Writing a terrible paragraph like this:
Did you hear the news à propos the coup d’état against the ancien regime? It turns out the revolutionary was a real artiste with a brunette girlfriend who was herself quite the belle esprit. Apparently he would lead his troops café au lait in hand and had a penchant for delivering the coup de grace to fallen enemies in person.
is pretty easy for the generally educated Anglophone. All of the Gallicized terms in that paragraph are in (relatively) common use, depending on the circumstance and the subject of a particular conversation.
So I’ve decided to do some academic sampling from my good friend Oxford about ‘la belle langue’ in ‘the language of business’. Maybe you can use some of this yourself in a party conversation this weekend if you want to sound like you dabbled in a field of linguistics until you got bored and decided to become a commercial diver or a communications manager or an eye doctor type. Or blog. I mean, whatever.
If the conversation is maybe sounding something like this:
“…that’s why romance languages are so much more attractive than English…”
or better yet:
“…yeah! why is it that there are so many kinda French words in English? Huh? Of course I’ve heard of the Bayeux Tapestry, who hasn’t, but what does that have to do with anything?!”
then maybe some of this can help you fill some void.
Medieval loans from French have given English much of the look of a Romance language. The movement of French words into English was facilitated by cognates already present in Old English. Words like munt, nefa, prud, rice, warian paved the way for mount, nephew, proud, rich, beware from Old French.
Because of its Geographical Position and Historical Cultural Prestige (accept it or not), France has exported many words to its neighbours in the form of linguistic borrowings. English has been the single greatest recipient of these. As a result, hundreds of words have the same spellings in both languages, which also share a series of Latin affixes.
Many words borrowed into French from other Romance languages (especially Italian) have also entered English in a more or less French form. For example: artisan, caprice, frigate, orange, picturesque, stance, tirade.
In addition to borrowings, Gallicized English words have also been a result of Bisociation. This is the occurrence in a language of pairs of words with similar meanings, one member of each pair being native to a different language. In English, the vernacular members of pairs are mainly Germanic (usually from Old English or Old Norse), and the loanwords are mainly classical (usually from Latin, often mediated by French). Examples include: freedom/liberty, hearty/cordial, go up/ascend, go down/descend.
English has also taken many words through French by way of Doublets: when one of two or more words is derived from one source. Examples include: fragile/frail, from Latin fragilis, the first directly, the second through Old French frele.
The ancient closeness of the two languages has had peculiar effects: a young English hare is a French leveret, a young English swan a French cygnet, and a small English axe is a French hatchet. An Old English stem can be used with a French suffix (eatable, hindrance) or vice versa (faithful, gentleness). The English stool, originally a chair (Old English stol), gave way to the Norman French chair, and was demoted in size and usage. Animals tended by Saxon peasantry retained English names like calf and sheep, while their meat when eaten in Norman castles became French veal and mutton.
Because of the long presence of French in England, many French fossils survive in the strata of English as well: for example, an s lost by French is preserved in bastard, beast, cost, custom, escape, establish, (e)state, false, honest, hostage, interest, master, paste, priest, scout, tempest. Because of that connection, English is sometimes a twofold language in which people can answer or respond and begin or commence to seek freedom or liberty. Such pairs are near-synonyms, sometimes expressing stylistic differences like kingdom/realm, sight/vision, and snake/serpent. Others still are further apart in meaning, such as ask/demand, bit/morsel, heel/talon, and illegible/unreadable.
Beware of faux amis (false friends): words that have the same origin and general appearance as a word in another language, and so can easily be mistaken to have the same meanings and uses: English deceive is to trick while French décevoir is to disappoint.
I’ve got a 17-page document of French words and terms in current use in English. If you read it you’d recognize most, if not all of them. Putting together the list from scratch? Much more difficult; That's how entrenched these two languages are.
