ABSTRACT
Knowledge of the two highest languages, Hebrew and Greek, was extremely restricted before the Conquest. The monk Byrhtferth was able, following Bede, to explain in his Enchiridion (c. 1010) a play upon four Hebrew words in Isaiah; and the same writer also gives the names of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, set out in parallel with the letters of Latin and Greek. So far as surviving textual sources are concerned, discussion of the languages of pre-Conquest England could be largely confined to English and Latin. Knowledge of the other linguae sacrae, Greek and Hebrew, amounted to very little, and the Scandinavian languages spoken in the Danelaw and the north-west of England left behind very few written memorials. During the twelfth century, indeed, Latin enjoyed a textual dominance unchallenged by either of the vernaculars. The survival of French in England would hardly, in fact, have seemed precarious to a contemporary.
