A history of the English Language

101.
Provincial Character of French in England.
One factor against the continued use of French in England was the circumstance that 
Anglo-French was not “good” French. In the Middle Ages there were four principal 
dialects of French spoken in France: Norman, Picard (in the northeast), Burgundian (in 
the east), and the Central French of Paris (the Ile-de-France). At the date of the Norman 
Conquest and for some time after, each enjoyed a certain local prestige,
51
46 
C.E.Mallet, 
A History of the University of Oxford 
(3 vols., London, 1924–1927), I, 118. 
47 
Documents Relating to the University and Colleges of Cambridge 
(1852), II, 31. 
48
Œuvres de Froissart,
ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, II, 419. 
49 
A full account of these books is given in K.Lambley, 
The Teaching and Cultivation of the French 
Language in England
(Manchester, 1920), and G.T.Clapton and W.Stewart, 
Les Études françaises 
dans l’enseignement en Grande-Bretagne
(Paris, 1929). 
50 
See William Rothwell, “The Teaching of French in Medieval England,” 
Mod. Lang. Rev., 
63 
(1968), 37–46. 
51 
Roger Bacon notes the four dialects and says: “A fitting and intelligible expression in the dialect 
of the Picards is out of place among the Burgundians, nay, among their nearer Gallic neighbors.” 
The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon,
trans. R.B.Burke (Philadelphia, 1928), I, 75. 
A history of the english language 128

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but with the rapid rise of the Capetian power in the thirteenth century the linguistic 
supremacy of Paris followed upon its political ascendancy. The French introduced into 
England was possibly a mixture of various northern dialectal features, but with Norman 
predominating, and under the influence of English linguistic tendencies, it gradually 
developed into something quite different from any of the continental dialects. The 
difference was noticed quite early,
52
and before long the French of England drew a smile 
from continental speakers. It was the subject of humorous treatment in literature,
53
and 
English writers became apologetic. One poet says, “A false French of England I know, 
for I have not been elsewhere to acquire it; but you who have learned it elsewhere, amend 
it where there is need.”
54
The more ambitious sent their children to France to have the 
“barbarity” taken off their speech.
55
But the situation did not mend. Everybody is familiar 
with the gentle fun that Chaucer makes of the Prioress: 
And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, 
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe. 
One might well feel some hesitancy about speaking a language of which one had to be 
slightly ashamed.