What language did the Normans speak when they conquered Sicily, Antioch and Britain?

[Dick]

I made a video about that a few years ago... see 3:40 in the video for the information about the language the aristocratic ruling elite Normans spoke when they conquered England and took over the ruling and middle classes, especially in the south of England.

Their language influenced the Middle English vocabulary which has over 15,000 words of French origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._French_origin

There was a linguistic class division in England for a while with the elites speaking in French and the commoners speaking in cruder Anglo Saxon dialects in certain regions, until the two languages merged together into Middle English.

Great video. You're very talented.

[Melki]

To be fair with Ilma, I'm glad to see that young people are so dedicated to preserve our endangered regional heritage. I thought Norman was a dialect on the brink of extinction, spoken only by a handful of elders. Thanks to people like Ilma, I know Norman will never die out.

Unlike the 7 languages spoken by recognized ethnic minorities (Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Creole, Corsican and Occitan): the Norman dialect is not taught at school. Breton kids can be taught (entirely or predominantly) in Breton in the Diwan schools, Basque in the Seaskas (French Basque ikastolak), Occitan in the Calandreta and Catalan in the Bressola schools in Northern Catalonia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwan_(school)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikastola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Bressola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calandreta

As far as I know, no school in France teaches Norman. And no self-learning method in Norman is commercially available. The survival of this dialect in France and in the Channel Islands depends entirely on people like Ilma.

[Ilma]

To be fair with Ilma, I'm glad to see that young people are so dedicated to preserve our endangered regional heritage. I thought Norman was a dialect on the brink of extinction, spoken only by a handful of elders. Thanks to people like Ilma, I know Norman will never die out.

Unlike the 7 languages spoken by recognized ethnic minorities (Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Creole, Corsican and Occitan): the Norman dialect is not taught at school. Breton kids can be taught (entirely or predominantly) in Breton in the Diwan schools, Basque in the Seaskas (French Basque ikastolak), Occitan in the Calandreta and Catalan in the Bressola schools in Northern Catalonia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwan_(school)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikastola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Bressola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calandreta

As far as I know, no school in France teaches Norman. And no self-learning method in Norman is commercially available. The survival of this dialect in France and in the Channel Islands depends entirely on people like Ilma.

This is true, we are only 3,4 Millions of Normands and unfortunately only around 150 000 speakers. The Republic school did work well on the extinction of the language and identity. Since early 20th century Normans must go to Republic school and learn french language. They were taught french by teachers telling them "You don't have a language, you just do not speak good french. You're going to learn true french" and this belief makes it disappear, little by little, because children grew up with the idea they should be ashamed of their native language and have to learn french to be integrated by society and get good jobs later.

For decades Norman language has been left as "non good french" and correlated to the idea only peasant would speak it. If you wanna get good jobs in town, make money, have a career, you had to let your identity and language behind to become a "real french citizen" in order to enter the society, administrations and businesses. This is the plague of my parents generation, the holy 70, 80, 90's.

Today Norman language is coming back thanks to youth wanting to find back their roots and identity. I heard about some project to open schools where Norman language will be taught but it is hard to develop. Now Normandy is reunited since 2016 this might occurs. I admit bretons are better than us to protect their roots, our proximity with Paris does not help us at all to protect ourselves enough.

So, when I read people pissing on Norman heritage, telling Norman language is "just french" and Norman people "just french people" I just want to put them all in a big bonfire because they just tend to continue the assassinate of Norman heritage, again and again.

The funnier part in this kind of behavior from french people is that they actually don't admit that Normandy does not need France but actually France needs Normandy. On many matters such as economy, tourism, food production (we produce everything enough to feed ourselves and feed 2/3 of France : milk, cereals, meat, fish, vegetables, cheese, drinks etc), petrol production (we have the raffinery feeding all Northern part of France in gasoil / oil for cars), electriticy production (we feed northern France with our nuclear central, the biggest of France), etc... We just control the Seine river where all the imports come to Paris. They need us totally and they would not accept to pay us taxes to have those benefits.

At least they don't accept this they should seriously respect us for what we are producing for them or tommorow they can expect to be punished of non having oil anymore as we did it last year. Paris without oil, poor them, they panicked so much. They learnt Normandy was feeding them, oh.

Now I hope everything is clear. I will never let anyone spread lies and bullshit on Normandy or try to grasp himself as french to say our great land is french to feel better. Normandy is Normandy and Norman language is recognized by UNESCO to be in danger now. Don't try to kill it more, try to recognize it's legit and respect us, that's it.

[Melki]

This is true, we are only 3,4 Millions of Normands and unfortunately only around 150 000 speakers. The Republic school did work well on the extinction of the language and identity. Since early 20th century Normans must go to Republic school and learn french language. They were taught french by teachers telling them "You don't have a language, you just do not speak good french. You're going to learn true french" and this belief makes it disappear, little by little, because children grew up with the idea they should be ashamed of their native language and have to learn french to be integrated by society and get good jobs later.

For decades Norman language has been left as "non good french" and correlated to the idea only peasant would speak it. If you wanna get good jobs in town, make money, have a career, you had to let your identity and language behind to become a "real french citizen" in order to enter the society, administrations and businesses. This is the plague of my parents generation, the holy 70, 80, 90's.

Today Norman language is coming back thanks to youth wanting to find back their roots and identity. I heard about some project to open schools where Norman language will be taught but it is hard to develop. Now Normandy is reunited since 2016 this might occurs. I admit bretons are better than us to protect their roots, our proximity with Paris does not help us at all to protect ourselves enough.

So, when I read people pissing on Norman heritage, telling Norman language is "just french" and Norman people "just french people" I just want to put them all in a big bonfire because they just tend to continue the assassinate of Norman heritage, again and again.

The funnier part in this kind of behavior from french people is that they actually don't admit that Normandy does not need France but actually France needs Normandy. On many matters such as economy, tourism, food production (we produce everything enough to feed ourselves and feed 2/3 of France : milk, cereals, meat, fish, vegetables, cheese, drinks etc), petrol production (we have the raffinery feeding all Northern part of France in gasoil / oil for cars), electriticy production (we feed northern France with our nuclear central, the biggest of France), etc... We just control the Seine river where all the imports come to Paris. They need us totally and they would not accept to pay us taxes to have those benefits.

At least they don't accept this they should seriously respect us for what we are producing for them or tommorow they can expect to be punished of non having oil anymore as we did it last year. Paris without oil, poor them, they panicked so much. They learnt Normandy was feeding them, oh.

Now I hope everything is clear. I will never let anyone spread lies and bullshit on Normandy or try to grasp himself as french to say our great land is french to feel better. Normandy is Normandy and Norman language is recognized by UNESCO to be in danger now. Don't try to kill it more, try to recognize it's legit and respect us, that's it.

You can have a double identity: French and Norman. There are other theatened langues d'oil in France and Belgium. A few of them have a future thanks to a strong regional identity and self-awareness: Picard and its derived Ch'ti, Walloon and to a lesser extent, Gallo. But all the others seem to be doomed to extinction in a near future, because like Norman, they used to be considered as corrupted variants of French, and also because the regions where they are spoken lack a true core identity due of the growing influence of Paris and its periphery (Tourangeau, Angevin, Poitevin, Saintongeois, Berrichon, Bourguignon, Champenois, Lorrain...).
The future is more bright in the southern half of France where the various dialects of Occitan are still commonly spoken (In the Midi, Paris is far away).