Week 5 - French Influences on English

This week I looked at the influences of French on the development of English.  By the eleventh century England had developed many languages from the proto-European language, faced invasion from the Scots, the Picts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Scandinavians, and converted from a collection of polytheistic religions to the roman catholic religion, each leaving it’s mark on the English language. In 1066 they faced yet another invasion. William the conquer came to England from Normandy and, after killing the Norwegian and Danish contenders to the throne from the north, he instituted, like many conquers before him, his language (a dialect of French) as the language of the courts. That is to say, law, administration, and high society. Latin remained the language of church, religion, and education. This is the reason we have two different words for animals and animal meat. A butcher was low caste and often spoke English. They used words like cow, swine, deer, and such animal names. When selling to the upper class they were called beef, pork, and venison, all derived from the French words for the animal. Likewise, a peasant lived in a house, while a lord lived in a mansion. There was a very confusing and involved story to the invasion that led to the battle of hasting, one I’m not sure I entirely understand. For my objectives though I don’t have to, but if your interested check out this 10 minute history lesson.

Other than including a bunch of loan words from French which lead to a plethora of synonyms in English, French affected English in a host of other ways. Most notably was the addition of affixes such as -ment, and -able. These French affixes we added to native old English words (hinder to hinderance). Some loan words kept their French affixes while native words did not, creating some confusion. Some examples here are words like refugee, payee, and devotee, all using the -ee affix. This was not uniformly adopted throughout the language, generating just one more of those inconsistencies that English is famous for. To compound the confusion, native affixes were applied to French loan words. For example, the word covet is of French origin, yet the past form is coveted, -ed being a Germanic affix. Loan words muddy the linguistic waters of English and this can be seen in words like choose, which is of native English origins. The related noun ‘choice’ is of French origin. This inconsistent adoption of forms makes English very unique and inconsistent. There are even cases of loan words supplanting native words. Often in this case, the native word and the French word meaning deviate to form two similar but different words. For example, colour is a French based word. Hue was the Germanic equivalent and the two were used interchangeably until the 1600’s when hue took to describing specific quality, shade, tinge, or tint of colour. Isabel Roth does a good job of explaining some of this in her article Explore theinfluence of French on English  

French also changed the way things were written. Scribes began to use c to represent both “s” and “k” sounds, and the “u” sound was often represented as a “o”. this is why words like son sounds like sun. something I found interesting was that is more on topic with writing than with French, the cursive writing of this time both in English and French, also changed the way words were spelled. Where a u was not well discernible from two e’s or maybe part of an “m” or any host of other letters, u was often changed to an “o” in writing. For this reason, we have words like “Love” where the o makes an “uh” sound. just check out this picture of the word minimum and you will see a perfect example of why o was used instead of u. try to find the "u". you can do it but its hard

Original image found here

Conjugation of verbs began to use the weak conjugation for past adding the -ed or -t as in loved or spent. Most strong conjugations from old English faded to favor the weaker forms due to French influence. However, a few of the old strong conjugations survived, such as shake, shook, shaken and sink sank, sunk. Find out more here. 

Starting in 1204, an English French rivalry kicked off and over the next hundred and fifty years and by the time of Chaucer in 1343, English was the official language of England, but it was no longer recognizable as the English of olde (we’ll add the e to give that extra olde tyme feel). The melding of old English and Norman French had been so complete that it didn’t even seem to be a mixed language. It is a mixed language and as a language made from mixing 5 different languages (Brittonic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Latin, and French) it is chalked full of synonyms with a rich vocabulary capable of expressing the finest nuances of meaning.  

While looking at the topic of French influence I came across an idea that I have heard before but never understood. That is “The Great Vowel Shift”. I’m not sure what it is but I think it may have something to do with the disparity between pronunciation and spelling. I think I will look into this next week. I hope you will join me for the adventure. Until nest time!