French borrowings
The Normans in England belonged to the Capetian dynasty spoke Norman French; this became non-prestigious in France as the variety spoken by the Angevian dynasty in France, Parisian French, became the prestige variety; because Norman French was seen as socially inferior, it was less difficult to abandon it in favour of English;
subsequently, England became at war with France in the Hundred Years War (1337-1453).
Even as English was on its way in, the gaps in English vocabulary had to be filled by loanwords from French. These include items pertaining to new experiences and ways of doing things introduced by the Normans.
domains that became enriched with French loanwords include: Government: parliament, government; Finance: treasure, poverty; Law: jury, verdict; War: battle, castle; Religion: charity, saint; Art, fashion, etc.: beauty, colour; Cuisine: bacon, mutton; Household Relationships: uncle, aunt.
Related posts:
- The noun and its categories The noun is expression that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality or idea. It serve as the subject or object of a verb, and the object of...
- Theory of phonetics as a branch of linguistics The word «phonetics» is derived from the Greek «sound» and used in two different meanings: 1) to some authors, usually non-phoneticians, phonetics is that part of grammar which deals with...
- Etymological survey of Modern English The reason of borrowings: 1. to fill a gap in vocabulary «Potato»,»tomato» from Spanish when appeared in English (these vegetables)...
- The subject and object of stylistics The subject of stylistics can be outlined as the study of the nature, functions and structure of stylistic devices, on the one hand, and, on the other, the study of...
- Modern English Word formation Word formation is a branch of science of the language which studies the patterns on which a language forms new lexical items (new unities, new words). Word formation is a...
- Affixation Affixation is one of the most productive ways of word-building throughout the history of English. It consists in adding an affix to the stem of a definite part of speech....
- Structural classification of Sentences The meaning of an English sentence depends on the word order. We put the subject before the verb and the object after the predicate. The cook burnt the dinner....
- Classification of functional styles, belles-lettres style A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. In the English literary standard Galperin distinguishes the following...
- Synonyms, antonyms, homonyms and their types Synonyms are words different in their outer aspects, but identical or similar in their inner aspects. In English there are a lot of synonyms, because there are many borrowings. There...
- Polysemy in Modern English Most English words are polysemantic. It should be noted that the wealth of expressive resources of a language largely depends on the degree to which polysemy has developed in the...
- Stylistics as a branch of linguistic Stylistics, sometimes called linguo-stylistics, is a branch of general linguistics. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: a) the investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their...
- Latin borrowings Latin, being the language of the Roman Empire, had already influenced the language of the Germanic tribes even before they set foot in Britain. Latin loanwords reflected the superior material...
- Phonetic Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices The theory of sense — independence of separate sounds is based on a subjective interpretation of sound associations and has nothing to do with objective scientific data. However, the sound...
- Lexical Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices Words in a context may acquire additional lexical meanings not fixed in the dictionaries, what we have called contextual meanings. The latter may sometimes deviate from the dictionary meaning to...
- Regional variation of English British English Pronunciation Standards comprise English English, Welsh English, Scottish English and Northern Ireland English. English English 1. Southern accents. 1) Southern accents (Greater London, Cockney, Surray, Kent);...
- Phraseology Phraseology received increasing attention in the English-speaking world. Linguistic competence also includes a familiarity with restricted collocations (like break the rules), idioms (like spill the beans in a non-literal sense)...
- General characteristics of the verb According to content, verbs can be described as words denoting actions (e.g. to walk, to speak, to play), process (e.g. to sleep, to wait, to live), state (e.g. to be,...
- Lexicography Lexicography is the study of the meaning, evolution, and function of the vocabulary units of a language for the purpose of compilation in book form-in short, the process of dictionary...
- Изучение Английского языка Изучение английского и вообще иностранных языков обширная и довольно таки интересная тема. На Английском языке разговаривает большая часть человечества. Английский является официальным языком таких стран как Англия, США, Канады, Мальты,...
- Как выучить иностранный язык Даже если вы ходите на курсы и прилежно выполняете домашние задания, следование этим пяти простым правилам поможет вам выучить любой язык. 1. Тратьте на это время. Самый важный фактор —...
- Compound words and their classification Compounds are words produced by combining two or more stems which occur in the language as free forms. They may be classified proceeding from different criteria: according to the parts...
- Types of narration. Author’s narrative dialogue A work of creative prose is never homogenous as to the form and essence of the information it carries. Both very much depend on the view point of the addresses?...
- Publicist style. Newspaper style. Belles-letters style The literary communication, most often (but not always) materialized in the written form, is not homogeneous, and proceeding from its function (purpose) we speak of different functional styles. As the...
- Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations in Grammar Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations between units in a segmental sequence. The combination of two words or word-groups one of which is modified by the other forms a unit...
- Noun: the category of gender The word «noun» derives from the Latin nomen meaning «name», and a traditional definition of nouns is that they are all and only those expressions that refer to a person,...
- General characteristics of the verb A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action («bring», «read»), occurrence («to decompose» (itself), «to glitter»), or a state of being («exist», «live», «soak», «stand»). Depending on...
- Structural Classification of Sentences The sentence is the immediate integral unit of speech built up words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose. From the point of...
- Morphological structure of the english word If we describe a w o r d as an autonomous unit of language in which a particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and which is capable...
- Native and Borrowed word Native are words of anglo-saxon origin brought to the English islands from the continent in the 5-th cent by the Germ. tribes (angles, saxons). Borrowings-the term is used to denote...
- Shortened words and conversation in Modern English The shortening of words consists in substituting a part for a whole. The process of shortening isn’t confined only to words; many word-groups also become shortened in the process of...
- Units of Language. Language Levels Language levels. The grammatical system of the English language, like of other Indo-European languages, is very complicated. It consists of smaller subdivisions, which are called systems too. In grammar they...
- Acoustic aspect of speech sounds Speech sounds can be analysed from the viewpoint of three aspects: (1) acoustic, (2) physiological and articulatory, (3) functional. Phonetics is connected with linguistic...
- Classification of vowel in modern English Vowels are voiced sounds in forming which the airstream passes freely without any obstruction through the larynx the mouth cavity make the vocal cords vibrate. Vowels are classified: in the...
- Theories of syllable formation and syllable division There are different points of view on syllable formation) which aге briefly the following. «»The most ancient theory states that there are as many syllablies in a word as there...
- British and American English British and American English are two main variants of English. Besides them there are : Canadian, Australian, Indian, New Zealand and other variants. They have some peculiarities in pronunciation, grammar...
- The category of number of nouns Modern English like most other languages distinguishes two numbers: singular and plural. Plural and singular nouns stand in contrast as diametrically opposite. Instances are not few, however, when their opposition...
- Phraseology, classification of phraseological units 1. Phraseology, classification of phraseological units. Vinogradov’s classification of phraseological units: a) phraseological combinations (сочетания). b) unities (единства). c) fussions (сокращения)....
- Synonyms and Antonyms Synonyms — are two or more words belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable in some context. Look...
- Homonymy in Modern English. Split policemy Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in one of these aspects, but different in their meaning. bank, n.-a shore bank, n.-an institution for...
- Theory of grammar as a branch of linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human languages which is characterized by the systemic approach to the object of its investigation. Grammar is one of the main linguistic disciplines which...