Revision of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (I-M)

Anglo-Norman is the form of French used in the British Isles as a direct result of the Norman Conquest: at first as a spoken language of the incoming Norman nobility, later as a written language in literature, records, administrative and trade documents, the law, diplomacy, and science, in parallel with medieval Latin. For nearly two hundred years after the Conquest, English - the vehicle of a thriving vernacular literature before 1066 - largely disappears from sight, continuing to be the spoken language of the vast majority, but no longer of sufficient prestige to be consigned to writing. That role was passed to Anglo-Norman, which enjoyed the additional - but massive - advantage of also being the language of the foremost political and cultural power in western Europe, France, whose linguistic and literary influence extended as far south as Spain and Italy and as far north and east as Scandinavia and Germany. Anglo-Norman was thus a means for England to be linked to the Continent, to trade with it, and to be part of medieval European culture. Intermarriage and rapid merger with the indigenous population meant that the Anglo-Normans and the English (and their languages) were from an early date in constant contact, and it is from this period that the major incursion of Romance vocabulary into medieval English dates. In time, the languages would merge, to produce the hybrid which was to become modern English. Without Anglo-Norman, English institutions such as Parliament (whose records were written in the language for hundreds of years), the law (which even now is substantially Anglo-Norman in its lexis), place-names and personal names, and perhaps as much as 50% of everyday vocabulary, would be short of many words. Anglo-Norman blended seamlessly into English, and to that extent it is not a 'foreign' language, but one of the constituent parts of the English language.

The Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND) is the only serious attempt to present in its entirety the vocabulary of this form of French from which so much of modern English derives, and as such, it is a fundamental scholarly resource for the history of English, as well as of French, and of medieval society.

The first edition of the AND dates back to 1947: at first conceived as an expanded glossary of predominantly literary texts, it became, under the editorship of Professor William Rothwell, increasingly a real dictionary, notably when in the mid-1980s a major new source of lexicographical data (in the form of a collection of material assembled by Professor J.P. Collas) became available. Thus the later fascicles of the first edition are much richer than the earlier ones. The AND is now regarded as an authority by the major dictionaries in Britain and abroad, and A-E of the second edition of the AND has been described by Max Pfister as 'the most significant achievement in Gallo-Romance lexicography since the completion of TL (2002) and of the FEW (2003)'.

It is (in part) to take account of the new materials that the revision was initiated in 1989 or so. Thus far, A-E is available in print (and also online at www.anglo-norman.net). F and G are online, and H is well under way. The new edition is between three and four times the size of the old one: considerable quantities of new material have been taken into account; and the range of registers and types of document has been vastly expanded so that the revised AND can claim to offer a genuinely panoramic coverage of the language.

We now intend to embark on the next stage, a similarly comprehensive revision of I-M. Alongside the rewriting of the entries, the project will further develop its standards-based technology, which helps the editors ensure formal consistency across all entries while making their work immediately and easily accessible to users worldwide. The project is well-established, with trained and experienced researchers, and a proven, efficent, robust online delivery system.