Under the influence of the French revolution some political terms have entered the English language,e.g.royalism,despotism,tyranny,democrat,aristocrat,etc.Those words are also international.
Many classical borrowings came into Early NE through French due continous contacts with France,for the French language had adopted many loan-words from classical languages at the time of the Renaissance.Sometimes the immediate source of the loan-word cannot be determined.Thus,the words solid,position,consolation and many others,judging by their form,could be adopted either directly from Latin or from French,having entered the French language some time before:such borrowings are often referred to as “Franco-Latin”.They should not be confused with loan-words from OFr,which usually go back to Latin roots,for French is one one of the descendants of Latin;words borrowed from OFr differ from their Latin prototypes as they have been subjected to many changes in French.Some loan-words from OFr were re-shaped by crudités of the age of Renaissance according to their Latin prototypes though their forms were historically correct,since they were adopted from OFr.This Latinisation in the 15th-16th century produced words like describe in place of Chaucer’s decrive(n),equal instead of egal,language instead of langage,debt,doubt and adventure instead of the earlier dette,doute,aventure.Some corrections even affected the pronunciation:language,adventure.
Adoption of classical words may have been facilitated by the large number of French loan-words in the English language of the 15th and 16th century.This is how O.Jespersen accounts for extensive borrowing of latin words:
“The great historical events,without which this influence would never have assumed such gigantic dimensions was the revival of learning.Through Italy and France the Renaissance came to be felt in England as early as the 14th century,and since then the invasion of classical terms has never stopped,although the multitude of new words introduced was greater,perhaps,in the 14th,the 16th, the 19th,than in the intervening centuries.The same influence is conspicuous in all European languages,but in English it has been strongerthan in any other language,French perhaps excepted.This fact cannot,I think,be principally due to any greater zeal for classical learning on the part of the English than of other nations.The reason seems rather to be that the natural power of resistance possessed by a Germanic tongue against these alien intruders had been already broken in the case of the English language by the wholesale importation of French words.They paved the way for the Latin words which resembled them in so many respects,and they had already created in English minds that predilection for foreign words which made them shrink from consciously coining new words out of native material.If French words were more distingues than English ones,Latin words were still more so,for did not the French themselves go to Latin to enrich their own vocabulary?”
The influx of French words continued and reached new peaks in the late 15th and in the late 17th century.French borrowings of the later periods mainly pertain to diplomatic relations,social life,art and fashions.French remained the international language of diplomacy for several hundred years;Paris led the fashion in dress,food and in social life and to a certain extent in art and literature;finally,the political events in France in the 18th -19th century were of world-wide significance.
All these external conditions are reflected in French loans.Examples of diplomatic terms are attaché,communiqué,dossier;the words ball,beau,cortege,café,coquette,
hotel,picnic,restaurant refer to social life;ballet,ensemble,essay,genre,pertain to art;
military terms are brigade,corps,manoeuvre,marine,police,reconnaissance;fashions in dress and food are illustrated by words like blouse,chemise,corsage,cravat,menu
champagne, soup.Words of miscellaneous character are:comrade, detail, entrance,
essay,machine,moustache,progress,ticket.
As seen from the lists,later French borrowings differ widely from the loan-words adopted in M.E.Most of them have not been completely assimilated and have retained a foreign appearance to the present day-note their spellings,the sounds and the position of the stress.Words like genre and restaurant have nasalized vowels and a French spelling:police,fatigue,marine receive the stress on the last syllable and are pronounced with long [i:] indicated by the letter i like French words;the diagraph ch stands for [ ʃ ] in machine,in beau the letters eau have also retained the sound value of the French prototype [o:].
Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650,mainly through French literature,but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated.There are the following semantic groups of these borrowings:
a)words relating to literature and music: belles-lettres, conservatorie, brochure,
nuance,piruette,vaudeville;
b)words relating to military affairs:corps,echelon,fuselage,manouvre;
c)words relating to building and furniture:entresol,chateau,bureau;
d)words relating to food and cooking:ragout,cuisine,etc.
Let’s summerise what happened in England after Conquest.For 200 years after the Conquest,the language of policy was French.And this was not a demarcation of ethnicity.Numerous English people(those of the upper classes)learned the language through marriage and by association. However, the language of the masses remain-
ed English.Until the beginning of the 13th century,French continued to dominate as the language of nobility.A very close connection existed between the continent and England…the nobility usually held land in both places;therefore,travel between the two was fairly common.
Further,William was no exception to this.In fact when William died,he left Normandy to his eldest son and England to his youngest son,William the Second.Later Normandy and England were under one ruler,but not until Henry the First.Under Henry the Second,English ”possessions” in France were even further broadened and enhanced.
