Anglonorman-ized English scratchpad

[Starbeam]

Anglese
Introduction

I have been working for a while on something of an anti-Anglish; a conlang consisting of Old Norman/ Old French words used as much as possible in the open classes of English vocabulary instead of inherited Germanic ones. The working title is "Anglese". I got a fair collection of notes on a personal blog already, but I've run into a few bumps.
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Before I show most of my notes, lemme ask a few questions, and i do apologize for asking from any misconceived info:

1. Was it just a variety of Old French with slight local alterations or did it follow contemporary Middle English grammar in any instances? Was Anglonorman some creole?
2. Did any regional dialects take precedence, besides the London standard?
3. And lastly, why did many Germanic words get replaced with French ones if the societal concept didn't change?

Thanks in advance for any help on these in particular, but if there's something I'm missing as far as context, I'm all ears.

If anyone wants example words, I'll be free to give a few. I did say up top there that I have notes, but nothing too cohesive. I'm currently documenting Anglo-norman words and trying to form a base vocabulary. Last thing I should state, is that the conlang is probably more low-complexity due to it basically being a register of English or at most a creole.

[Richard W]

Anglo-Norman was a French dialect which shifted from the standard of Stratford-atte-Bow towards the standard of Paris. You can do a lot worse than read up in Wikipedia! It did turn into Law French, which degenerated to a form of Franglais. This is the opposite of what you want - the closed classes are French, not English.

The language of blazons (heraldry) is probably closer to your desire, but it seems that the closed class words were curtly changed from French to English at some point.

I'm not sure that London English was significant until quite late. If my memory is right, London seems to have changed from Kentish to East Midlands during the reign of Henry III. The poet John Gower, a companion of Geoffrey Chaucer, composed in Anglo-Norman French, Kentish-flavoured English, and Latin.

I surmise that what you desire is a style of English massively adorned with French, perchance resembling this sentence. I humbly request your pardon if it rejoices in more the semblance of the language of Rome.

Briefly, is not your conlang a natlang we command?

[Kuchigakatai]

There are whole dictionaries of Anglo-Norman, I'd like to note. Notably that one on anglo-norman.net.

Some books on Old French also include contrasts of Parisian Old French (the language of the 12th century is regularly taken as "reference") against Anglo-Norman (particularly in its earlier 12th-century form), such as Einhorn's Old French: A Concise Handbook (1974) and Pope's very old but still famous From Latin to Modern French, in part 5 (1932, 2nd edition 1952).

Some things even illuminate Middle English, like the an > aun change as in Latin grandem > grant > graunt (seen in Middle English in words like chaunge for modern change), or the use of <ea> to spell a long type of [ɛ:] sound (feare for Parisian faire < Lat. facere); or they are just of some interest, like the retention of [ẽn] distinct from [ãn] (Einhorn says that, in Parisian, prent < Lat. prehendit and avant < Lat. ab ante could rhyme, but not in Anglo-Norman). Wikipedia has other nice examples.

[Starbeam]

Anglo-Norman was a French dialect which shifted from the standard of Stratford-atte-Bow towards the standard of Paris. You can do a lot worse than read up in Wikipedia! It did turn into Law French, which degenerated to a form of Franglais. This is the opposite of what you want - the closed classes are French, not English.

The language of blazons (heraldry) is probably closer to your desire, but it seems that the closed class words were curtly changed from French to English at some point.

Thank you for catching that pitfall; I guess I'm more looking for a much more Gallicized English using the influence of Anglo-Norman rather than some revival of the French spoken in Anglo-Norman-era British Isles. In this case, how and why exactly did English displace the Germanic words, aside from the concepts being represented being changed?

I surmise that what you desire is a style of English massively adorned with French, perchance resembling this sentence. I humbly request your pardon if it rejoices in more the semblance of the language of Rome.

Briefly, is not your conlang a natlang we command?

It isn't. We still use plenty of Germanic and other non-Norman words in English. What you're doing there reminds me of Xenophon Zolotas trying to make a speech in English using Greek-derived words as much as possible, and thus being forced to reach for complex words that don't 100% fit what he was trying to say. As a side note, I am trying to aim for more weathered and common-ish French/ Norman words rather than straight-up Latin.

I'm not sure that London English was significant until quite late. If my memory is right, London seems to have changed from Kentish to East Midlands during the reign of Henry III. The poet John Gower, a companion of Geoffrey Chaucer, composed in Anglo-Norman French, Kentish-flavoured English, and Latin.

Some things even illuminate Middle English, like the an > aun change as in Latin grandem > grant > graunt (seen in Middle English in words like chaunge for modern change), or the use of <ea> to spell a long type of [ɛ:] sound (feare for Parisian faire < Lat. facere); or they are just of some interest, like the retention of [ẽn] distinct from [ãn] (Einhorn says that, in Parisian, prent < Lat. prehendit and avant < Lat. ab ante could rhyme, but not in Anglo-Norman). Wikipedia has other nice examples.

I mostly brought up pecularities in Middle English dialects to avoid accidentally reconstructing vocabulary using features that would not have likely survived or influenced Modern English. In particular, I don't think the an > aun change has been especially kept.

I'm familiar with the anglo-norman.net dictionary, actually. I'll see if i can get the reference grammars sometime, tho. Thank you both for your present help.