Re: How French Has Influenced English

Subject: Re: How French Has Influenced English
From: Jimmy Breck-McKye <jb527 -at- hotmail -dot- co -dot- uk>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2010 18:36:59 +0100

Interesting trivia: meats and luxurious products almost always bear
French / Latinate names (beef, poultry, wine, textiles), as they were
picked out by the Norman aristocracy. The raw produce, handled by
Anglo-Saxon peasants, are usually given Old English / Germanic names
(cow, chicken, wool).

Contrary to popular imagination, Latin only bore an influence on English
after the Normans invaded, as they principally used Latin in legal and
administrative documents (that's why Latin forms the lexis of the
educated and authoritative). Romans certainly traded with natives during
their tenure, but the two languages rarely interacted. Old English
remained exchangeable with Old Norse (well, for the most part) right up
until 1066.

On 01/07/10 15:38, Monique Semp wrote:
> I've been trying to relearn my high-school French (from oh so many years ago!), and recently came across this great article, "How French Has Influenced English", http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/frenchinenglish.htm.
>
> And it's timely, with its explanation of voilà (not sure if the accented a will come through) -- pronounced "vwa la" -- http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/voila.htm. (The link to this is on page 5 of the main article.)
>
> Happy Independence Day weekend to the US-readership,
> -Monique
>
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How French Has Influenced English: From: Monique Semp

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