How the Black Death Saved the English Language [27:24]

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· A catastrophic plague
0:00 · We know the Black Death as a catastrophic plague in the 1340s
0:04 · that devastated Europe and many regions across the world.
0:08 · It was the deadliest plague in history,
0:11 · wiping out a quarter of the world's population.
0:15 · What you might not know is how it reshaped the economies of Europe.
0:19 · If we look beyond the horror, we see that for the survivors
0:23 · as it was the beginning of a golden age with higher wages and more freedom.
0:29 · In England, the Black Death not only had a profound impact
0:33 · on society, it had linguistic consequences too.
0:37 · It was one of the main reasons we speak English today and not French.
0:42 · Today on LetThemTalkTV
0:43 · the Black Death, the demise of feudalism and the rise of the English language.
0:49 · It's dark, it's scary, but it has a happy ending.
0:52 · If you're an English speaker anyway, You won't miss this story, so stay tuned.
· The eve of destruction
0:59 · Let's start with a look at
1:00 · England in 1347, on the eve of the plague.
1:04 · The monarch is King Edward the Third.
1:06 · The population is around 6 million people.
1:09 · The capital city is London, with about 100,000 people.
1:13 · It's an overwhelmingly agrarian society.
1:16 · 90% are peasants working on the land.
1:20 · There is the clergy, a small merchant class.
1:24 · And then there is the nobility, most of whom are of Norman descent.
1:29 · So too is the king.
1:30 · We need to talk about four languages in England at that time.
1:34 · If you know your history, you'll know that the Normans invaded in 1066.
1:41 · And almost 300 years later, French, or rather Anglo-Norman
1:46 · French, as the linguists call it, was still the language of the aristocracy.
1:50 · King Edward's native language was French, so was that of the high
1:55 · nobility, for French was the language of power.
1:58 · The laws were written in French.
2:00 · The administration was in French, although some documents were written in Latin.
2:06 · The clergy spoke French, but they would have no Latin.
2:09 · Two as the language of Scripture and religious services.
2:12 · Medieval schooling at that time was mostly in the hands of the church.
2:16 · Teaching would have been in French, and the pupils would have learnt Latin.
2:21 · In 1347 there were just two universities in England, Oxford and Cambridge,
2:26 · which had received royal charters in 1214 and 1231 respectively.
2:32 · Just like the schools, the universities would have taught in French and Latin
2:37 · at some churches and universal colleges.
2:40 · Speaking English was forbidden.
2:43 · Yes, that's right.
2:44 · In Merton College, a report shockingly found that Fellowes
2:48 · was speaking English at High Table and wearing dishonest shoes.
2:54 · So even before the Black Death, there was already concern
2:58 · about English encroaching into the sphere of education,
3:02 · and corrupting the offspring of the Norman nobility.
3:06 · So that's French and Latin.
3:08 · but who spoke English on the eve of the plague.
3:11 · The peasants continued to speak English again.
3:14 · The vast majority of the English population works on the land.
3:18 · The majority of the landlords would be Anglo-Norman
3:22 · or of Anglo-Norman descent, toiling.
3:24 · The fields were two kinds of peasants the free and the unfree peasants,
3:30 · the free peasants or freemen paid rent for the land
3:34 · they worked on, for which they received a wage.
3:37 · They could leave if they wished, and moved somewhere else.
3:41 · Also, if there was a dispute with the landlord,
3:44 · they could take their case to the king's court,
3:47 · which was independent and unfree.
3:50 · Peasants, or Villein, on the other hand, was tied
3:53 · to the land under the control of the local lords.
3:56 · Not quite a slave, but definitely not free.
3:59 · They couldn't leave the manor without permission.
4:02 · They had a small plot of land which they could farm for themselves, but
4:06 · in addition they had to spend several days a week working on the Lord's land.
4:12 · If you had a dispute with your landlord, you might go to the manorial court,
4:18 · or a shire court where you could plea in English,
4:21 · while the written records, the court roles were kept in Latin.
4:25 · However, for the higher courts and the royal courts of the French
4:30 · was the main language Once again, Latin was used for written legal records
4:34 · such as court roles and official documents.
4:37 · 300 years after the Norman Conquest
4:41 · Some of the lower nobility would have become anglicized to some degree.
4:46 · Although they still would have
4:47 · spoken French, which was still the language of prestige.
4:51 · Most of the monks and the lower echelons of the church
4:56 · would have spoken English, though they would have had
