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Showing posts from October, 2016

Word of the month: Some Italianisms in the Port Books of Southampton

A map of medieval Southampton based on the  Terrier  of 1454: http://3dvisa.cch.kcl.ac.uk/paper_jones.html My previous AND blog [ July 2016 ] on luxury fabric colours introduced the study of Anglo-Norman / Italian language contact, an area which has been largely overlooked by academics so far. [1] Tuscans, Genoese and Venetians played a crucial role in the economy of late medieval England and Italian merchants and bankers could be found in many social niches. They dominated the textile and wool markets, they were the main importers of sugar and spices, they acted as personal money-lenders to the King and ran the Royal Mints, they worked closely with the London Guilds (such as the Worshipful Company of Grocers) and they were the undisputed European masters of shipping. One of the aims of my recently submitted PhD thesis ( Money Talks: Anglo-Norman, English and Italian language contact in medieval merchant documents, c1200-c1450 ) is to uncover probable Italian borrowings