French influence on the vocabulary in Middle English

The greatest peak of first examples of French borrowings in English comes in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. This probably largely corresponds to the realities of linguistic change, since we know that this is the period in which English was taking on many technical functions from Latin and, especially, French, at least so far as written records were concerned.

The French language was brought to England by the Norman conquerors. The Normans remained masters of England for a sufficiently long time to leave a deep impress on the language. The Norman rulers and the immigrants, who invaded the South-Western towns after the Conquest, spoke a variety of French, known as “Anglo-Norman. This variety died out about two hundred years later, having exerted a profound influence upon English. In the 13th and 14th c. English was exposed to a new wave of French influence; this time it came from Central, Parisian French, a variety of a more cultivated, literary kind.

The effect of these successive and overlapping waves was seen first and foremost in a large number of lexical borrowings in ME. At the initial stages of penetration French words were restricted to some varieties of English: the speech of the aristocracy at the king’s court; the speech of the middle class, who came into contact both with the rulers and with the ruled; the speech of educated people and the population of South-Eastern towns. Eventually French loan- words spread throughout the language space and became an integral of the English vocabulary. Early borrowings were mostly made in the course of oral communication; later borrowings were first used in literature — in translations of French books.

The total number of French borrowings by far exceeds the number of borrowings from any other foreign language (though sometimes it is difficult to say whether the loan came from French or Latin). The greater part of French loan-words in English date from ME.

During the initial hundred and fifty years of the Norman rule the infiltration of French words into the English language progressed slowly. The majority of French loan-words adopted in ME were first recorded in the texts of the 14th c. Chaucer's vocabulary, which amounts to 8,000 words, contains about 4,000 words of Romance origin, i.e. French and Latin borrowings.

A still greater number of words belong to the domain of law and jurisdiction, which were certainty under the control of the Normans. For several hundred years court procedure was conducted entirely in French, so that to this day native English words in this sphere are rare. Many of the words first adopted as juridical terms belong now to the common everyday vocabulary: acquit, accuse, attorney, case, cause, condemn, court, interest, judge , justice, marry, marriage, money, penalty.. [19,(p.302)]

A large number of French words pertain to the Church and religion, for in the 12th and 13th c. all the important posts in the Church were occupied by the Norman clergy: abbey, altar, Bible, baptism, cell, charity, chaste, clergy, divine, grace, glory, pray, preach, procession, religion, rule, sacrifice, saint, save. From the loan-words referring to house, furniture and architecture we see that the Normans introduced many innovations, which became known to the English together with their French names: arch, castle, cellar, chimney, column, couch, curtain, cushion, lamp, mansion,. Some words are connected with art: art, beauty , design, figure, image, ornament, paint. Another group includes names of garments: apparel, boot, coat, collar, garment, gown, jewel, robe.

Many French loan-words belong to the domain of entertainment, which is natural enough, for the Norman nobles amused themselves with various pastimes. The borrowed chase competed with its native synonym hunt, which has survived as well; other examples are: cards, dance, dice, leisure, partner.

By 1500, over 40 per cent of all of the words that English has borrowed from French had made a first appearance in the language, including a very high proportion of those French words which have come to play a central part in the vocabulary of modern English

CHAPTER 2.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 2848