As with other foreign influences, the impact of French is to be found, first and foremost, in the vocabulary. The layers and the semantic spheres of the French borrowings reflect the relations between the Norman rulers and the English population, the dominance of the French language in literature and the contacts with French culture. The prevalence of French as the language of writing led to numerous changes in English spelling.
CHAPTER 2
The French Influence on English Vocabulary.
2.1.Borrowings and Loanwords.
Borrowing words from other languages is characteristic of English throughout its history.More than two thirds of the English vocabulary are borrowings.Mostly they are words of Romanic origin(Latin,French,Italian,Spanish).Borrowed words are different from native ones by their phonetic structure,by their morphological structure and also by their grammatical forms.It is also characteristic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically.English history is very rich in different types of contracts with other countries,that is why it is very rich in borrowings.The Roman invasion,the adoption of Christianity,Scandinavian and Norman conquests of the British Isles,the development of British colonialism and trade and cultural relations served to increase immensely the English vocabulary.The majority of these borrowing are fully assimilated in English in their pronunciation, grammar ,spel-
ling and can be hardly distinguished from native words.
English continues to take in foreign words,but now the quantity of borrowings is not so abundant as it was before.All the more so,English now become a “giving”language,it has become Lingva franca of the twentieth century.
Borrowings can be classified according to different criteriation a:a)according to the aspect which is borrowed,b)according to the degree of assimilation,c)according to the language from which the word was borrowed.(In this classification only the main languages from which words were borrowed into English are described,such as Latin,French,Italian,Spanish,German and Russian).
Classification of Borrowings according to the borrowed aspect.There are the following group : phonetic borrowings,translation loans,semantic borrowings,mor-
phemic borrowing.Phonetic borrowing are most characteristic in all languages,they are called loan words proper.Words are borrowed with their spelling,pronunciation and meaning.Then they undergo assimilation,each sound in the borrowed word is substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrwing language.In some cases the spelling is changed.The structure of the word can also be changed.The position of the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the borrowing language.The paradigm of the word,and sometimes the meaning of the borrowed word can also changed.Such words as:labour,travel,table,
chair,people are phonetic borrowings from French.
Translation loans are word-for-word(or morpheme-for-morpheme)translation of some foreign words or expressions.In such cases:the notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units,”to take the bull by the horns”(Latin),”fair sex”(French),”living space”(German),etc.
Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed.It can happen when we have two relative languageswhich have common words with different meaning,e.g.,there are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English,such as meaning “to live”for the word “to dwell”in which in Old English had the meaning”to wander”.
Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language into another,so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language,e.g.,we can find a lot of Romanic affixes in the English word-building system , that is why there are a lot
of words_hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin,e.g.,”goddess”,”beautiful”.
Classification of borrowings according to the degree of assimilation.The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors:a)from what group group of languages the word was borrowed,if the word belongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier,b)in what way the word is borrowed:orally or in the written form,words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker,c)how often the borrowing is used in the language,the greater the frequency of its usage,the quicker it is assimilated,d)how long the word lives in the language,the longer it lives,the more assimilated it is.
Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into:completely assimilated,partly assimilated and non-assimilated(barbarisms).
Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in the language,cf.the French word”sport” and the native word”start”.
Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following group:a)borrowings non-assimilated semantically,because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed.e.g.,sari,sombrero,taiga,kvass,etc.
b)borrowings non-assimilated grammatically,e.g.nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms(bacillus-bacilli,phenomenon-phenomena,datum-data,genius-genii etc.
c)borrowings non-assimilated phonetically.Here belong words with the initial sounds/v/ and/z/,e.g.,voice,zero.
Non-assimilated borrowings(barbarisms) are borrowings which are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated,e.g.addio(Italian),tete-a-tete(French),dolce vita(Italian),an home a femme(French),etc.
Classification of Borrowings according to the language from which they were borrowed.Although the mixed character of the English vocabulary can not be denied and the part of borrowing in its development is indded one of great importance,the leading role in the history of this vocabulary belongs to word-formation and semantic changes patterned according to the specific features of the English language system.This system absorbed and remodelled the vast majority of loan words according to its own standards,so that it is sometimes difficult to tell an old borrowing from a native word.Examples are:cheese,street,wall,wine and other words belonging to the earliest layer of Latin borrowings.Many loan words,on the other hand,in spite of the changes they have undergone after penetrating into English,retain some peculiarities in pronunciation,spelling,ortheopy and morphology.
2.2.Assimilation of French words.
The Norman Conquest changed the language situation of the uppermost parts of the upper echelons only. These included the aristocracy, the higher members of the clergy, legal professionals, political circles, and highest economic classes. Here, because of the prestige of French (Norman, not metropolitan French), anybody who wanted to make it, spoke French. As time goes on, there are reports of upper class children learning to speak French as a second language. The language that people wrote was mainly French. It was the language of courtly literature, of Romance [originally a story written in the Romance language, i.e. in this case, French]. An important group of stories in this tradition was those that concerned King Arthur. Although Arthur was probably a Celtic hero, after the Norman Conquest, the stories were taken over and adapted by the Norman ruling class. Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table became the models of the French concepts of chivalry and courtesy.
From the middle of the 13thc onward, French was beginning to be accepted as an alternative language of record. In courts of law, the previous practice with regard to Latin was transferred to French, and the words of people speaking English were recorded in French. This means it’s actually very hard to determine which language people were speaking in court, unless the court recorder explicitly mentions it.
Lower down the social and literacy scales, people spoke English. The local parish priest was likely to speak English, and the magistrate was also likely to speak English. English was everywhere, French was mainly in London, at court, in law and in the church. This left the vast majority of English people English. Unlike the Viking invasions, which affected every level of society, the Norman Conquest mainly affected the top. The proportion of England’s population that was Norman was at the most 2%, way too small for it to shape the whole society.
