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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

“(There is no direct evidence that Richard I, Cœur de Lion, raised in Norman castles in England, spoke English.”

Richard Coer de Lion died in 1199. If you measure the birth of English as a language from the writing of the Canterbury Tales in 1387 (or was it 1400?), there was no English to speak in 1199, nor in the days of Edward II. There was an informal mish-mosh of Norman French and Saxon German along with a few other languages, but no body of literature as of yet.


50 posted on 06/06/2023 8:30:53 AM PDT by Eleutheria5 (Every Goliath has his David. Child in need of a CGM system. https://gofund.me/6452dbf1. )
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To: Eleutheria5

There was “Anglo-Saxon”, and Beowulf dates to the Seventh Century. There was clearly writing in Anglo-Saxon at least from the Seventh Century, and an English alphabet, though no clear single dominant dialect, but late West Saxon became dominant. Chaucer is considered Middle English, Beowulf Old-English or Anglo-Saxon. Shakespeare is considered early modern English, though much of his language is archaic today.


54 posted on 06/06/2023 8:55:27 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (If Kitty Genovese had a gun, she’d be in jail today.)
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