by Jonathon Stern

Created on: August 07, 2008   Last Updated: February 27, 2010

In the short run everything has a legacy. But the key thing is: is there still a legacy in our world in the early 21st century?In the case of Hastings I'll warrant that it does.You and I are living evidence of the outcome of a war waged on Senlac Hill in 1066. Why?Check this out:"CASE." "WARRANT." "WAR." "WAGED."Recognise those words? Of course you do. You've just read them!

You and I are having no problem communicating, are we? I could use words like "CASTLE", "KENNEL" and "WARDEN" as well and you'd still understand what I meant. That's because you and I were born way after 1066: those and many other words were injected into our language by Norman French in the wake of the victory of William of Normandy.The clash of two such different languages (Anglo-Saxon and Norman French) and the confusions caused thereby has been cited as the cause of our grammar being so much easier than that of other European languages.

What gender is "table" in French, for instance? It's feminine. And in German? Masculine. In Welsh? Masculine if you live in North Wales; feminine if you live in South Wales. Why, in German, would you say "ich gehe in DIE Kueche" but "ich bin in DER Kueche". Because "Kueche" ("kitchen") is feminine and the first clause was in the accusative case and the second was in the dative case.

Confused? Of course you are: English is the only Indo-European language where you need never worry about the gender of objects (what gender is "table"? Neuter, of course, as is "kitchen", as is "army", as is "washing machine"...). We also hardly use case endings (OK "he" and "him" and so on but it's really negligible compared to other related languages). Anglo-Saxon and Norman French wouldn't agree what gender some noun or other was... so they'd just forget about it and call it "it".

This has created a very flexible language (once referred to as "a lot of foreign words mispronounced") which often has two subtly different words for things (e.g. compare our "come" and "arrive" with the German "kommen" and the French "arriver" - remember Anglo-Saxon would have been very like German; Norman French was closely related to Parisian French). This flexible hybrid language has made itself very open to new influences from other languages coming in (in the way that, say, Icelandic and Korean haven't). Have you ever had to contact the ombudsman (Swedish) or eaten a bowl of spaghetti (Italian)?

Maybe you live in a bungalow (Gujarati) or carry things in a basket (Welsh)? Without the Norman

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