4:59 · to have learned Latin, and probably French too.
5:03 · The merchants and traders in the towns would have had English
5:07 · as their mother tongue, but would have had to know French
5:10 · for dealing with the courts,
5:14 · administration and accountancy,
5:17 · and for their interactions with those in power.
5:20 · Those were the three main spoken languages at the time.
5:23 · But what about writing?
5:24 · Who could read and write?
5:25 · The largest group by far.
5:27 · Were the clergy who needed to read the scriptures.
5:31 · Monastic schools were the centre of learning, and the monks
5:35 · made up most of the scribes, who copied text and books.
5:39 · Remember, this is some time before the printing press.
5:43 · Some of the noblemen and a few noble women could read and write in French,
5:48 · And if they, the males, that is, had been to a grammar school
5:53 · or had a university education, then they would have known Latin too.
5:58 · So then what writing do we have of this period?
6:01 · If you were a nobleman who knew French,
6:04 · then you had a wealth of material written
6:08 · in Anglo-Norman French to read in your leisure time.
6:12 · These include a number of chivalric romances
6:15 · with gallant knights and perhaps a damsels in distress.
6:19 · The epic poem The Chanson de Roland, the Folie de Tristan,
6:24 · Hugh of Rhuddlan and many more.
6:28 · There was even a woman writer, Marie de France,
6:31 · who lived in England during the late 12th century and wrote
6:35 · a large collection of poems and fables in Latin.
6:39 · You could read the legends of Merlin and Arthur, collecting the Historia Regum
6:45 · Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth, That's to name but a few.
6:49 · But what about English?
6:51 · Yes. Over 90% of the population spoke English, but the vast majority
6:56 · couldn't read or write Between the 12th and the mid 14th century.
7:02 · English almost ceased to exist as a written language.
7:07 · Most of the texts we have from
7:09 · this period are a small number of religious writings.
7:13 · One notable exception is Layamon's Brut, which is a history of Britain
7:19 · including mythical figures such as King Arthur.
7:23 · The work is largely taken from other sources in Anglo-Norman and Latin.
7:28 · By the way, I said at the beginning that there were four
7:32 · languages in England at that time.
7:35 · The fourth, if you haven't guessed already, is Cornish, spoken
7:38 · in Cornwall on the southwest tip of England.
7:41 · Spoken by perhaps 38,000 people
7:45 · at the time and around 1300.
7:48 · So that's the state of play in 1347.
7:51 · English was the language of the people, but mostly unwritten
7:55 · and not the language of prestige or of record.
7:59 · But an unprecedented calamity was about to strike England
8:03 · and most of Europe, a devastating plague that would kill millions,
8:07 · but also change the course of human history in very unexpected ways,
8:12 · And leave England with a very different linguistic landscape.
· The end of the world
8:18 · Let's first have a
8:19 · brief look at the immediate impact of the plague.
8:23 · The first outbreak of the Black Death
8:25 · appears to have taken place in 1338,
8:29 · in Central Asia, probably in what is now Kyrgyzstan
8:34 · The disease was spread by fleas living on black rats.
8:39 · It moved slowly by modern standards
8:42 · along the Silk Road towards Europe.
8:45 · By 1346 it had reached the Crimea and port of Caffa,
8:49 · then controlled by the Genoese, but under siege
8:53 · by a Mongol army that had been ravaged by the plague.
8:56 · With the siege dragging on and the Mongols unable to break
9:00 · through the well-fortified city, they resorted to desperate tactics in
9:05 · what is considered the first recorded case of biological warfare.
9:09 · The Mongols catapulted the corpses
9:12 · of their plague infected soldiers over the walls.
9:16 · The plague quickly spread through Caffa The Genoese hastily abandoned the city.
9:23 · Boarding ships bound for various ports around
9:26 · the Mediterranean Unwittingly taking the plague with them.
9:30 · The death toll of the Black Death is staggering.
9:34 · Between 1346 and 1353,
9:37 · the Black Death killed about 25% of the Earth's population.
9:42 · Perhaps 60% of the European population.
9:46 · In dense urban environments, the death toll was particularly bad.
9:50 · The population of Florence fell from between 110
9:54 · to 120,000 inhabitants in 1338,
9:57 · to 50,000 in 1351.
10:00 · It killed half the city of Paris.
10:03 · The Black Death first arrived in England around
10:06 · June 1348, in the port of Melcombe.
10:09 · It reached London by autumn, and for the next year
10:12 · it ripped through the country.
10:14 · It's estimated that between 40 and 60%
10:18 · of the population died in the outbreak.
10:21 · London had a population of 70 to 100,000 before the plague arrived.
10:27 · By the end of the first wave of the Black Death,
