Talk:Anglo-Norman literature/Archive 1

Style
The use of the pronoun 'we', as in "We will examine these works briefly, grouping them into narrative, didactic, hagiographic, lyric, satiric and dramatic literature." is bad form. This is written like a scholarly paper, not a encyclopedia article. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:35, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
 * And POV pushing (but actually I think just poor style) like "Of far greater importance". Mglovesfun (talk) 16:41, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The use of the pronoun "we" betrays the underlying source of most of this article in the 1911 Britannica, so it does have the flavour of a 100-year-old encyclopaedia article. Could do with some modernising of style. Man vyi (talk) 16:58, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Life of St Edward the Confessor by Matthew Paris
Is this the one mentioned in the Hagiography section? http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-EE-00003-00059 - Which is held at Cambridge University Library and has been fully digitised. Irisbox (talk) 13:46, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

To a French speaker, this is standard French!
I just would like to mention that the following sentences:

"le plus bel et le plus gracious language et plus noble parler, apres latin d'escole, qui soit au monde et de touz genz mieulx prisée et amée que nul autre (quar Dieux le fist si douce et amiable principalement à l'oneur et loenge de luy mesmes. Et pour ce il peut comparer au parler des angels du ciel, pour la grand doulceur et biaultée d'icel)"

are 100% intelliglble by any Frenchman without any effort whatsoever. The only peculiarities are the spelling variations which were commonplace in French, actually until the 18th century. To illustrate this, here is the modern French version:

"le plus bel et le plus gracieux langage et plus noble parler, après le latin d'école, qui soit au monde et de tous gens mieux prisée et aimée que nul autre (car Dieu le fit si doux et aimable principalement à l'honneur et louange de lui-même. Et pour ce il peut comparer au parler des anges du ciel, pour la grande douceur et beauté de celui-ci)"

The only word that has changed is "icel", or "icelui", which means "celui-ci" in Old French.

Anglo-norman cannot be considered a language on its own but rather a local variety of French, but of course the subjects of her Majesty just cannot accept that their coat of arms, protocol language is French!