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August 7

Primary language of Capetian Angevins in Naples, Hungary and Poland?

What was the primary language of the Capetian Angevin kings and queens of Naples, Hungary and Poland? The dynasty originated from France, as a cadet branch of the French royal house. They held on to their ancestral fiefs in Provence long after their ancestor, Charles I of Naples, moved his base to southern Italy. This would suggest Old French, but is it likely that the vernaculars of the countries they ruled did not override their French past throughout the generations?

For example, did King Robert of Naples, a grandson of Charles I, primarily speak a French or an Italian dialect? Did his granddaughter and successor, whom we call Joanna I, think of herself more as Jeanne or as Giovanna? Did Charles Robert, a great-grandson of Charles I who moved from Naples to Hungary at age 12, speak French or some form of Italian or Hungarian as his first language? What about his son, Louis I of Hungary, who lived his whole life in Hungary but was apparently captivated by Naples? Finally, what was the primary language of the last rulers from this dynasty, Ladislaus of Naples and his sister Joanna II of Naples and Mary of Hungary and her sister Hedwig of Poland, who were all five generations removed from the Paris-born Charles I of Naples?

It might be interesting to note that William the Conqueror's successors held on to Norman French for many generations, but they did not really branch out as much as the Capetian Angevins.

Pinging Borsoka for input regarding the Angevins in Hungary. Surtsicna (talk) 09:29, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I do not know. What is sure that only a small retinue accompanied Charles Robert to Hungary, consequently it is almost impossible that he could frequently speak Italian or French after his 12th birthday. His grandmother was a Hungarian princess and he was destined to rule Hungary, so I assume that he could speak Hungarian. We also know that his son, Andrew, was mocked in the court of Joan I of Naples because he preferred to stay with his Hungarian nanny and court priest. Decades later, Sigismund of Luxemburg came to Buda to learn Hungarian after his engagement to Mary of Hungary, which suggests that most courtiers spoke Hungarian at the royal court of her father, Louis the Great. Borsoka (talk) 09:51, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Educated rulers in medieval Europe were expected to be multi-lingual - including having a knowledge of Latin which served as a lingua franca across much of the continent. Wymspen (talk) 10:08, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess that members of any royal family tended to learn the language of the country where they actually lived (plus Latin, as Wymspen noted), not where they ancestors hailed from. Hedwig, for example, was born in Buda, but spend most of her childhood in Vienna, so German and Latin were her primary languages. When she came to Poland, she had to start learning Polish. I believe this is what the trilingual (Latin-German-Polish) Sankt Florian Psalter was commissioned for – it was meant as a medieval version of a language learning aid. — Kpalion^(talk) 11:09, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It wouldn't be a good guess. Henry of Poland hardly learned a word of Polish. For most of the first 200 years after the Conquest, English Kings barely spoke any English, if at all. Likewise, the first two Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, George I and George II did not speak English as a first language; George I learned a bit of it to "get by" while George II acquired fluency as a young adult. As noted in both articles, French was used as the primary court language, while George I's native language was German. It often took a few generations for Kings to become native in their local vernacular, and French was the primary language of Western European court life in many (if not most) royal courts, even becoming the fashion in Russia following the reign of Catherine the Great, who was a German princess raised to speak French as a first language (see Francophile#Russia). --Jayron 32 11:40, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's a difference between conquering a country as the Normans did and being invited to rule like the Hanoverians. The Normans spoke their language wherever they went (England, Sicily, the crusader states) because why would they adopt the language of the people they conquered? But that is what they did when they were Vikings and they conquered Normandy and adopted French! So, as always, there is no single answer and it depends on the time and place and other circumstances. I am also reminded of the saying attributed to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse." Adam Bishop (talk) 12:48, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Charles spoke all of those languages, though his childhood language was Dutch and his royal court spoke French, though he was required to speak Castillian Spanish when in the Cortes Generales (Spanish parliament). --Jayron 32 14:03, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That would suggest that the Capetian Angevins also retained their French language, as they were conquerors of Sicily too. But that brings another question: did all Sicilian Hautevilles primarily speak Norman French? Up to Tancred? His name does not really sound Norman, for what that's worth. Surtsicna (talk) 13:05, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tancred is a Germanic name, so it could have easily been a "Norse" name as the Nordic languages all belong to the North Germanic languages. As you can see here the name appears in English and Norse contexts as both a surname and a forename. --Jayron 32 13:59, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron32, I should have added "in childhood". Obviously, the ability and willingness to learn new languages in adult age varies from person to person. As for Henry, he grew up in France, so his first language was French. He spent only a year in Poland, hated every moment of it and scurried back to France at the first opportunity, never to return to Poland; I don't think he ever had much motivation to learn Polish. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:00, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) "Charles II and Robert were dealing with a number of cultural factions in southern Italy. The court elite, many of whom were imported nobility, were French- and Provencal- speaking, although Latin was the language of the church and even Robert's own sermons; the upper-class merchants and bankers were often Tuscan: and the local nobility were southern Italian. Charles II and Robert needed to create an atmosphere in which their varied subjects could unite". Art and Architecture in Naples, 1266-1713: New Approaches edited by Cordelia Warr, Janis Elliott (p. 53). Alansplodge (talk) 13:11, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I should point out that I am asking about the primary language - the language that Capetian Angevins used in everyday communication to their family and other close people. My gut did tell me that in Hungary they probably spoke Hungarian, but I am completely clueless about the seven Angevins monarchs of Naples (spanning three centuries). And what about the Angevins in Achaea? Surtsicna (talk) 13:03, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Surtsicna -- I can't directly answer the question, but the main administrative or record-keeping language of the kingdom of Hungary was Latin down to at least the 18th century. AnonMoos (talk) 17:47, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

