Re: How French Has Influenced English

[Jimmy Breck-McKye <jb527 -at- hotmail -dot- co -dot- uk>]

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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