History Main / NobleTongue

* From the 12th century until the 15th century, the courts of England used three languages: Latin for writing, Norman French as the main oral language during trials, and Middle English in less formal exchanges between the judge, the lawyer, the complainant or the witnesses. The judge gave his sentence orally in Norman French, which was then written in Latin. Only in the lowest level of the manorial courts were trials entirely in Middle English. The form of French used in courts became known as Law French, which still left traces such as ''voir dire'' and ''replevin'' and the use of legal doublets. The UK parliament and monarchy still use Law French / Norman for certain ceremonial affairs, such as the prorogation of Parliament or the transmission of bills between the houses. Indeed, the official formulas for granting Royal Assent (the official act by which a bill becomes law) is in Law French: ''Le Roy[[note]]La Reyne'' when the monarch is female''[[/note]] le veult'', "The King[[note]]The Queen when the monarch is female[[/note]] wills it" is used for most legislation, but there are different formulas for supply bills (in which ''Le Roy'' thanks his good subjects for being so kind as to give His Majesty money) and personal bills. (There’s another one, ''Le Roy/La Reyne s'avisera'', "The King/Queen will consider it", for when assent is withheld; however, it hasn’t been used since [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart 1708]].) It remains an official language of the UK Parliament, while many actual British languages (such as Welsh) are not.

* From the 12th century until the 15th century, the courts of England used three languages: Latin for writing, Norman French as the main oral language during trials, and Middle English in less formal exchanges between the judge, the lawyer, the complainant or the witnesses. The judge gave his sentence orally in Norman French, which was then written in Latin. Only in the lowest level of the manorial courts were trials entirely in Middle English. The form of French used in courts became known as Law French, which still left traces such as ''voir dire'' and ''replevin'' and the use of legal doublets. The UK parliament and monarchy still use Law French / Norman for certain ceremonial affairs, such as the prorogation of Parliament or the transmission of bills between the houses. Indeed, the official formulas for granting Royal Assent (the official act by which a bill becomes law) is in Law French: ''Le Roy[[note]]La Reyne when the monarch is female[[/note]] le veult'', "The King[[note]]The Queen when the monarch is female[[/note]] wills it" is used for most legislation, but there are different formulas for supply bills (in which ''Le Roy'' thanks his good subjects for being so kind as to give His Majesty money) and personal bills. (There’s another one, ''Le Roy/La Reyne s'avisera'', "The King/Queen will consider it", for when assent is withheld; however, it hasn’t been used since [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart 1708]].) It remains an official language of the UK Parliament, while many actual British languages (such as Welsh) are not.

* From the 12th century until the 15th century, the courts of England used three languages: Latin for writing, Norman French as the main oral language during trials, and Middle English in less formal exchanges between the judge, the lawyer, the complainant or the witnesses. The judge gave his sentence orally in Norman French, which was then written in Latin. Only in the lowest level of the manorial courts were trials entirely in Middle English. The form of French used in courts became known as Law French, which still left traces such as ''voir dire'' and ''replevin'' and the use of legal doublets. The UK parliament and monarchy still use Law French / Norman for certain ceremonial affairs, such as the prorogation of Parliament or the transmission of bills between the houses. Indeed, the official formulas for granting Royal Assent (the official act by which a bill becomes law) is in Law French: ''Le Roy[[note]]La Reyne when the monarch is female[[/note]] le veult'', "The King[[note]]The Queen when the monarch is female[[/note]] wills it" is used for most legislation, but there are different formulas for supply bills (in which ''Le Roy'' thanks his good subjects for being so kind as to give His Majesty money) and personal bills. (There’s another one, ''Le Roy/La Reyne s'avisera", "The King/Queen will consider it", for when assent is withheld; however, it hasn’t been used since [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart 1708]].) It remains an official language of the UK Parliament, while many actual British languages (such as Welsh) are not.

* From the 12th century until the 15th century, the courts of England used three languages: Latin for writing, Norman French as the main oral language during trials, and Middle English in less formal exchanges between the judge, the lawyer, the complainant or the witnesses. The judge gave his sentence orally in Norman French, which was then written in Latin. Only in the lowest level of the manorial courts were trials entirely in Middle English. The form of French used in courts became known as Law French, which still left traces such as ''voir dire'' and ''replevin'' and the use of legal doublets. The UK parliament and monarchy still use Law French / Norman for certain ceremonial affairs, such as the prorogation of Parliament or the transmission of bills between the houses. It remains an official language of the UK Parliament, while many actual British languages (such as Welsh) are not.

* In a curious subversion, after the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheAztecEmpire Spaniards conquered the Aztecs]], it was Nahuatl (the ''Aztecs''' language) and not Spanish the language that became the noble tongue in the rest of conquered territories from Central to North America, even in those where there were zero native Nahuatl speakers. The Spaniards realized that adopting the mainstream language was way easier than teaching the entire continent to speak a wholly foreign one, so they just ran with it for the rest of the conquest (another factor was that most of their conquering armies were actually composed by native allies from Nahuatl-speaking zones too), and this in turn made it more accessible and convenient to learn Nahuatl rather than Spanish for other native tribes. Spanish would take many centuries to catch up, and even then, Nahuatl and its variations remain alive and healthy.
* Quechua was originally the courtly language of the Inca empire, whose citizens mostly spoke Aymara. Gradually, though, use of Quechua was imposed across the Incan territories. (Then the Spaniards conquered the Inca and did the same as in Mexico above.)

