Page:The study of the Anglo-Norman.djvu/19

 was an Oxford man and a fellow of my own college (Exeter). Surely we could not desire a more trustworthy witness. The tradition of a homogeneous Anglo-Norman speech was still alive in 1415 when an enterprising (Oxford?) teacher produced his Dialogues Français for the benefit of young gentlemen who desired to acquire a knowledge of Parisian (?). When asked for his name, the pupil is made to answer: 'J'ai a noun Johan bon enfant, beal et sage et bien parlant engleys, fraunceys et bon normand.' 'Good' Norman still ranked as an independent language by the side of English and Parisian French. Modern scholarship, too, has greatly strengthened our case. A careful study of the vocabulary of Middle-English led Professor Behrens to the conclusion that the French words taken up by the English language before the end of the fourteenth century point, almost without exception, to a Norman origin. This view has been confirmed by recent investigations, e.g. those of J. M. Booker on The French inchoative suffix in Middle-English, and of Zachrisson on the Anglo-Norman influence on English Place-Names. For a final solution of the problem we must of course wait until Anglo-Norman has been more systematically studied; but two points at least seem fairly established: (1) That Anglo-Norman was not a jargon but an independent language, as homogeneous in character as the majority of French dialects. (2) That it