10:29 · this had dropped to 30 to 50,000 people.
10:33 · hundreds of villages were completely abandoned across the country.
10:38 · The plague killed rich and poor, young and old.
10:42 · It was a great leveler.
10:44 · However, one group that was particularly
10:47 · badly affected was the clergy.
10:50 · They were constantly exposed
10:52 · to the sick, hearing confessions and to the dying.
10:57 · They administered the last rites.
· The aftermath
11:00 · So let's look
11:01 · now at the consequences of the plague.
11:04 · To quote Dickens, writing about another era,
11:07 · they were the best of times and maybe the worst of times, If you were a peasant
11:12 · lucky enough to survive the plague, things were pretty good.
11:16 · The plague caused a massive labour shortage.
11:20 · There weren't enough peasants to toil the land, and landlords were desperate
11:25 · to have labor to bring in the harvests and tend the animals.
11:31 · Wages went up.
11:32 · Landlords had to offer better terms to attract or keep workers.
11:37 · And those rigid feudal bonds, especially for
11:40 · the unfree, started to loosen significantly.
11:44 · They could negotiate their freedom and find a decent wage where they were,
11:48 · or go elsewhere.
11:49 · Landlords couldn't enforce the old rules anymore.
11:52 · Some peasants moved to the cities labour was bountiful and wages were higher still.
11:58 · Back on the land, many villeins gained
12:02 · their freedom and became small landowners.
12:05 · Small landowners became larger landowners.
12:09 · If you were to inherit a plot of land and your brothers died.
12:14 · You'd inherit
12:14 · Their land too. Creating bigger farms and richer peasants.
12:19 · So you have this huge social shake up
12:22 · empowering the English speaking majority for the first time.
12:26 · Moreover, it wasn't just the peasants who died.
12:30 · Of course, the landlords, too many minor English landlords,
12:35 · merchants and even successful peasants began
12:40 · rising in status, buying up land or leasing abandoned estates.
12:45 · Up until the Black Death, the priests were mainly speakers of French and Latin.
12:50 · Now the church had a massive recruitment problem,
12:54 · and they had no choice but to take English speakers
12:57 · and Englishmen to fill the vacancies.
13:01 · They were so desperate for new recruits that some who joined
13:04 · could hardly write in English, let alone French and Latin,
13:08 · and their knowledge of the scriptures
13:11 · left a lot to be desired.
13:14 · Remember that the church were also the educators.
13:18 · And if you can't find teachers who can teach French, then
13:22 · what are you going to do?
13:23 · So the schools across England were taught in English.
13:28 · This is a quote from John Trevisa 1342
13:31 · to 1402, a Latin translator
13:34 · who added his own remarks in English.
13:39 · Now the year of our Lord 1385.
13:41 · In all the grammar schools of England, children leave
13:45 · French and construe and learn in English.
13:49 · Now children of grammar school know no more French
13:52 · than they know their left heel, and that is harmful for them.
13:56 · If they should pass across the sea and travel
13:59 · in strange lands, and in many other cases also.
14:04 · Also, gentlemen have
14:05 · largely stopped teaching their children French.
14:09 · So the children of the nobility were
14:11 · now going to English schools,
14:14 · where they were taught in English.
14:17 · And this happens at Oxford and Cambridge universities, too.
14:21 · What about the courts?
14:23 · Well, the French speaking lawyers
14:26 · were not immune from the plague either.
14:29 · So vacancies here were filled by English speakers.
14:34 · And as we have seen, More of the elite were speaking English than ever before.
14:39 · The nobility were being educated [in] English.
14:42 · There was more social mobility, and the numbers of French speakers
14:47 · were falling, For this reason, in 1362
14:52 · Parliament introduced the Statute of Pleading.
14:56 · This required that English be the language
14:59 · of legal proceedings for the first time.
15:03 · This is what it said.
15:04 · All pleas which shall be pleaded in any courts whatsoever,
15:08 · before any of his justices whatsoever, or in his other places,
15:13 · or before any of his other ministers whatsoever,
15:17 · or in the courts and places of any other laws whatsoever
15:22 · within the realm shall be pleaded, showed, defended, answered, debated, and judged
15:28 · in the English language, and that they be entered, and enrolled in Latin.
15:34 · The statute repeating itself was ironically written in French.
15:38 · So let's get this straight.
15:40 · We have a law written in French saying that English must be Used at court.
15:45 · But the court records should be in Latin.
15:49 · What a linguistic mess England was at that time.
