Francophone majority in England?

Hey Guys,

I know a topic like this was made the other day, but I thought I'd make a slightly different one. How could you make England after 1066 become a predominantly Francophone nation say through French settlers, where would they go and how could you generally manage a majority of francophones in England?
 
Hey Guys,

I know a topic like this was made the other day, but I thought I'd make a slightly different one. How could you make England after 1066 become a predominantly Francophone nation say through French settlers, where would they go and how could you generally manage a majority of francophones in England?
Somehow Scotland owns all of old Northumbria and then some, Wales is twice as big, all the Normans are squeezed into a much smaller country, have more immigration (?because???)....

Don't see it happening. Don't suppose it's quite to ASB level, but I don't really see a viable way.
 
Nothing short of out-Anglo-Saxoning the Anglo Saxons and force them to culturally assimilate to a French based yet somewhat English influenced Romance language.
 
Francophone

There would have to have been a very great incentive for English speakers to learn French. Greek replaced the native languages of Anatolia in a similar fashion. The government would have to establish schools to teach French. The entire process would have lasted perhaps a century or more, but it was entirely feasible.
 
There would have to have been a very great incentive for English speakers to learn French. Greek replaced the native languages of Anatolia in a similar fashion. The government would have to establish schools to teach French. The entire process would have lasted perhaps a century or more, but it was entirely feasible.

Except that schools to "teach the English peasants" are totally out of character and would cost an extortionate amount in an era when the government paid for little. Also, to your Greek scenario, Greek-speaking territories had a land connection to Anatolia, which is why the language was able to spread. French does not have a land connection to England.

The only way this could happen is with a pseudo-Saxon migration event of Frenchmen coming to England, but good luck finding a justification and the numbers of French required to make this work...
 
Francophone England

Interesting points..I've always wondered why Persian did'nt die out after the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Yet Coptic died out in Egypt after the Arab conquest there, but Egypt was far more densely populated than Persia..
 
Rather a cop out, but English could have become even more Francified than IOTL if, for example, the Plantagenets conquer France and the union holds.
 
Umm until recently (meaning turn of the 20th century) wasn't french the language of culture and diplomacy in Europe so in short to be someone you had to speak and know French? So in a sense the whole of Europe was Francophone until the rise of English and America after WW2. To this day French is the official language of most countries in Africa and is much more international than even English or Spanish (although Spanish is trying very hard)


I understand that Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people but not in more countries.
 
Umm until recently (meaning turn of the 20th century) wasn't french the language of culture and diplomacy in Europe so in short to be someone you had to speak and know French? So in a sense the whole of Europe was Francophone until the rise of English and America after WW2.

The vast majority of people have, until recently, been quite cut of from what is known as "culture and diplomacy", in Britain as in any other country.

In any case, the shift actually started earlier (at the Congress of Berlin, when we insisted on haranguing everybody in English).
 
Interesting points..I've always wondered why Persian did'nt die out after the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Yet Coptic died out in Egypt after the Arab conquest there, but Egypt was far more densely populated than Persia..

Well Coptic didn't die out immediately (I admit that I had to look this up), that process took almost a millenium from the 7th to the 17th centrury (AD).
 

Hendryk

Banned
French does not have a land connection to England.
England does not have a land connection to Ireland, and yet...

It's usually considered that this would be the long-term paradoxical outcome of an English victory in the Hundred Years War, but there are certainly other possibilities as well.
 
England does not have a land connection to Ireland, and yet...

It's usually considered that this would be the long-term paradoxical outcome of an English victory in the Hundred Years War, but there are certainly other possibilities as well.

No, but Ireland a number of factors which a France-England connection wouldn't - probably most notably the way that in the 19th century and before and after much of the Irish elite, while perhaps patriotic towards Ireland, still attempted to Anglicise themselves to integrate better and "fit in" with English high society, and gradually this filtered down lower through the Irish classes. Also, there may well have been substantial cases of English or English-speaking landlords forcing their tenants to speak English and adopt English customs, especially in the 19th century, though I'm not 100% on that. Compared to England and France, England was just too big a place to allow itself to fall in a circle of cultural enslavement by France - the nobility may have spoken French and there may have been much intermarrying between nationalities but I just can't see a situation where the English middle classes are desperate to portray themselves as French so as to feel part of the "true" elite. Such a circumstance would require England to be seen as a dirty backwater province, and I just can't see England ever being that subservient to France. At worst, England is always going to be a competitor to France in economic and social influence, and that precludes any chance of England wanting to prostitute itself to French culture.
 
The vast majority of people have, until recently, been quite cut of from what is known as "culture and diplomacy", in Britain as in any other country.

In any case, the shift actually started earlier (at the Congress of Berlin, when we insisted on haranguing everybody in English).


I totally agree with that, but if you wanted to be considered cultured or an effective merchant you needed to know an international (europe) language than French was it. This was something that if you were a 17th century trader and left Vienna to trade in England they might not know German but they would likely know french. My point is that the language of Culture and trade was French and yes most people didn't speak but anyone who was anyone or wanted to anyone spoke it.

Can't say I knew that about the Congress of Vienna neat:)
 
I totally agree with that, but if you wanted to be considered cultured or an effective merchant you needed to know an international (europe) language than French was it. This was something that if you were a 17th century trader and left Vienna to trade in England they might not know German but they would likely know french. My point is that the language of Culture and trade was French and yes most people didn't speak but anyone who was anyone or wanted to anyone spoke it.

I'm actually not sure about that. I think rather if you were a 17th century Austrian naval trader you would arrive in London and go straight to the German quarter in town, where someone there would direct you to a bilingual middleman.
 
I totally agree with that, but if you wanted to be considered cultured or an effective merchant you needed to know an international (europe) language than French was it. This was something that if you were a 17th century trader and left Vienna to trade in England they might not know German but they would likely know french. My point is that the language of Culture and trade was French and yes most people didn't speak but anyone who was anyone or wanted to anyone spoke it.

I understand; I'm just hesitant to call that situation Francophone.

Can't say I knew that about the Congress of Vienna neat:)

Not Vienna, Berlin, in 1878. Bismarck still did a lot of his diplomacy in French, but Disraeli, being the arch-showman presiding over Britain near the pinnacle of Top Nationdom, obviously had to be contrary.

At Vienna, things were still French, although the parties sometimes communicated among themselves in their own languages; and the British in particular got a reputation for being presumptive, arrogant, and provincial. Also excessively exuberant, loud, and crass, and even a tad raunchy. Ah, the times change. :D
 
I would just like to make two points:

1) Th ruling dynasty of England spoke French for 300 years

2) Ireland is currently an Anglophone nation

If England is kept in the French sphere, it could be a French Ireland:though English is kept around as a relic of the past, French could be the main language in England.
 
I would just like to make two points:

1) Th ruling dynasty of England spoke French for 300 years

2) Ireland is currently an Anglophone nation

If England is kept in the French sphere, it could be a French Ireland:though English is kept around as a relic of the past, French could be the main language in England.

Or TTL England could resemble OTL Belgium, with an Anglophone majority, but with a large Francophone minority (at some point also a Francophone 'Anglophone elite') which used to rule the country.
 
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