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Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 102, a medieval glossary.

In this episode, we're going to look at the interaction of English and French in the early 1200s.

As we know, English borrowed a lot of words from French during the middle English period,

but much of that borrowing occurred after the mid 1200s.

In the early 1200s, as English documents started to reappear, French loan words were still few and far between.

During this period, English and French existed side by side, but they didn't tend to invade each other's space.

For the most part, English manuscripts used English words,

but French was starting to encroach on the margins, and in the margins.

Some of the first evidence we have of the changes that were about to take place can be found in the notes and translations left behind by scribes

who were trying to manage the growing interaction of English, French, and Latin.

This is the story of medieval glosses.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglischpodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast at patreon.com slash historyofenglisch.

And as always, you can reach me by email at kevinathistoryofenglischpodcast.com.

Now this time, I want to continue looking at developments during the first half of the 1200s.

We're still in the early part of the reign of Henry III, who reigned as king for 56 years in total.

As I've noted before, this was a period in which English writing was starting to make a comeback,

but English documents were still rare.

Most manuscripts were composed in Latin, and increasingly, French was being used as an alternative.

But in England, most of the scribes spoke English as their native language,

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