When Henry the 2nd marries Eleanor of Aquitaine,he increased his holdings so that by the time he became King of England,he controlled about 2/3 of France.From William the Conqueror through Henry the 2nd,most kings spent at least 2/3 of their time in France.And besides Henry I,no other English king married an Englishwoman until Edward the 4th in the 1460.The perpetuation of French was on.Too much time and too much money were invested in France for the nobility not to have,as a natural course of events,used French as the language.No evidence exists to suggest that English was a “hated”language.Most probably very little attention was paid to it because classes simply did not mix.Fusion of the French and English-over time,the two”cultures”assimilated and adjusted to one another. Some nobility spoke English. This would be a natural occurrence.Some clergy preserved English. Some of educated, the nobility, and
clergy,then representing the upper social strata,were bilingual.Knights learned French.Merchants spoke both French and English.Managers (sheriffs,bailiffs,etc.) on large estates were bilingual.For the most part,bilingualism extended only down to the middle class.Bilingual as used above does not indicate fluency.In 1204 King John “lost” Normandy.He fell in love with a French noblewoman-Isabel of Angouleme.He married her hastily without regard for her other suitor(to whom she was already engaged),Hugh of Lusignan.Hugh was the head of a very powerful and ambitious family,but John chose to ignore these connections and,in anticipation of retaliation for stealing Isabel,attacked Hugh’s family.Hugh appeals to the King of all France,Philip,and Philip took advantage of the situation to “embarrass”the duke of Normandy (and King of England),John.Since John was extremely irritating to Philip,it was with great delight that Philip summoned John to appear before him,answer charges,and submit to the judgement of the court.John maintained that,as King of England,he was exempt from subjugation and did not appear at his trial.Hence,Philip stripped John of his “dukedom” and invaded Normandy.Philip succeded,and Normandy returned solely to the French.John lost support:he was viewed as a scoundrel.There was even thought(with some basis) that he had his own cousin,prince Arthur,murdered.
With the loss of Normandy (some holdings were left in the south of France) many nobles had to decide where their allegiance lay…France or England. Philip,
and later louis,helped solve this problem: he confiscated the land of many nobles.Those who still had holdings in both places were forced to give up one or the other.There were some that were divided up by Philip,and in some instances,the nobles kept their larger landholdings in England and gave up the lesser in Normandy.
By 1250 the holdings had been divided or the choice made to hold land either in England or Normandy,and by 1250,there was no real reason for using French.During the breakup of holdings,an influx of French from south was also oc-
curing during the reign of Henry the 3rd:
1.in 1233 under Peter des Roches(a Frenchman made bishop of Winchester and later chancellor).
2.in 1236 when Henry married Eleanor of Provence,and he gave her many,many relative land and positions.
3.the last in 1246.
Henry the 3rd’s reign was full of excesses and liberties.He freely gave to foreigners-land,etc,and encouraged their influx.The hostilities that insued were,in large part,due to Henry’s catering to the French.Resentment of the foreigners and of Henry was the attitude of the day.
Opposition to foreigners helped promote national feeling.Drove the barons and middle class together in a common cause.Ironically,one leader of the cause was Simon de Monfort-a Norman by birth.In line with these feelings,then,some knowledge of English would be regarded as desirable.
Though England was beginning to unite,this did not mean French was given up overnight.In fact,French was considered ”the” language of the continent.Even Germans and Italians spoke French.In the 13th century French continued to be spoken by the upper class in England,but not for different reasons.No longer the “mather” tongue,French was spoken as a matter of social custom and administrati-
ve convention.Because French use was fading and English use becoming prevalent,the impact of “borrowing” French vocabulary is major.When an English term was unknown and needed to be expressed,a French word or phrase was used.
One the whole English use was steady.By the middle of the 13th century,French is considered as a foreign language.Some attempt to preserve French existed in the clergy and from scholars,but not much.The French that had been spoken among “Englishmen”was considered by Francophiles to be a”backard” and butchered dialect.The 100 years’War-promoted national unity against the French to a very instense degree.Because the English came to”hate” the French,the French language was used less and less.
The rise of the middle class-with the outbreak of “The Black Death” in 1348,approximately 30% of the population died.This brought a shortage of labor;consequently,the economic importance of the working class grew.Since English was the language of the common laborer,its use become even more widespread.
By the beginning of the 14th century,English was once again the dominant language.Further,in 1362 Parliament enacted a law requiring all lawsuits to be conducted in English.English is,then,officially recognized.From here,the use of English filtered down to other branches of government and law.
Henry V’s reign from 1413-1422 marked a turning point in English as a written language.Henry used English in writing letters,and the practice diffused among the English people.French literature was not so easily replaced,though,by English literature.Most of the literature in Middle English comes in the form of religious.The diffusion of the hate language does extend eventually to literature.Chaucer(1340-1400),Langland(Piers Plowman),and the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight emerge,leading to the labeling of writing at the time as The Period of Great individual Writing(1350-1400).
The 15th century literature of England becomes known as the Imitative Period or Transition Period,the period of imitators of Chaucer and before Shakespeare.
