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stranger
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stranger
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This has been a topic I've thought about ever since I took a Teaching Company course on the History of the English Language. I got to thinking about the fact that much of the English language is French based due to the Norman conquest in 1066. Much of our legal vocabulary is of French origin (appeal, plea, justice, evidence, etc). But these words sound English to us. Others don't even though they are part of English now, like a la carte and art nouveau. What I'm wondering is what is the last French word that has been absorbed into English that no longer sounds French to us? How long does it take for a word to lose its foreignness?
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
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That would be really hard to trace. And I think it never looses it's foreignness, only we no longer notice it.
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newbie
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newbie
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And I think it never looses it's foreignness, only we no longer notice it. What is the difference?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'm not quite sure how one would even measure the "foreignness" of a loanword. Perhaps have a text for people to read out loud and see how they pronounce some loanwords, or if they hesitate before the words or phrases. If people pronounce a word by naturalizing its "foreign" pronunciation into something more accommodating to English phonetics, that word has probably been "anglicized". Although some words never seem to lose their "foreignness", e.g., deja vu (even if it has lost its accents), schadenfreude (part of whose definition seems to include the German language or the German people).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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And I think it never looses it's foreignness, only we no longer notice it. What is the difference? And I think it never looses it's foreigness, only we got used to it. That any better gooofy?
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Beef might be a good example of a loanword having lost its foreignness. It's taken on the good English plural beeves.
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ha, beeves and beverages. We're used to the word 'beverages' but just give beverage one second look and it makes you laugh.
It's taken on the good English plural beeves
Do you really consider words that passed from English to American as loanwords too? It's all English to me.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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It's taken on the good English plural beeves
Do you really consider words that passed from English to American as loanwords too? It's all English to me.
is from the Old French buef, (Modern French boeuf). The f > v in the plural is from the Old English voicing of unvoiced consonants between vowels, cf. wife/ wives, knife/ knives.
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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And in France when you want a steak you can order a 'steak de boeuf' but more often it's just 'bifteck'. That's what makes languages an amusing thing.
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Joined: Mar 2012
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stranger
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stranger
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Re etymology of mayday/m'aidez: I think the "m'" stems from "moi", as in "aidez-moi", not from "me", tho the meaning's the same ...
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