15:52 · But at least the English language was at last being taken seriously.
15:57 · It should be noted that Parliament was also a court.
16:01 · So for the first time you could speak at Parliament in English rather than French.
16:06 · Some historians argue that this is when English became the official language
16:12 · of England again, meaning for the first time since 1066.
· Turning back the clocks
16:20 · Society was
16:21 · rapidly changing because of the Black Death.
16:25 · Wages were going up as a result of the labour shortage.
16:29 · But Parliament tried to put a stop to this with the statute of laborers.
16:34 · 1351.
16:36 · The law froze wages at pre plague levels
16:39 · and restricted the movement of laborers, so as to stop peasants
16:44 · demanding more money or leaving for better jobs.
16:49 · Now, you might think that this law was put in place
16:53 · for purely economic reasons, because wages were spiraling out of control,
16:59 · but the social and political motivations ran much deeper.
17:03 · Increased wages and social mobility
17:06 · were turning the feudal system on its head.
17:09 · Equally important was protecting the existing social hierarchy
17:15 · and reinforcing the privileges of the landowning and ruling classes.
17:20 · They didn't want former peasants, English
17:22 · speaking peasants gaining wealth and economic power.
17:26 · They wanted the lower classes to stay poor and stay put.
17:32 · Moreover, under the feudal system, it was believed that this hierarchy
17:37 · had been ordained by God.
17:40 · It reminds me of the hymn All Things Bright
17:42 · and Beautiful albeit written much later.
17:46 · The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.
17:51 · God made them high or lowly,
17:54 · and ordered their estates.
17:57 · Of course, the statute of laborers didn't work.
18:02 · There was the law of supply and demand,
18:05 · and even the Anglo-Norman nobility, backed
18:08 · by Almighty God, couldn't stop that.
18:11 · For example, farm wages in England on average
18:15 · doubled between 1350 and 1450.
18:19 · In 1363, Parliament acted
18:22 · the statute concerning in diet and apparel.
18:25 · This act was intended to shore up
18:28 · the privilege and status of the nobility.
18:31 · It aimed to regulate what people could eat and where.
18:35 · Based on their social rank and income.
18:39 · Here's a quote from John Gower, a poet and friend of Geoffrey Chaucer,
18:43 · moaning that the lower classes are eating the same food as him.
18:48 · It never used to be like that.
18:51 · The labourers of olden times were not accustomed to eat wheat bread.
18:55 · Their bread was made of beans and of other corn, and their drink was water.
19:02 · Then cheese and milk.
19:03 · Well, as a feast to them, rarely have they any other feast than this.
19:09 · Their clothing was plain grey.
19:11 · Then was the world of such folk well-ordered in its estate
19:18 · English men
19:19 · and women of the lower ranks were getting richer,
19:23 · and some began dressing like the nobility
19:27 · and it was particularly aimed at the affluent merchant class,
19:32 · spending their wealth on clothing and other luxuries.
19:36 · This is another example of how the aristocracy
19:40 · saw their old worlds rapidly falling apart, and they didn't like it.
19:45 · They tried to reinforce the clothing
19:48 · and culinary distinction between classes through legislation.
19:54 · The law laid out seven social categories.
19:58 · Each member of each class had to be distinguished by their clothing.
20:04 · Just to give you a few examples of this.
20:08 · The wives and daughters of servants were forbidden
20:12 · to wear veils of more than 12 pence in value.
20:17 · A yeoman's wife couldn't wear silk veils.
20:21 · Gold cloth and purple silk
20:24 · were only to [be] worn by women of the royal family.
20:28 · Esquires and all gentlemen earning under £100
20:32 · a year could have no cloth over 4.5 marks
20:36 · No fur or embroidered clothing.
20:40 · There have been other laws of this kind in England.
20:43 · These type of laws are known as sumptuary laws, but this one was much
20:47 · more about distinctions based on income than on blood.
· Revolution in the air
20:54 · It's clear from these laws
20:57 · that there were tensions in
20:59 · England, and change was afoot.
21:02 · And this all reached its apex in the Peasants Revolt of 1381.
21:08 · This is said to be the first capitalist uprising in history.
21:13 · In English history.
21:14 · At least Prior to this, uprisings had been undertaken
21:18 · by disgruntled barons and the like.
21:21 · Peasants were just too poor
21:23 · to do anything other than till the land for subsistence.
21:27 · And it's important to note that this wasn't driven
21:31 · by famine or utter desperation.
21:33 · It happened in a period where things
21:36 · were actually improving for many peasants.
21:40 · Wages were rising,
21:42 · but they were facing attempts to claw back those gains.
