Re: CHAT: con-this'n'that

[John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>]

Lars Henrik Mathiesen scripsit:

> Well, that's a good question. Giving a (Norman) French ruling house,
> would the Anjou dialect have survived as a home language of the
> English nobility? Does the House of Lords still conduct its business
> in 'law French' *there?*

Almost certainly not.  I can't lay my hands on the date for the change
in language in the law courts, but it was certainly before the Reformation.
The fact that Britain remains Catholic is pretty much the first
*outwardly visible* (outside Britain) difference.  Most British
Nonconformists go to the New World.   (All this because of no Tudors
coming to power in England.)

> A Parisian would still find the accent appaling, of course.

In Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series, the Plantagenets descended from
Richard I rule a unified Anglo-French Empire, with suzerainty over the
Germanies and the Italies as well (not to mention the whole New World;
Spain speaks Arabic).  Their major European opponent is Poland
(really Poland-Lithuania-Ukraine); the Russias are disunited and weak.
The Byzantine Empire ("Roumelia") also survives, in about the same
position as the Ottoman Empire, but speaking Greek instead of Turkish.

The Imperial language is Anglo-French, and Parisien is considered an
appallingly vulgar patois.  So is English, or maybe it is even extinct.

--
John Cowan                                      cowan@ccil.org
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.