French in England | news

Ever since our benevolent sovereign bowed out on September 8, the media has frantically tried to relive every moment of British mourning. Personally, I was struck by the very French, vocabulary that refers to card in English. Here is a sample from it Gazette September 15, the journey of the royal remains is told (underlining mine).

” Tea Coffin was Wrapped up In Royal Standard And is number one Imperial State Crown — Embedded With nearly 3000 Diamonds – and the UN cluster of Flowers and plants, incl Pine From Balmoral EstateElizabeth died there September At 8 o’clock age 96. (Translation: The coffin was draped with royal standards and covered with the Imperial State Crown – encrusted with nearly 3,000 diamonds – and a bouquet of flowers and plants, including pines from the Balmoral estate, where Elizabeth died on September 8, 96.)

According to the Oxford Dictionary, all the underlined words are of French origin. I might add Plants” and ” Including », but my Oxford method: it is a direct borrowing from Latin, the usage of which has been influenced by French. Of the 44 words in this extract, 15 are of French origin. The same thing is repeated throughout the text.

English has borrowed heavily from French since William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, invaded England and seized the throne in 1066. Since then, the French have been providing An astonishing amount of words in English In almost all fields of activity. According to linguists, between a quarter and half of the current English vocabulary is of French origin.

English tells us a lot about French history because it fossilized French usages that have now disappeared. Nowadays, for example, French speakers say “foreigner, bièvre, estriver” rather than “forrain, bièvre, estriver”, but English speakers ” Foreign, Otter, to live “. The French no longer say “Malle” for “Korean” but ” Email Common in English.

Many seemingly English words and names are French: The Mall, the avenue separating Buckingham Palace from Trafalgar Square, was originally the field for the “game of mail,” the ancestor of golf and croquet.

French novel

Since there was no French language at the time of the Norman Conquest, at least for the first two centuries, it would be more accurate to speak of the words “from France” rather than “from the French.”

In France, dialects derived from Latin were spoken, referred to interchangeably as “Roman”. In the north of France, “ye” was later pronounced “oil”, so the term “oil’s language” refers to the dialects of the north: Norman, Picard, Champagne, Orleans and Walloon, to which Francois was added late. Anglo-Norman. In the south, “am” is like “oc”: the term “langue d’oc” refers to Provençal, Dauphinois, and Limousin, but whether the category includes Catalan and Bernois (now called Gascon) is debatable. Nowadays, all the dialects of the Languages ​​d’Oc are grouped under the name “Occitan”.

During the first century of the French presence in England, English creditors were mainly Normans and Picards. But the Anglo-Normans and the Francois soon took over. A new dialect that gradually emerged around Paris during this period was a new dialect that developed as a language between Picard, Norman, Orleans and Champagne. As for Anglo-Norman, it was actually spoken in a variety of Norman England under strong Francois influence, also known as English French.

Law 101, An English Tradition

The entire English polity, from monarchy to parliament, was Frenchized by French words—”parliament, judge, court, estate, standard”—for the simple reason that the aristocracy, clergy, and bourgeoisie were largely French for three centuries after William. He wisely reorganized the kingdom and established his people in all the districts and duchies.

But despite heavy borrowing from the French, England was never Frenchized, particularly because the population remained English and a section of the upper classes forced the English to withdraw politically from the French crown again. The movement’s founding act occurred during the reign of Edward III with the English Pleading Act of 1362, which can be translated as the “English Pleading Act”.

The head of research for the development of French-speaking culture in North America at Laval University offers an adaptation of the original French version: “In the same way, great damage was often shown to the king, because it happened to many people of the kingdom. , the customs and laws of the said kingdom are not generally known, because they are very little known in the French kingdom. are pleaded, expressed, and judged in the language, and the said laws and customs shall be speedily learned, known, and well understood, in the language used in the said kingdom. The King has ordained and established that all pleas shall be argued, stated, argued, argued, and judged in English, and recorded and transcribed in Latin. . »

Although Anglo-Canadians are used to harshly criticizing Quebec language laws, I’ve always wondered how the British don’t often recall what they did in Quebec 615 years ago. In fact, they practically invented language conservation laws.

Obviously, the British crown has become English. Edward III’s grandson, Richard II, became sovereign in 1377 and was the last monarch of England whose mother tongue was French. His cousin and successor, Henry IV, who was crowned in 1399, was brought up in English.

Despite laws and wars, parliament and justice continued to function in French for more than three centuries. This explains why French is everywhere in the English language and in the culture of Anglophones. Henry V, who fought in France, chose “God and my right” as his battle cry, which became the motto of the crown. But as another motto so well says, in the spelling of the Order of the Garter, XIV^e Centenary: “Harm to think wrong about it”!