Category talk:Anglo-Norman language

Language or dialect?

 * See also: Wiktionary talk:About Old French

I don't really know why Anglo-Norman has its own ISO code, I was taught that it's one of the major dialects of Old French. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:08, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Me neither. All I know is that some references make the distinction and thence we inherit it. Also some entries have "Old North French" (lang=?), "Middle French" (lang=frm), and "Frankish" (lang=?). Resolving Old North French into fro, xno, or whatever would be useful if you can figure that out at some point. Similar with Frankish. They may not be "resolvable", but perhaps could be supplemented by additional etymology using languages with ISO codes. DCDuring TALK 13:20, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know what Old Northern French is, but Middle French is a separate language (frm) and Frankish (frk) even more so as it's a Germanic language brought in by the tribes invading France during Roman rule. I'm not actually sure it's well enough attested to have entries here, a bit like Transalpine/Cisalpine Gaulish, which have ISO codes but aren't really recorded in writing. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:55, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The preceeding was from Grease pit, Mglovesfun (talk) 19:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia says it's a dialect of Old French but has its own ISO 639-3 code. Maybe comparable to Arabic, as we have Category:Arabic language but also various 'dialects' like Category:Egyptian Arabic language and Category:Moroccan Arabic language. Makes you think, because we don't have a lot of Old French/Anglo-Norman entries. I've heard of Old Picard, but thankfully that doesn't have an ISO 639-3 code. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * As you know, the difference between "language" and "dialect" is a pretty arbitrary one. In this case there are good reasons for treating it separately: it had a very distinct influence on English, in which the difference between AN and OF are important. And also, consider that AN outlasted OF and was contemporaneous with early MF; that's why so many English words are derived from "Anglo-Norman x and Middle French y". < class="latinx">Ƿidsiþ 10:26, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Linguistic List is fairly unhelpful, it gives the same time period as for Old French but says that Old French was spoken in France and Belgium (or just France, Belgium wasn't a country back then) and Anglo-Norman was spoken in England. That seems overly simplistic, did the Old French language just transform into Anglo-Norman the day that the Normans set foot in England? On the positive side a lot of entries listed as Old French could easy be listed as both. On the downside, it might theoretically means reclassifying words like dulur a Anglo-Norman but not Old French. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:54, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Evidence of Old French and Anglo-Norman being the same language
There has been a discussion on my talk page of merging Anglo-Norman and Old French. I wouldn't want to propose this lightly, so I want to try and collect evidence on this page. For example when I say the difference is Geographic rather than, this is based on http://multitree.org/codes/fro.html and http://multitree.org/codes/xno.html. It was actually based on a previous website that I made the initial remark but that website seems not to contain the same information anymore. In the two links above, 'fro' is used in France but not in England, and 'xno' is used in England but not in France. Since there are no hard and fast difference between Old French and Anglo-Norman with respect to vocabulary, grammar and spelling, the only tangible difference is geography. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:07, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Here's one suggesting that Anglo-Norman is a dialect not a language: "ANGLO-NORMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. The term "Anglo-Norman" designates the French dialect written and spoken in the British Isles between *William I's conquest in 1066 and the early 15th century." (Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Vol. 1. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:47, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English page 26-27 says it started off as just French but "developed separately from European French". Mglovesfun (talk) 13:50, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
 * History of the English language says that Anglo-Norman "agrees in its most characteristic features with the dialects of northern France and especially with that of Normandy". Mglovesfun (talk) 13:54, 30 December 2012 (UTC)