (instead of French arpent ) for land measurement in Normandy until metrication in

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