Despite the fact that there were so few Norman French speakers in England, English absorbed lots of Norman French—spelling, pronunciation, and NB.
Let’s look at the influence of French on the vocabulary, and then examine the social conditions that made French such an important source of borrowing for English.What areas of life were affected or change by French?Administration,law, church, and military; food and drink,fashion,science and learning,etc.
Why did English borrow so many words from Norman French? Compare the situation with the Celtic flight before the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. The key is the Prestige of French—but need to interpret this matter more sensitively—while Norman French was the initial influence, this lasted only a hundred years.
How the French language has influenced the English? A. L. P. Smith has pointed out in his book "The English Language" that "the main additions to the English language, additions so great as to change its character in a fundamental way, were from French, first of all from the Northern French of Norman conquerors and then from the literary and learned speech of Paris." Even before the Norman conquest, the English had become acquainted with the Norman culture and the way of its life, because of the social, political and Ecclesiastical intercourse between the two nations. During the reign of Edward, the confessor, several Norman nobles were placed in important positions in England and the fortified buildings in which they stayed were known as 'castels' (castles), 'capun' (capon) and 'bacun' (bacon) are two other words introduced at the tea time and they serve to suggest the greater luxury of French cooking which was new to the English. After the conquest, we find a stream of French words entering the English vocabulary and they suggest the influence of an occupying power over a conquered people. 'Prisun' (prison), 'tur' (tower), 'market', 'rent', 'justice', etc., have been thus introduced into the English language. After the Norman conquest, we find the 'church', the 'courts of law', the 'arts of war', trade with the 'continent' and the 'pastimes' of the aristocracy becoming Norman-French intermingling. Words like 'battle', 'court', 'countess', 'treasure', 'charity', etc., were derived from French. In the thirteenth century the contact with France was much weakened. Meanwhile the English and the Normans had become merged into one people and in another hundred years English had become accepted as the National language of the country in place of Norman-French. Frenchified terminology became restricted to the court of law. Among the French legal terms which were retained and are still in use are 'plaintiff', 'defendant', 'privilege, etc. The dialect of French that was becoming culturally important was Central or Parisian French. A series of central words like 'chancellor', 'charity', 'chattel', were introduced into English though their Norman French equivalent 'cancelar', 'carited' and 'cattle' were already known to English. Among the French loans from 1100 to 1300 the following words may be taken as representative of different objects- 'prisun', 'chapel', 'grace', 'service', 'miracle', 'religion', 'bataille', 'basin', 'lamp', 'beast', etc. The 14th century witnessed a great increase in the number of French loans. These were no longer limited in use to the educated or upper class but became integral parts of the language. During this period we find that there is a very high proportion of French loan words relating to hunting, cooking and the art of war to English vocabulary. For instance 'colonel', 'lieutenant', 'major', 'captain', etc. have been derived. While French influence on the English language was general and wide spreading during the Middle English period, it was no longer so after the beginning of the 16th century. Though like Latin, French continued to be the source of new words; the French loans after the 15th century were confined to particular classes of technical words restricted in use to the better educated people. The 16th century borrowings, for instance, were mostly technical terms and the common man had little to do with them. The 17th century is significant in the history of the French loans as it was a period of very close contact between the English and the French in matters of literature and social intercourse. One if the subjects which engaged the attention of the satirists and playwrights of Restoration was the indiscriminate imitation of all things French by 'smart set' in London. Words like 'dragoon', 'stockade', 'ballet', 'burlesque', 'tableau', 'chagrin', champagne', 'native', 'forte', 'soup', etc. are the representative of the 17th century borrowings from French. While the 18th century was also rich in the French entrants into English vocabulary, the 19th century was also the richest of all in those. Along with the usual borrowings of the military terms, we find those relating to diplomacy and those called forth by the French Revolution. The loan words of the 18th century are 'guillotine', 'regime', 'bureau', 'canteen', 'picnic', 'police', 'coup', etc. The 19th century witnessed a rich harvest of French loans. These include along with the usual military terms those relating to art and letters, textiles and furniture. 'Barrage', 'communique', 'renaissance', 'restaurant', 'matinee', 'motif', 'menu', 'chauffeur', 'elite', etc. are the examples of the 19th century borrowings. The kind of objects and ideas devoted by the French loans made during the two centuries following the Norman conquest till their own story of the conquering Normans and their authority over the conquered English. Waniba the jester in Scott's "Ivanhoe" points out how the living animals like ox, sheep, chalf, swine and deer have continued to bear their English names even after the conquest while the flesh of these animals used as food has been referred to by French words like 'beef', 'mutton', 'pork', 'bacon', etc. Terms relating to war were naturally adopted from the language of the conquerors. War itself is a French word. So are 'battle', 'assault', 'banner', 'armour', etc. The terms relating to family relationships have also been borrowed from the French. Thus 'uncle', 'nephew', 'niece', 'cousin' have all come from French. The use of the French prefix was extended to 'grandson' and 'granddaughter' in Elizabethan times. 'Mother-in-law' and 'father-in-law', though compounded of English words, are literal translation of Old French designations.
The antipathy towards anything foreign, particularly if it had a papist tinge, shown by the Puritans was replaced by the wish to emulate all that was sophisticated and modern in France in particular. Latin loanwords became less frequent as French loans proliferated.
The proliferation of Fr. loans eventually became a cause of concern and as a result an anti-French faction gradually formed which aimed to check the great influx of words. To be sure, because there was no academy which dealt with such matters like in France often the gentlest of men would disagree over what was polite and proper in usage and what was affected. Even had there been an English academy, I believe that there would have been just as many disagreements because of the transitive term polite, which was the criterion for assessing affectation.