When the Normans conquered the English in 1066 ....
.... they almost immediately attempted to impose the Norman French as the new official language.
The royal courts, law courts and local lords administrations were all conducted in either Latin or the conquerors language. The church also used Latin or, after the replacement of Anglo-Saxon clergy with French clergy, also used Norman French.
And in fact it wasn't until around 1560, when Geoffrey Chaucer and other contemporaries such as William Langland, were writing in Middle English, that it was apparent that the English language had survived and indeed thrived. The reason for this was simply that at the very most, barely 50,000 Normans had settled in England, while the native population was probably 2 million (less than the 4 million in Roman times), who continued to speak their own language.
The fact that Chaucer was also an administrator in King Edward III's court, suggests strongly, that outside of official documents, many in the royal court were already using Middle English in a daily context, and that it was only the linkages to France by the nobility that was keeping Norman French a requirement. By the time 100 year war ended in AD 1453, French was probably no longer used as the daily English courtly language.
Now this is not a new colonial phenomena, but its pattern varies, depending upon a number of local factors ... for instance the Mongol language never really supplanted the native Chinese dialects after the Mongol conquest, because of the vast numbers of Chinese, so this meant that the Mongol written script of 'Phags-pa script,' was the same for all the Mongol empires dialects. After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty in AD 1271, most of the Mongol Emperors could generally converse well in the Han Chinese language, but not any other Chinese dialect.
Similarly, in India under the British, the English language was used for administration, but barely impacted on 99 per cent of the local native populations language of choice ... the one divergence from this basic trend of the native languages surviving, then re-emerging, was the Spanish language introduction into the South Americas ... where, 400 years later, the vast majority of the populations still speak Spanish.
Now the reasons for this are that quite simply the native populations were *decimated, when possibly in excess of 95% of the native population were killed by influenza, measles, and smallpox in the hardest hit areas ... these illnesses spread, even in advance of any European immigration in many many areas.
The full scope of this disaster is at least analogous to the impact of the black death in Europe in the middle ages. For example, the Inca population of Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest was estimated as something between 13 million and 32 million, but dropped to below 1.5 million post conquest. Overall the Spanish colonisation of the Americas killed so many native peoples, that it resulted in climate change and temporary global cooling, according to scientists from University College London.
Now this doesn't mean that native languages in Central and South Americas died out, but the decimations allowed the colonisers language to dominate. However the native populations of the Americas have recovered slowly, with 42 million indigenous people in Latin America, making up nearly 8 percent of the total population. Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Bolivia have the largest number of these, and in Peru the indigenous population make up around 34 per cent of the countries population.
These natives still speak in Quechua (aka Runa Simi), the language of the Inca Empire, and in an interesting development, a court in the city of Huaraz, in Northern Peru, has for the first time since the end of the Inca Empire in AD 1533, issued a first oral legal ruling in that language, then the same magistrate followed this up, with a full written and oral ruling in the language in another case. The magistrate, Oswaldo Ener Granados Guerrero, issued the written ruling in a dispute between two native speakers of Áncash Quechua, a dialect still spoken in the Andes Mountains region.
There are an estimated 10 million people from Ecuador in the north, to Argentina in the south, who still speak dialects of the Inca language. Sadly its still largely a spoken rather than written language, so the Inca written language is essentially dead, except for native religious practices.
However, perhaps after this breakthrough legal case ruling, both the written and oral native languages will start to revive ... they won't ever replace Spanish, as English did to the conquerors French in England, but maybe they will become a strong second language in a number of countries.
*Some genocide historians believe that the vast majority of natives were actually killed in mines and construction slavery under the Spanish colonials, where life expectancy was less the 6 months in the mines. Even Spanish priests railed at the cruelty of the treatment of the conquered natives.
In 1511 in Hispaniola a Dominican friar named Antonio de Montesinos, delivered a sermon to Spaniards in Santo Domingo, denouncing the cruel practices that were destroying the native Taınos:
"With what right and what justice do you hold those Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude? With what authority have you made such detestable war on these peoples, who were in their calm and peaceful lands; where [their population being] so limitless, you have consumed [it] with unheard of deaths and ruination? How can you keep them so oppressed and fatigued, without feeding them or curing their sicknesses, which they incur from the excessive labours that you give them, and to which they succumb?"
