English and Galician in the Middle Ages - Publicaciones ...

Revista Estudios Ingleses 17 (2004)
the necessary confi dence in the vernacular for it to be spoken
and cultivated with no sign of stigmatisation. Englishmen were
always proud of their tongue (note 11) when fi ghting against
the French adversary.
The combination of different social forces made English
emerge. This may be inferred from its use for legal or administrative
purposes (increasing use in private and offi cial
documents, petitions, deeds, wills...) (note 12) and in private
correspondence. At the same time, the appearance of manuals
to teach the French language is symptomatic of the nonnative
character of this tongue (Kibbee, 1991; Rothwell, 1993;
Crespo, 1996, 2000). This emergence of the native tongue
crystallised in the development of Chancery English, the
language of the national bureaucratic system considered by
some scholars as a decisive step in the normalisation process
of English and its future expansion.
In Galicia the political pressure imposed by Castile on local
government and administrative affairs turned Castilian into
the area’s language of prestige. When the efforts of an incipient
bourgeoisie were fi nally overcome, all hope of recovering
the vernacular died away. On the whole, the most outstanding
characteristic of Galician from the Middle Ages until the
20 th century is that of being regarded as an unlearned and
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