Re: Roumán Part II - Nouns,Adjectives,and Pronouns

At 10:53 pm +0100 29/11/00, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à John Cowan <jcowan@...>:
>
>>
>> In English law the term "cestui que trust" ["sEtEki'trVst] survives,
>> meaning "the person for whose benefit a legal trust has been created".
>>
>
>Oh yeah, it's true that the Anglo-Normand dialect of French was for a long
>time
>the language of the upper classes in England.
Not only that - it was the only _official_ language in England (and those
parts of Wales that the Normans could get their hands on) for several
centuries.  So the poor peasant brought up before the courts was tried in
AngloNorman, a language he had little or no knowledge of - a slight
disadvantage, but then, I guess, the Normans considered it pretty
irrelevant as Saxons were most likely guilty anyway  :)

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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