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| The Norman Conquest Was Cultural Colonisation .... |
.... they almost immediately attempted to impose the Norman French as the new official language.
The royal courts, law courts and local lords administrations were all conducted in either Latin or the conquerors language. The church also used Latin or, after the replacement of Anglo-Saxon clergy with French clergy, also used Norman French.
And in fact it wasn't until around 1560, when Geoffrey Chaucer and other contemporaries such as William Langland, were writing in Middle English, that it was apparent that the English language had survived and indeed thrived. The reason for this was simply that at the very most, barely 50,000 Normans had settled in England, while the native population was probably 2 million (less than the 4 million in Roman times), who continued to speak their own language.
The fact that Chaucer was also an administrator in King Edward III's court, suggests strongly, that outside of official documents, many in the royal court were already using Middle English in a daily context, and that it was only the linkages to France by the nobility that was keeping Norman French a requirement. By the time 100 year war ended in AD 1453, French was probably no longer used as the daily English courtly language.
Now this is not a new colonial phenomena, but its pattern varies, depending upon a number of local factors ... for instance the Mongol language never really supplanted the native Chinese dialects after the Mongol conquest, because of the vast numbers of Chinese, so this meant that the Mongol written script of 'Phags-pa script,' was the same for all the Mongol empires dialects. After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty in AD 1271, most of the Mongol Emperors could generally converse well in the Han Chinese language, but not any other Chinese dialect.
Similarly, in India under the British, the English language was used for administration, but barely impacted on 99 per cent of the local native populations language of choice ... the one divergence from this basic trend of the native languages surviving, then re-emerging, was the Spanish language introduction into the South Americas ... where, 400 years later, the vast majority of the populations still speak Spanish.
 |
| Inca Doctors Couldn't Handle Smallpox Or Other European And African Diseases ..... |
Now the reasons for this are that quite simply the native populations were *decimated, when possibly in excess of 95% of the native population were killed by influenza, measles, and smallpox in the hardest hit areas ... these illnesses spread, even in advance of any European immigration in many many areas.
The full scope of this disaster is at least analogous to the impact of the black death in Europe in the middle ages. For example, the Inca population of Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest was estimated as something between 13 million and 32 million, but dropped to below 1.5 million post conquest. Overall the Spanish colonisation of the Americas killed so many native peoples, that it resulted in climate change and temporary global cooling, according to scientists from University College London.
Now this doesn't mean that native languages in Central and South Americas died out, but the decimations allowed the colonisers language to dominate. However the native populations of the Americas have recovered slowly, with 42 million indigenous people in Latin America, making up nearly 8 percent of the total population. Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Bolivia have the largest number of these, and in Peru the indigenous population make up around 34 per cent of the countries population.
These natives still speak in Quechua (aka Runa Simi), the language of the Inca Empire, and in an interesting development, a court in the city of Huaraz, in Northern Peru, has for the first time since the end of the Inca Empire in AD 1533, issued a first oral legal ruling in that language, then the same magistrate followed this up, with a full written and oral ruling in the language in another case. The magistrate, Oswaldo Ener Granados Guerrero, issued the written ruling in a dispute between two native speakers of Áncash Quechua, a dialect still spoken in the Andes Mountains region.
There are an estimated 10 million people from Ecuador in the north, to Argentina in the south, who still speak dialects of the Inca language. Sadly its still largely a spoken rather than written language, so the Inca written language is essentially dead, except for native religious practices.
However, perhaps after this breakthrough legal case ruling, both the written and oral native languages will start to revive ... they won't ever replace Spanish, as English did to the conquerors French in England, but maybe they will become a strong second language in a number of countries.
*Some genocide historians believe that the vast majority of natives were actually killed in mines and construction slavery under the Spanish colonials, where life expectancy was less the 6 months in the mines. Even Spanish priests railed at the cruelty of the treatment of the conquered natives.
In 1511 in Hispaniola a Dominican friar named Antonio de Montesinos, delivered a sermon to Spaniards in Santo Domingo, denouncing the cruel practices that were destroying the native Taınos:
"With what right and what justice do you hold those Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude? With what authority have you made such detestable war on these peoples, who were in their calm and peaceful lands; where [their population being] so limitless, you have consumed [it] with unheard of deaths and ruination? How can you keep them so oppressed and fatigued, without feeding them or curing their sicknesses, which they incur from the excessive labours that you give them, and to which they succumb?"
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