[geeks] English language [was: power (was Mr. Bill)]

[Mike Meredith]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:19:00 -0400 (EDT), Sandwich Maker wrote:
> yes they were normans - william of normandy was cousin to both harald
> of denmark and harold of england - but they spoke the french of the
> day, which was as you say rather far from modern or even renaissance
> french.

Or rather the french of the region (and it was only William the bastard
who spoke norman french). One of the reasons English came to be spoken
by the Normans in England was that the later French found their Norman
French to be rather quaint :) (it's more complex than that of course)

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
  Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ``I know, I'll use
  regular expressions.'' Now they have two problems.  -- Jamie Zawinski