However, the Diets were held in Hungarian for centuries, thus the German burghers of Pressburg could not always understand the debates. (Bak, János M. (1993). "Linguistic pluralism" in Medieval Hungary. In: The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Memory of Denis L. T. Bethel (Edited by Marc A. Meyer); The Hambledon Press; ISBN 1-85285-064-7) Taking into account that many Hungarian monarchs married princesses from the neighboring Slavic countries (and the Hungarian monarchs had also a significant number of Slavic speaking subjects), we can assume that most of them could also speak at least one Slavic language (Polish, Czech, Croatian...). Even if Latin was the main language of administration, it is quite for sure that it was not a vernacular, frequently spoken in the royal court. Borsoka (talk) 13:40, 8 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

However, when Stephen Bathory, a Hungarian from Transylvania, became king of Poland, he communicated with his subjects in Latin. He never learned more than a few words in Polish. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:43, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One thing to consider is that French was a high-status language dating back to the 9th century, when the Merovingian and Carolingian Franks adopted the local vernacular Latin (now known as Old French). The earliest government document written in French is the Oaths of Strasbourg, dating to the late 9th century. It really is just French that becomes the dominant force in language changes: The Normans adopt a form of French when the move into France, but then they retain this language when the conquer elsewhere. Throughout history, royal courts assume French as the main language of the court, and French becomes the main language of diplomacy and international business, etc. etc. Even in the Eastern Mediterranean, the language of the courts of the Frankokratia and Crusader States was Old French. As noted above, French was a courtly language in the HRE, in Russia, in England, and other places all over Europe at various times. No other single language was so pervasive. --Jayron 32 14:27, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing to remember is that in the Middle Ages, all the Romance languages were still kind of intelligible, both in spoken and written forms. Off the top of my head I can give my own anecdotal experience that medieval French, Occitan, Catalan, Tuscan, and Venetian are not really all that different, and they are all quite a lot easier if you also know Latin. Since everyone with an education back then knew Latin, and their vernacular languages hadn't diverged as much as they have today, members of a French dynasty could probably speak easily enough to their Italian subjects, without either side thinking that they were speaking a totally different language. I know there is academic work on this subject and I will try to find some references (it's a bit difficult to search for since "medieval Romance" is also a kind of literature...) Adam Bishop (talk) 19:23, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One relevant author here is Roger Wright (University of Liverpool). Specifically, "Early Medieval Pan-Romance Comprehension", in J. J. Contreni & S. Casciani (editors) Word, Image, Number: communication in the Middle Ages (Vol. 8, pp. 23-40). Firenze: Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2002. (But I wasn't able to access the full text). ---Sluzzelin talk 20:03, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Naples: [1] says Robert "rarely communicated in anything but Latin or Provencal". [2] says French was required of courtiers in Naples.

Hungary: [3] basically says we do not know what languages were spoken in the Hungarian court in the medieval period. No one thought to record this information.

Jadwiga of Poland says of her in 1386, "Jadwiga and her husband did not speak a common language, but they cooperated closely in their marriage." 70.67.222.124 (talk) 03:11, 8 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I just wrote up an article on the Order of the Ship. When Charles III of Naples founded an order of knighthood shortly after his coronation in 1381, its statutes were drawn up in Middle French. He had no direct connection to France, having been born in Naples and being destined to die in Hungary. I'd say that's strong evidence that French was the language of the Angevin court in Naples at a late date. Srnec (talk) 02:56, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Population without double counting

When calculating population without double counting, how does the French census decide where to count the individuals in question? For example, if you're a student from Lyon and you're studying in Marseille, do you get reflected in the PWDC counts for Lyon or Marseille, and how is the answer ascertained? Nyttend (talk) 23:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This pdf from INSEE (found in the INSEE FAQ) shows the form people fill out - you are counted where you are studying and you are supposed to tell them your home commune as well. The pdf text notes that errors are introduced when people don't fill out the form correctly. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 03:29, 8 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As I interpret the Wikipedia article, you are counted in the "municipale" population of at most one commune. If you are in the "municipale" of commune A and also in the "comptée à part" population of communes B and C, you will be in the "without double counting" population of A but not of B and C. This still leaves unaswered the (probably very rare) case of someone counted in 2 or more "comptée à part" populations and no "municipale" population. It's also not clear whether or how foreign tourists are counted. I would encourage anyone with answers to these questions to update the article with their sources. jnestorius^(talk) 12:12, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]