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French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language.It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100 –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years.
Many words in the English vocabulary are of French origin, most coming from the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern English. English words of French origin, such as art, competition, force, machine, and table are pronounced ...
It excludes combinations of words of French origin with words whose origin is a language other than French — e.g., ice cream, sunray, jellyfish, killjoy, lifeguard, and passageway— and English-made combinations of words of French origin — e.g., grapefruit (grape + fruit), layperson (lay + person), mailorder, magpie, marketplace, surrender ...
the acute accent (née) and grave accent (English poetry marking, changèd), modifying vowels or marking stresses; the circumflex (entrepôt), borrowed from French; the diaeresis (Zoë), indicating a second syllable in two consecutive vowels; the tittle, the dot found on the regular small i and small j, is removed when another diacritic is required
The Normans had a strong influence on English personal names. [19] Old English names such as Alfred, Wulfstan, Aelfric, Harold, Godwin and Athelstan largely fell out of fashion and were replaced with Hebrew, Greek, or Christian names, such as John, Peter and Simon, as well as Normanized Germanic names like William, Richard, Henry, Robert, Roger ...
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).
Francophone speakers of Quebec (including Montreal) also have their own second-language English that incorporates French accent features, vocabulary, etc. Finally, the Kahnawake Mohawks of south shore Montreal and the Cree and Inuit of Northern Quebec speak English with their own distinctive accents, usage, and expressions from their indigenous ...
Indian English: Standard Indian English. Indian English: the "standard" English used by government administration, it derives from the British Indian Empire. Butler English: (also Bearer English or Kitchen English), once an occupational dialect, now a social dialect. Hinglish: a growing macaronic hybrid use of English and Indian languages.