This article introduces the nonmedievalist reader to the multilingual landscape of England 700-1400. Building on recent work exploring in particular the relationships among English, French, and Latin in medieval England, it discusses a series of "multilingual moments" from a range of sources, including letters, poems, travel writings,…

This article synthesises progress made in the description of spoken (especially conversational) grammar over the 20 years since the authors published a paper in this journal arguing for a re-thinking of grammatical description and pedagogy based on spoken corpus evidence. We begin with a glance back at the 16th century and the teaching of Latin…

In the multilingual history of England, the period following the Norman Conquest in 1066 is a particularly intriguing phase, but its code-switching patterns have so far received little attention. The present article describes and analyses the multilingual practices evinced in London, British Library, MS Stowe 34, containing one instructional prose…