* The ruling classes of the Mughal Empire frequently spoke Persian as their first language alongside a Hindustani language known as Urdu. This was in stark contrast to the other castes of Mughal society which spoke Hindu or the local dialect of their home province.
* In Indonesia, Dutch was rarely spoken or studied by Indonesians, but laws and court cases were written in Dutch, so Indonesian lawyers, even post-independence, need to be able to at least read in Dutch in order to read old court cases in the event that a precedent they are using was decided pre-independence.

* Quechua was originally the courtly language of the Inca empire, whose citizens mostly spoke Aymara. Gradually, though, use of Quechua was imposed across the Incan territories.

* ''Film/Heidi2015'': The Sessemanns and their servants speak a more formal version of German than the dialect that Heidi speaks.

* ''TabletopGame/DarkSun'': The court of Lalali-Puy uses an archaic dialect, presumably from the age of her youth, which they are taught when ennobled -- the sorcerer-queen of Gulg is known to be a little quirky in general.

* Up until the latter half of the 20th Century, the Japanese Imperial Court spoke and wrote in a dialect of Classical Japanese, which was also used by the overall government until the reforms of the Meiji Period, when the common spoken form of Japanese was used for all writing. Classical Japanese is still used in classical poetry, including haiku. For example, the Jewel Voice Broadcast, a recorded speech by the Emperor stating that [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki "the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb"]], and announcing that Japan would stop fighting, was probably the first time an Emperor had ever spoken to the public, even indirectly. But because he used the courtly dialect, few people actually understood what he was saying, and a translation of the speech into the common Japanese was published in newspapers.
* Roman society used two distinct forms of Latin, classical and vulgar. Classical Latin was used for all writing and formal occasions, while Vulgar Latin was the primary vernacular form. Notably, this makes studying Vulgar Latin challenging, since almost no written examples of it exist, and it's mostly reconstructed from indirect methods such as recurring grammatical mistakes in Classical Latin texts and comparisons of modern Romance languages, as these are all descended from the various vulgar dialects instead of the formal Classical tongue. Generally, Classical Latin was a very formalized, polished and artificial tongue, very well suited for writing impressive texts and showing off literary and grammatical skill but difficult to use in casual conversation, while Vulgar Latin was less sophisticated but easier to use; for instance, Classical Latin is characterized by extremely fluid grammar that allows words to be placed in any order or position in a sentence, which is mostly useful when one has the leisure to extensively think over and compose a statement, while Vulgar Latin has a much more rigid and straightforward sentence structure similar to those of modern Romance languages. Vulgar Latin also came to incorporate loanwords from other languages, such as Gaulish, Germanic tongues, and Greek; Classical Latin, meanwhile, only borrowed from Greek (since Greek was a "scholarly" language used by philosophers and suchlike), and to a lesser extent than Vulgar Latin.

* Until after the fall of the Colonels in 1974, the Greek language had a divide between the commoners' Demotic Greek and the elites' Katharevousa version. Contemporary Greek is a "merged" form of the two variants.

* In the early part of the 20th century, upperclass Americans spoke with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent Mid-Atlantic Accent]]. This was a cultivated accent deliberately taught to the children of wealthy people as a type of "proper English". The most famous examples of people who spoke with this accent are F.D.R. and his wife Eleanor. The use of this accent faded away after World War II, though nobody really knows why. You can still hear it in fiction works, where it is used to denote a snooty rich person, such as Montgomery Burns of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''.

* Roman society used two distinct forms of Latin, classical and vulgar. Classical Latin was used for all writing and formal occasions, while Vulgar Latin was the primary vernacular form. Notably, this makes studying Vulgar Latin challenging, since almost no written examples of it exist, and it's mostly reconstructed from indirect methods such as recurring grammatical mistakes in Classical Latin texts and comparisons of modern Romance languages, as these are all descended from the various vulgar dialects instead of the formal Classical tongue. Generally, Classical Latin was a very formalized, polished and artificial tongue, very well suited for writing impressive texts and showing off literary and grammatical skill but difficult to use in casual conversation, while Vulgar Latin was less sophisticated but easier to use; for instance, Classical Latin is characterized by extremely fluid grammar that allows words to be placed in any order or position in a sentence, which is mostly useful when one has the leisure to extensively think over and compose a statement, while Vulgar Latin has a much more rigid and straightforward sentence structure similar to those of modern Romance languages. Vulgar Latin also came to incorporate several loanwords from other languages, such as Gaulish, Germanic tongues, and Greek, while Classical Latin was kept strictly limited to an ancestrally Latin vocabulary.

* ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'': The Gunslingers of Gilead, essentially a feudal knightly order, use "High Speech", which is considered a "civilized" language when compared to the Low Speech of everyday communication.

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': The Quirmian language is basically French and aristocratic young women generally go to boarding school in Quirm. Also naturally in aristocratic use is the old Ankh-Morpork language of [[DogLatin Latian]].

** By the Third Age, after Númenor's fall, Sindarin acts as the prestige language for the human nobility of Gondor, the primary Númenorean successors at that point, who otherwise speak Westron.