Abstract

In studying language history it is not often that we can pinpoint linguistic change, but it is only a slight exaggeration to say that from nightfall on October 14, 1066, the ruling class of England effectively ceased to be an English-speaking one. Yet by the end of the fourteenth century, the descendants of the Anglo-Norman conquerors were speaking English. Precisely when the Anglo-Normans began to acquire English and how they came to do so is not known