language in England. Old English became the language of the poor population and French the language of the court and wealthy population. It is said that during this period, people in England spoke more French than those in France. Today, it is estimated that 50% to 60% of the English language comes from French or Latin. Cookery gives a good example of this tendency: the names of many farm animals have Anglo-Saxon roots. However, the names of their meat (once exclusive to the wealthy) have Old French origins: Pig (Anglo-Saxon) – Pork from the Old French Cow (Anglo-Saxon ) – Beef from the Old French Chicken (Anglo-Saxon) – Poultry from the Old French or Sheep (Anglo-Saxon ) – Mutton from the Old French France "Francization" is also used to mean any of many cultural assimilation policies implemented by French authorities since the French Revolution. These aimed to impose or maintain the dominance of the French language and French culture. Before the Revolution, French was still a minority language in France by number of speakers, but was the prestige language. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts under King Francis I of France prescribed the official use of the French language, the langue d'oïl dialect spoken at the time in the Île-de-France, in all documents. Other languages, such as Occitan, began to disappear as written languages. With the decline of Latin, French became increasingly important for writing. Often, people were encouraged or compelled to adopt French, thereby developing a French identity at the expense of their existing one. Use of other languages was often suppressed. This occurred, for example, among the Alemannic-speaking inhabitants of Alsace and the Lorraine Franconian-speaking inhabitants of Lorraine after these regions were conquered by Louis XIV during the seventeenth century, to the Flemings in French Flanders, to the Occitans in Occitania, and to Basques, Bretons, Catalans, Corsicans and Niçards. Shortly after the fall of the Ancien Régime, the new revolutionary government adopted a policy of promotion of French as a unifying and modernizing language, simultaneously denigrating the status of minority languages as bulwarks of feudalism, Church control of the state, and backwardness in general. In less than a year after coming to power (1792), the Committee for Public Instruction mandated that the newly-expanded public education be fortified by sending French-speaking teachers to areas that spoke other languages. This programme achieved many of its aims during the 19th century: by the