English words taken from Old French

[wholesaleblogger]

Prompted from another post about the history of the English language. I got to thinking about what words used in English come from other languages perhaps because we were invaded, for example by the Romans, Vikings and later the Normans.

Here is a link to old French words that are now used (modified) for English. quite interesting

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/words-and-language/word-origins/words-from-french,9,HCB.html

[limon]

Awesome. That's one of the fun things about English, it is full of other languages!

[DiesIrae]

Nice link. That's also probably why English can help you learn other European language, it has similar or similar-sounding words with the other languages. I'm surprised though at the number of words derived from old French. I didn't think those had French origins.

[zambothegreat]

I had learnt in high school that a lot of English terms for food and terms related to food derive from French, but it's interesting to see them in a list like that. There's also "banana", which derives from "banane"; "dinner", which derives from "diner" (the i should have a ^ where the dot is); and baguette.

[limon]

Well, banana is a West African word originally, I think. So I suspect the English only got it from the French after the French borrowed it from one of their colonial possessions.

[mccanono]

English is a very interesting language. It is a language where all languages meet. Haha

From Latin, Spanish, French, and all other languages; you would always hear them being used in the English language.

[justusforus]

I always though most English words were derive from the Latin or Greek words.  Thanks for the link.  I wonder if anyone has ever figured out what language the majority of English words are derived from?  Now you have me thinking.  I guess I will pay more attention to the derivation source when I look words up.

[limon]

Well English is a Germanic language, so not related to Greek though they both have Indo-European roots.

Obviously languages cross-pollinate a *lot*, so charts and trees don't tell the whole story, but here are a couple that show the major divisions;

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/IE_Main3_both.html

http://gn250.pbworks.com/w/file/35414189/Language+Tree.gif

[Monox D. I-Fly]

On 10/7/2013 at 4:35 PM, limon said:

Awesome. That's one of the fun things about English, it is full of other languages!

Try Bahasa Indonesia. About 90% of its vocabulary is borrowed from various other languages.