age, air, arm, boil, calm, chaise, clear, course, crime , etc.
It is necessary to distinguish between loan words from the Norman dialect and
those from the central dialect of France (that came into English later and mostly
through writing). The Normans were of Scandinavian origin and that‘s why their
French had some phonetical peculiarities. Thus:
the [
oi ] diphthong of the central dialect corresponded to [
ei ] in the Norman
dialect, e.g.
voile (Centr.) – veile (Nor.) the Central
eu corresponded to the Norman
u, ou :
fleur - flour- flower (E) the
Central
ch ,
j corresponded to the Norman
k, g :
jardin – gardin – garden (E) words of Germanic origin in the Norman dialect retain the initial
w while in the
central dialect the initial
w developed into
gw, gu :
guerre – werre – war. Among later
French borrowings we find numerous Latin and Greek words which entered the
English Vocabulary in the epoch of the French bourgeois revolution, e.g.
democrat, aristocrat, revolutionary, revolutionize, royalism ;
law terms : accuse, amend, justice,
plaintiff, prison, jury, etc;
military terms : army, peace, assault, lieutenant, officer,
sergeant;
religious terms: chaplain, faith, saint, clergy, pray
, preach, sermon
; terms of rank : duke, duchess, prince, baron;
terms of art and architecture : colour, image,
design, paint, garment, tower, column, mansion.
In the 18-th century were borrowed words connected with literature: novelist,
publisher, magazine, editor, etc.
Later adoptions are characterized by the following phonetical
peculiarities: a). Keeping the stress on the last syllable, e.g.
finance, supreme; b).
