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English words of French origin can also be distinguished from French words and expressions used by English speakers. Although French is derived mainly from Latin, which accounts for about 60% of English vocabulary either directly or via a Romance language, it includes words from Gaulish and Germanic languages, especially Old Frankish. Since ...
This is because the English word was not borrowed directly from French or Old French, but from some of the northern langue d'oïl dialects such as Picard and Norman, where the original "w" sound was preserved (the majority of these words are words of Germanic origin, and stem mainly from either the Frankish language, or other ancient Germanic ...
Generally, words coming from French often retain a higher register than words of Old English origin, and they are considered by some to be more posh, elaborate, sophisticated, or pretentious. However, there are exceptions: weep , groom and stone (from Old English) occupy a slightly higher register than cry , brush and rock (from French).
In French, les objets trouvés, short for le bureau des objets trouvés, means the lost-and-found, the lost property. outré out of the ordinary, unusual. In French, it means outraged (for a person) or exaggerated, extravagant, overdone (for a thing, esp. a praise, an actor's style of acting, etc.); in that second meaning, belongs to "literary ...
French was the prestige language during the Norman occupation of the British Isles, causing many French words to enter English vocabulary. [11] Their language also contributed common words, such as how food was prepared: boil , broil , fry , roast , and stew , as well as words related to the nobility: prince , duke , marquess , viscount , baron ...
Cognates also do not need to look or sound similar: English father, French père, and Armenian հայր (hayr) all descend directly from Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr. An extreme case is Armenian երկու ( erku ) and English two , which descend from Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ ; the sound change *dw > erk in Armenian is regular.
Nine state capitals are French words or of French origin (Baton Rouge, Boise, Des Moines, Juneau, Montgomery, Montpelier, Pierre, Richmond, Saint Paul) - not even counting Little Rock (originally "La Petite Roche") or Cheyenne (a French rendering of a Lakota word). Fifteen state names are either French words / origin (Delaware, New Jersey ...
In English this is most common in borrowings from Latin, and borrowings from French that are themselves from Latin; less commonly from Greek directly and through Latin. In case of borrowing cognate terms, rather than descendants, most simply an existing doublet can be borrowed: two contemporary twin terms can be borrowed.