21:47 · There was growing tension in England, and the trigger for the revolt was a poll
21:53 · tax brought in to pay for campaigns in the ongoing Hundred Years War.
21:59 · In 1381, the leader of the Peasants
22:02 · Revolt, Wat Tyler, marched on London.
22:06 · Amongst their demands was the complete abolition of serfdom,
22:11 · and a rebel priest, John Bull, gave a rousing speech where he said.
22:17 · From the beginning all men by nature were created alike,
22:20 · and our bondage or servitude came in
22:24 · by the unjust oppression of naughty men.
22:29 · By the way, the word naughty has changed in meaning since then.
22:33 · In other words, all men are born equal.
22:37 · This was new thinking and contradicted the concept of the divine
22:41 · right of kings And hereditary privilege.
22:45 · Unfortunately, it didn't end well on that particular day.
22:50 · Wat Tyler was killed and the rebellion brutally suppressed.
22:55 · But it was evident from these events that society
22:58 · had changed irrevocably since the Black Death.
23:02 · Just a year after the Peasants' Revolt came another threat to the social order,
23:06 · And that was seen as so revolutionary.
23:10 · The some of its proponents were burnt at the stake.
23:14 · In the 1380s, John Wycliffe and his followers
23:17 · produced the first complete translation of the Bible into English.
23:22 · Until then, the Bible was in Latin.
23:25 · Wycliffe believed the Bible should be available
23:29 · to everyone in the language of the people.
23:33 · He thought individuals had the right to read scriptures
23:38 · for themselves without priests acting as gatekeepers.
23:43 · But if they could read the scriptures, they might question
23:47 · and make up their own mind about what they meant.
23:51 · They might question the authority and the wealth of the church,
23:55 · and the church and state were inextricably linked.
23:59 · This was dangerous.
24:01 · It was a social and political threat, a challenge to the whole idea
24:07 · that truth and power should be controlled by an elite.
· English is back
24:12 · The late 14th century saw the flowering of English literature.
24:17 · We see words such as Piers Plowman by William Langland in 1382,
24:23 · and a allegorical poem and social critique,
24:27 · and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, published in 1400.
24:31 · Hugely popular and influential to this day,
24:36 · English literature was flourishing once again.
24:39 · And who read these books?
24:41 · Those very kids of the upper classes no longer got their kicks from
24:46 · chivalric novels written in French.
24:50 · They spoke in
24:50 · English, they read in English, and they wrote in English.
24:54 · Yes. That's right.
24:55 · English wasn't just the language of the fields anymore.
24:59 · It was becoming a language of high culture.
25:03 · And to crown it all.
25:05 · In 1399, King Henry the Fourth became the first king
25:10 · since 1066 to have English
25:13 · as his mother tongue rather than French.
25:17 · To be clear, there were other factors leading to the demise of French,
25:23 · and these included the loss of Normandy in 1204,
25:26 · Which forced many English nobles who held land on both sides
25:32 · of the channel, to choose whether their loyalty lay
25:35 · with England or France.
25:38 · And the Hundred Years War.
25:41 · France was England's enemy,
25:43 · and the war fostered a stronger sense of English national identity,
25:49 · Despite the trauma of the Black Death
25:52 · that caused England to change in ways that would have been unthinkable
25:57 · a generation earlier, Feudalism was on its way out.
26:01 · By 1500, there would be no more serfs in England.
26:05 · And although English had triumphed in the end against its Gallic rival,
26:10 · English had morphed into a very different language to the one Harold Godwinson.
26:15 · And the people of England had spoken on the eve of the Norman conquests.
26:21 · In short, English had become more French.
26:25 · And this was exacerbated by the fact that the French from
26:31 · Paris was still hugely influential
26:34 · in the continent, and wealth would continue to be so for centuries.
26:39 · And not to mention the influence of Latin.
26:42 · Indeed, we have more words from
26:46 · French, in the English language than we do from Old English.
26:51 · So the Black Death ended the life of millions of people across the world.
26:56 · But they wouldn't be the only victims.
26:59 · feudalism was on its way out.
27:01 · If you were born a peasant, you died a peasant.
27:04 · If you were born a noble, you died a noble.
27:08 · But that was starting to change.
27:10 · If you're interested in the history of the English language,
27:13 · then do sign up to my newsletter, The Rambler.
27:16 · It's free.
27:17 · Link in the description or join me on Patreon for much, much more.
27:22 · So for now. See you soon! Bye.

