…while the Normans used their native French as the language of the court and of literature, English became the language of England’s common, conquered people. Compare English words that come from that time \u201d\u201d “fire,” “work,” “strong,” “heart” \u201d\u201d to French words from that era: “glory,” “cordial,” “fortune,” “guile” and “sacred.” As McCrum explains, English disappeared from the written record, but survived “underground on the lips of ordinary people.” As a result, the language became democratized very early on.<\/p>\n
That democratic character, according to McCrum, is partially responsible for English’s eventual global domination. While French imperialists forcefully imposed their own language on foreign countries in a “top-down” manner, English imperialists took a “bottom-up” approach. English would not be “imposed from above by the government” in the colonies, says McCrum. Instead, “the troops would arrive, and the language would flow again from the ordinary people.”<\/p>\n
It sounds nice and democratic, but McCrum isn’t arguing that British Empire was a “benign” or “culturally beneficial” influence. “Clearly, the British Empire has much to answer for,” he says. “But at the level of language, the way in which it operated was very effective from the point of spreading English.”<\/p>\n