French influence led to different kinds of changes in the vocabulary.Firstly,there were many innovations,i.e.names of new objects and concepts,which enlarged the vocabulary by adding new items.Secondly,there were numerous replacements of native words by French equivalents,which resulted in a shift in the ratio of Germanic and Romance roots in the language,e.g.the loan-words very,river,peace,
Easy displaced the native OE swiþe,ēa,friþ,ēaþe.The adoption of a word synonymous with a native word did not necessarily lead to replacement .Most frequently the co-existance of a borrowed and native synonym ended in their differentiation,they were both retained as they differed in style, dialect, shades of meaning or combinability.This third kind of influence enriched the English vocabulary even more than the adoption of pure innovations.The influx of French words-as well as the later borrowing of Latin words-is one of the main historical reasons for the abudance of synonyms in ModE.The difference between the native and borrowed words often lies in their stylistic connotations:French loan-words,particularly those which were adopted in Late ME(and later)preserve a more
bookish,literary character;hence such pairs of words as French commence native begin,conceal-hide,prevent-hinder,search-look for,odour-smell,desire-wish.
Since the French loan-words of the ME period were completely assimilated,it is not easy to identify a French borrowing and to distinguish it from native words or borrowings from other languages.Some French loan have retained their bookish character,but this stylistic connotation is even more typical of later borrowings from classical languages (cf. e.g.sorrow,sorry-native, grief-French, affliction-L).
Many French words are polysyllabic,but so are many native words and borrowings from other languages.More reliable criteria are French suffixes and prefixes frequently occurring in borrowed words:-ment,-ty,-ion,re-,de- and others;and yet,since they came to be employed as derivational means in English and yielded new specifically English words,they cannot serve as absolutely reliable marks of French words.In order to understand this sphere of borrowings from French one must bear in mind that the first loans were to be found in the upper classes who spoke Anglo-Norman.This fact led to French loans being automatically placed on a level above the normal everyday English vocabulary.Up to the present-day this characteristic of French words in English has remained.While it is true that some of the common French borrowings have become part of the basic stock of English vocabulary.(cf.air,age,cry,change,large,manner,mountain,place,point,village,voice) a large quantity of words has remained on a stylistically higher level alongside the lower English terms.
Every language is in a state of flux and subject to variation and change in phonology,morphology,and syntax.The vocabulary was assimilated.With the advent of new vocabulary,some loss of the old will occur.Two things may occur:1)the old word becomes obsolete and disappears although or 2)the old word becomes archaic and is used by older speakers,but may drop out completely later.These are not mutually exclusive process.
The influence of the French language on the English vocabulary was extremely great,and though the English language remained Teutonic,more than a half of its words are of French origin.
CHAPTER III
The French Influence on Middle English Phonology.
Assimilation of French words by the speakers of English was a more difficult process than assimilation of Scandinavian words.The French language belonged to a different linguistic group and had very little in common with English.The Norman Conquerors of England had originally come from Scandinavia.About one hundred and fifty years before they scized the valley of the Scine and settled in what was henceworth known as Normandy.They were swiftly assimilated by the French and in the 11th century came to Britain as French speakers and bearers of French culture.They spoke the Northern dialect if French,which differed in some points from Central,Parisian French.Their tongue in Britain is often referred to as “Anglo-Norman”,but may just as well be called French,since we are less concern-
ed here with the distinction of French dialects than with continuous French influence upon English,both in Norman period of history and a long while after the Anglo-Norman language had ceased to exist.
The Conquest of England by the Normans was the third invasion of this island by a Teutonic race from countries across the German Sea;for the Normans were closely related both to the Anglo-Saxons and to their Danish Conquerors,and originally they spoke a language allied to the Anglo-Saxon.But they had travelled far,and acquired much,since they had left their remote Scandinavian birthplace.For 150 years before they came to England they had been settled in Normandy,where they had lost almost all memory of their original speech,and adopted a new religion,a new system of law and society,new thoughts and a new manners.They therefore came practically as Frenchmen to their English and Danish cousins;and it was the speech of French,the civilization of France that they had brought with them.But the speech of France was a very different language from Modern French as we know it;indeed there was not,at this time,any recognized and classical French,but only a number of dialects;among which that of Normandy was the one which was first introduced into England.These French dialects were descended from the popular and collequal Latin once common in most of the Roman Provinces,but which underwent divers changes in various regions-changes which have produced the various related forms of speech-French,Italian,Spanish,etc-which are united under the common name of Romance languages.These Latin words suffered many transformations in becoming French;many of the consonant and vowels were so unchanged,and the words were so shortened and clipped by the omission of unaccented syllables,that their connexion with their Latin ancestors is often not very apparent.As later in the history of England many of these words came into the language in forms more nearly approaching their Latin originals,we can see by comparing them with those adopted from the French,after they had undergone the process of phonetic decay, how greatly they had been changed in that process.Thus compute and count both descended from the Latin computare,secure and sure,blaspheme and blame,dominion and dungeon,dignity and dainty,codence and chance are others among these”doublets”,as they are called,in which the longer form of the word in each case is more directly from the Latin,while the shorter has suffered a French transformation.