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And text speak has destroyed the English language.

Viking-warrior “overstayers” affected how much of English was affected in its pronunciation.

Many French words have been “annexed” into the German language as well.

WTF? BRB.

Get your DNA done. If you’ve got British Isles ancestry, you’ll find Viking overstayers in your chromosomes. :^)

Ur prbly rt abt tht. I thot so 2!

The hand of God???

More like his middle finger.

My French ancestor arrived in England in 1066.

“More like his middle finger.”

Not really, when you accept the ascendancy of Anglo-Saxons and others over the Normans in England was a blessing not only to “English” speakers, but to British, European and world history.

Norman French was basically redneck French, so the Brits didn’t want to speak it, preferring instead the Parisian. Problem was there wasn’t enough contact with Paris, as it was further away, to maintain the Parisian variety.

“Norman French was basically redneck French, so the Brits didn’t want to speak it, preferring instead the Parisian. Problem was there wasn’t enough contact with Paris, as it was further away, to maintain the Parisian variety.”

The article explains well how the plague was a significant if complex part of that, and much more than mere language or dialect sympathies. The circumstance produced by the plague loosened the advantages of the Norman aristocracy and the their language.

Get your DNA done. If you’ve got British Isles ancestry, you’ll find Viking overstayers in your chromosomes. :^)

I've got a story about that. My brother got the DNA test done. Sure enough 1/4 came back as "Northeastern European"....Yep. That's our dad's mom who was from Germany. 5% came back "Southern European"...yep my mom's side several generations back somebody married someone from Southern Europe. We knew the remaining 75% was British Isles. He then told me we were 15% Scandinavian.

I scoffed: Scandinavian??? We don't have any ancestors from Scandinavia! Why, they were all from the British isles and.......pause..........oh!

yeah....maybe we do actually have ancestors from Scandinavia after all.......

:^)

It’s a little more complex than dialect sympathies or the plague. French never really had a hold on the common folk of England, it was only spoken by the aristocrats, church leaders, law, etc. The common people were speaking germanic/English dialects before the Norman invasion, and they continued to do so afterward. The language of the land might have been officially French, but it was de facto English all along. No doubt the plague hastened things along with its impacts on labor and resulting rise of a native merchant class, but French was already on the wane anyway.

Thanks for posting this. I’ve watched several of this guy’s videos. He’s always interesting.

I listen to a few history podcasts and one recently had a story about the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. The quick version of the story is that isolated areas in France of what used to be part of the western Roman world were now, around 800, being contacted by Latin speakers who couldn’t understand what they were saying. Due to the separation and isolation from the Latin world their language was developing into French.
Another podcast talked about a WW2 British pilot shot down over France that the underground was helping to escape back to England. His high school French was helping tremendously as they moved him along trying to get him to the coast and a boat back home. Then he hit Brittany where the partisans started speaking a language he didn’t understand at all. It was Breton a language closely related to Cornish and Welsh. The pilot was concerned and unsure of who these people really were. But it all worked out and he made it back in a small boat. Here’s a sound of Breton from YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XeGjnOTOx8

I listen to a few history podcasts and one recently had a story about the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. The quick version of the story is that isolated areas in France of what used to be part of the western Roman world were now, around 800, being contacted by Latin speakers who couldn’t understand what they were saying. Due to the separation and isolation from the Latin world their language was developing into French.
Another podcast talked about a WW2 British pilot shot down over France that the underground was helping to escape back to England. His high school French was helping tremendously as they moved him along trying to get him to the coast and a boat back home. Then he hit Brittany where the partisans started speaking a language he didn’t understand at all. It was Breton a language closely related to Cornish and Welsh. The pilot was concerned and unsure of who these people really were. But it all worked out and he made it back in a small boat. Here’s a sound of Breton from YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XeGjnOTOx8