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The Linguistic Situation of
Triglossia |
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Three languages performed different social functions
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English was a 'low-level' language
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French and Latin were used for different 'high-level'
purposes
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To educated English people English would have been their
mother tongue
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They would have learned Latin as the required language of
the Church, the Roman Classics, most scholarship, and some
politico-legal matters
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They would have found French essential both for routine
administrative communication within Britain and in order to
be considered fashionable throughout Western European
society
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Eventually England would become a diglossic
community, as French died out, with Latin maintained as the
medium of education and the Church and English as the
everyday language
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Later still, the country would become monoglossic –
or monolingual, after English had been equipped with the
linguistic resources to perform the functions of Latin and
French
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