AHC: Make England speak French

Would there be any way to make England speak French, considering the Plantagenets, and to have them do it even today. This only concerns England, although if you find a way to implement it in Scotland or Wales, then good for you.:D

The French can be a different dialect, as it would be impossible to make a different country speak the same type of French, but can you make it happen?
 
Would there be any way to make England speak French, considering the Plantagenets, and to have them do it even today. This only concerns England, although if you find a way to implement it in Scotland or Wales, then good for you.:D

The French can be a different dialect, as it would be impossible to make a different country speak the same type of French, but can you make it happen?
I doubt it.

Certainly the Court and the aristocracy could, with the right PoDs, (although even that might be tricky). But the general populace? I don't see it.
 
Victory in the Hundred Years war.
Wut?

Okay.

1)The French and English languages were already formed in the late middle-age. In fact, they were already formed in the XI.

2)Political conquest in the middle-ages mean nothing for language. Exemple : the gascons never stopped to speak occitan because Guyenne was part of Angevine "Empire" or English crown.

3)National consciousnees was already formed at the beggining of this war for France, and quite soon for the English one. It wouldn't be accepted as a administrative language at 100%.

4)Even if some foolish english king imposed that, how an administrative language can impose itself to the population without a decent learning system, only avaible to the masses after the industrial revolution.
 
Eh. I don't see it likely of happening. Even if the nobility decides to adopt French as the administrative language of England, it still means that the majority of the population - the peasantry will still speak English and that's what matters in the long run. Anglo-Norman, the local dialect of Old French, would need to replace Latin which was the major language of record-keeping in legal and other official documents in England during the medieval era. It would probably help for the Normans in England to maintain a solid connection with the French to achieve this but even then you might just end up with something akin to Middle English, but more influenced by French loan words.
 
On a serious note I can't see this happening, as even after the Norman Conquest English persisted. What you need is for Anglo-Saxon England not to flourish.
 
On a serious note I can't see this happening, as even after the Norman Conquest English persisted. What you need is for Anglo-Saxon England not to flourish.

The Harrying of the North looked to be an one-time thing and I don't think it would do William and the few thousand Normans much favors if they applied the same tactics to the entire Anglo-Saxon population.
 
The Harrying of the North looked to be an one-time thing and I don't think it would do William and the few thousand Normans much favors if they applied the same tactics to the entire Anglo-Saxon population.

I mean for an earlier POD - say, England remains divided.
 
No Chaucer would probably do it. He created English as a language to be taken seriously among literary and elite circles. Otherwise French could have filtered down from the aristocracy to the emerging middle class.
 
I can't speak to the veracity of this, but from my paltry understanding of English medieval society I understand that the middle class and the nobility spoke Anglo-norman for a while. This is info from Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like there's a PoD there.
 
Make England speak French.

Specifically the Anglo-Norman French dialect of the royalty and nobility becoming the native language of the country? You would need longer ties between England and Normany, as well as very extensive Norman settlement in England. After Hastings in 1066, you had many Normans settling in England and being granted extensive estates, but I'm not aware of any Norman peasants settling there.
 
I see two possibilities:

1. Early POD. Franks invade Britain instead of Gaul, so the language spoken in Britain might be known as 'French'
2. A bit later POD. England remains divided. France slowly conquers the different English kingdoms and populates it with French settlers. The English langugage will slowly die out, or at least remain to be very few spoken, just as with OTL irish or scottish gaelic
 
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