French loan-words in ME.

After the Norman Conquest the main spheres of the Latin L remained: church; law; academic activities.

French became the official L of administration (it was used in the king’s court, in the law courts, in the church (as well as Latin), in the army, by the nobles in the south of England).

English was the L of common people in the Midlands and in the north of England. It still remained the L of the majority who were the representatives of the lower classes of society and never learned French, so the Norman barons had to learn English to be able to communicate with locals and soon English regained its position as the L of the country.

In ME the main donors of borrowings to English were French and Scandinavian Ls:

French borrowings started to penetrate from the South and spread northwards.

Ways of Borrowing: French borrowings penetrated through oral and written speech and at first were adopted only by the high strata of the society (French was the L of the administration, king’s court, law courts, church (as well as Latin) and army).

Assimilation of Borrowings: French borrowings were more difficult to assimilate as far as French was a Romance L while English was a Germanic one (they belonged to different L groups). So they two Ls differed in some essential features (stress/accent, vocalic system, etc.) and the assimilation was hard.

Semantic Fields: government and administration (assembly, authority, council, to govern, office, nation, etc.); feudal system (baron, countess, duke, feudal, noble, etc.); military (aid, arms, army, battle, defeat, force, etc.); law (crime, court, jury, justice, false, defendant, etc.); church (abbey, Bible, chapel, clergy, grace, etc.); art, architecture (chimney, palace, colour, figure, design, etc.); entertainment (pleasure, leasure, sport, dance, cards, etc.); address (madam, sir, mister, etc.).

Recognition in ModE: French borrowings are often recognisable due to some phonetic, word-building and spelling peculiarities: oi, oy (point, joy, toy, etc.); initial v (very, voice, etc.); -age (village, carriage, etc.); c as [s] (pierce, city, etc.).

Contributions: French borrowings enlarged the English vocabulary (a lot of new words); Some French borrowings replaced the native words (very, river, easy,etc.); French borrowings enlarged the number of synonyms in English: native to hide – Fr. borr. to conceal, native wish – Fr. borr. desire, native smell – Fr. borr. odour, etc; Some French affixes were borrowed into English (com-, sub-, dis-, -ment, -ish, -able, etc.).

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