What Influence did French have on English During the Middle English Period? (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: This term paper is going to examine the occurrence and the influence of French words on English language. The French language has always played a significant role in English. According to Scheler, 38 per cent of English words are of French origin. This high amount leads to the result that almost half of the English vocabulary are of French origin. Due to this striking high set of statistics, the reasons for this will be examined in this paper. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of French language on English language during the medieval period. This fact has been particularly pronounced over the last decades. Thus, French had influenced the English lexicon a lot due to the Norman invasion. Where two languages exist side by side for a long time, a huge delivery of words from one language to the other is inevitable. A lot of Old English words were replaced by borrowed items, from the French language. Hence, French remnants can be found a lot in English language. In certain cases, there are striking similarities between both languages, which is interesting to analyse.

First, it starts with a short introduction of the historical background from the French influence on the English language. French influence is direct and observable upon the vocabulary. There will be some examples of borrowed word fields. Regardingly, derivational affixes from Old French into Middle English play a leading role in this term paper as well. In addition, the focus will also be set on the phonological difference between Norman French and Parisian French and on their influence on English language. The development of these words and their loan into the English language are enormous. Throughout the investigation, one can assume that French had influenced English the most in terms of lexicon, vocabulary and suffixation. If William the Conqueror had not invaded England in 1066, the vocabulary of English language would have looked very different. There would have existed a lot of Old English vocabulary in present day English.