The French influence on the English vocabulary

Extract

[...] French Influence on the English language III.1 Loans The influence of French on the English language can be seen most clearly in its vocabulary. In an analysis cited by Berndt, (1984) (Horn list of 1926)[52] the results show that 45% of the 10,000 most frequently used Modern English words are of French origin. This proportion is by far larger than that of Old English words ( 31.8 According to calculations based on the Oxford English Dictionary, about 10,000 French loans entered the English language, out of which about 75% are still in use today.[53] A small number of loans existed already before 1066 such as prud (proud), sot (foolish), tur (tower) or capun (capon).[54] After the Norman Conquest, more and more French words entered the English language but the number of loans remained quite modest. [...]

[...] Consequently, this social group was not entirely French but constituted an ethnically mixed community which probably favored intermarriage at an earlier stage than in the high aristocracy.[18] The influx of French immigrants after the conquest had various consequences on the different groups of the English society: while political and ecclesiastical life was dominated by the Norman intruders, their culture and the language of the peasantry was hardly affected by the Norman conquest and its effects (if one disregards the immediate consequences as pillaging and burning which undoubtedly affected the population strongly). [...]

[...] Similarly, Norman French borrowings such as ‘punish', ‘usher' or ‘cushion' have / / as against Central French ‘rejoice' Likewise ‘garden' is a Norman borrowing while ‘joy' or ‘jest' reflect the shift from Norman French to Central French Obviously, some words were borrowed twice into the English language, once in the Norman period of influence and once in the Central French period. In certain cases, both survive side by side with a differentiation in sense. There are doublets for ‘wile/guile' or ‘ward(en)/guard(ian)'. [...]

[...] On the other hand, those whose native tongue was English made efforts to learn French to be able to communicate with the high aristocracy. Berndt (1984) believes that the lesser nobility of Norman or Anglo-Norman descent adopted English as mother tongue at a certain stage in the 12th century, but retained French as second language for social reasons[31] because it had become associated with the governing class[32]. After the Norman Conquest and the introduction of new nobility to the English Royal court, French became the language of power and prestige. [...]

[...] On the contrary, it was vital to retain their language because they preserved their ties to France in every respect: they spent a lot of their time on their French territories were engaged in French affairs and they did not intermingle with the native population of England. All of this did not favor the acquisition of English and there is reason to believe that in the generations following the Conquest and even for some time after the loss of Normandy and the severance of the continent, French remained the mother tongue of most Anglo-Norman aristocrats (even though they were born in England).[22] After 300 years, Henry IV (1399-1413) was the first English King whose mother tongue was English.[23] Likewise, Norman-French gained an important status in the church and the religious institutions. [...]