You might have bored a few people to tears or driven some partygoers to other conversation circles (about what? the Yankees? as if I know where you hang out), but you probably attracted some heads too, and maybe there’s that intellectual, attractive language professional who wants to go for coffee now. Ok, maybe that’s a stretch…
Did you hear the news à propos the coup d’état against the ancien regime? It turns out the revolutionary was a real artiste with a brunette girlfriend who was herself quite the belle esprit. Apparently he would lead his troops café au lait in hand and had a penchant for delivering the coup de grace to fallen enemies in person.
is pretty easy for the generally educated Anglophone. All of the Gallicized terms in that paragraph are in (relatively) common use, depending on the circumstance and the subject of a particular conversation.
So I’ve decided to do some academic sampling from my good friend Oxford about ‘la belle langue’ in ‘the language of business’. Maybe you can use some of this yourself in a party conversation this weekend if you want to sound like you dabbled in a field of linguistics until you got bored and decided to become a commercial diver or a communications manager or an eye doctor type. Or blog. I mean, whatever.
If the conversation is maybe sounding something like this:
“…that’s why romance languages are so much more attractive than English…”
or better yet:
“…yeah! why is it that there are so many kinda French words in English? Huh? Of course I’ve heard of the Bayeux Tapestry, who hasn’t, but what does that have to do with anything?!”
then maybe some of this can help you fill some void.
Medieval loans from French have given English much of the look of a Romance language. The movement of French words into English was facilitated by cognates already present in Old English. Words like munt, nefa, prud, rice, warian paved the way for mount, nephew, proud, rich, beware from Old French.
Because of its Geographical Position and Historical Cultural Prestige (accept it or not), France has exported many words to its neighbours in the form of linguistic borrowings. English has been the single greatest recipient of these. As a result, hundreds of words have the same spellings in both languages, which also share a series of Latin affixes.
Many words borrowed into French from other Romance languages (especially Italian) have also entered English in a more or less French form. For example: artisan, caprice, frigate, orange, picturesque, stance, tirade.
In addition to borrowings, Gallicized English words have also been a result of Bisociation. This is the occurrence in a language of pairs of words with similar meanings, one member of each pair being native to a different language. In English, the vernacular members of pairs are mainly Germanic (usually from Old English or Old Norse), and the loanwords are mainly classical (usually from Latin, often mediated by French). Examples include: freedom/liberty, hearty/cordial, go up/ascend, go down/descend.
English has also taken many words through French by way of Doublets: when one of two or more words is derived from one source. Examples include: fragile/frail, from Latin fragilis, the first directly, the second through Old French frele.
The ancient closeness of the two languages has had peculiar effects: a young English hare is a French leveret, a young English swan a French cygnet, and a small English axe is a French hatchet. An Old English stem can be used with a French suffix (eatable, hindrance) or vice versa (faithful, gentleness). The English stool, originally a chair (Old English stol), gave way to the Norman French chair, and was demoted in size and usage. Animals tended by Saxon peasantry retained English names like calf and sheep, while their meat when eaten in Norman castles became French veal and mutton.
Because of the long presence of French in England, many French fossils survive in the strata of English as well: for example, an s lost by French is preserved in bastard, beast, cost, custom, escape, establish, (e)state, false, honest, hostage, interest, master, paste, priest, scout, tempest. Because of that connection, English is sometimes a twofold language in which people can answer or respond and begin or commence to seek freedom or liberty. Such pairs are near-synonyms, sometimes expressing stylistic differences like kingdom/realm, sight/vision, and snake/serpent. Others still are further apart in meaning, such as ask/demand, bit/morsel, heel/talon, and illegible/unreadable.
Beware of faux amis (false friends): words that have the same origin and general appearance as a word in another language, and so can easily be mistaken to have the same meanings and uses: English deceive is to trick while French décevoir is to disappoint.
I’ve got a 17-page document of French words and terms in current use in English. If you read it you’d recognize most, if not all of them. Putting together the list from scratch? Much more difficult; That's how entrenched these two languages are.
You might have bored a few people to tears or driven some partygoers to other conversation circles (about what? the Yankees? as if I know where you hang out), but you probably attracted some heads too, and maybe there’s that intellectual, attractive language professional who wants to go for coffee now. Ok, maybe that’s a stretch…
Thank you for this wonderful article! A pleasure to read it! Couldn't have phrased it more beautifully!
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