why there are a lot of french words in English vocabulary?

Answer 1

In 1066 William of Normandy, who spoke a form of French known as Anglo-Norman, became the king of England, and for around 300 years, this was the "official" language of the court, widely spoken amongst the nobility, although Middle English continued to be the language spoken by the huge majority of the population, including most of the nobility on a day to day basis. Many English words which come from Old French are due to this influence - pork, beef and mutton for example (the words for meat, which was eaten mainly by the nobility, whereas the corresponding words for the animals themselves, swine, cows and sheep, which were looked after by the peasants, come from the anglo-saxon). Even after this period, for a while England maintained territories in France, and individuals remained land-owners in France, with plenty of resulting travel and trade to keep French as easily the most widely spoken foreign language in England, which it remains even today.

As has already been pointed out, some words which appear to be French actually come direct from Latin to both French and English.

The third main reason is that English has always been extremely accommodating of words from other languages - words from many different languages exist in English, often without us realising. This is usually because they have a meaning for which no corresponding word exists in English, or where the closest translation has a different meaning which we want to avoid. Given that French is the most widely spoken foreign langauage in England, it's natural that more of the borrowing came from there than elsewhere.

Answer 2

We English have a very long history compared to America or Australia and the Country has many European ties, the French have ruled us and us them many times, Remember William the Conquerer! As the Romans also invaded us before that along with the Vikings and lots of others, English has many words from many languages and language evolves constantly.The Romans spread Latin throughout Europe so lots of words have the same roots as the French,German etc. We did it slowly but American's are bar the Native tribes all immigrants from not just England but all over the world!French and English were the First so American English isn't completly the same language and if we didn't have global communication it would have evolved to be even more different but now If we don't blow ourselves off the planet perhaps one day it will be a truely universal language!

Answer 3

English belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family--a fact that will become more apparent if you try reading some Old English. ("Old English," also known as Anglo-Saxon, is the English language of 1000 years ago, not that of Shakespeare or later.) Old English will remind you of German. Even today's English has quite a few similarities to German. In Brahms's German Requiem, the Biblical quotation "All Fleisch ist Grass" is used several times. You might think you were hearing English! But you're right: a LOT of English words came from French and Latin! Some Latin words came into English very early, since the island of Britain had been a Roman province until shortly before the first Anglo-Saxons arrived there, and since England was the first Germanic country to which Rome sent Christian missionaries. (Well, the Franks were converted earlier, but they ceased to be German in a couple of centuries, too.) Then in 1066, the Norman Conquest had a drastic effect on English, which more or less went underground as a written language for a century or so, while French was the official language of the country. When English re-emerged, it had acquired a great many French words and had become grammatically simpler. Over the following centuries, more French and Latin words came into English as parts of scientific and other scholarly terminology. However, the fact remains that English originated as a Germanic language. It still uses auxiliary verbs to form the future tense, and it still puts adjectives before the nouns they modify. I sometimes compare English to a person who has been adopted by a family of a different ethnicity. The person grows up talking, thinking, and acting like his adoptive family, but his DNA is still that of his biological parents.

Answer 4

It was because of the Norman Conquest in 1066. The Normans spoke French and for centuries, the upper classes spoke that language while the lower classes spoke English. Over time, the two languages began to merge and so a lot of French words came into the English vocabulary. This happens when one country occupies another for a long time. For example, Spanish has a lot of Arabic words in it. This was the result of the Moors (who came from Northern Africa and spoke Arabic) being in Spain for 700 years

Answer 5

The French words came into the English vocabulary when the Normans invaded England from Normandy in France

Answer 6

I think you should also be asking why the French have taken a lot of English words...

'Le weekend' for example

I think the anglicisation of French words happened when WIlliam the Conqueror came to England in 1066, or when Latin came to England, and then evolved into English. It's just a guess though, you would need to look into it.

Answer 7

What really upsets the French is how many English words there are in their vocabulary!

Answer 8

The French had a great deal of influence in our country during it's baby years and there are some things just not said better any other way....and we use a lot of French things wines and breads I can't spell etc, we also use other countries words because there people brought them with them when they came.... we have, 'pardon my french' bastardized about every countries words to make up the American English we use today....

Answer 9

Blame it on the Normans (1066 and all that). They tried to impose French on the English after the death of Harold, but gave it up as a bad job. It seems that even then the English were not very good at learning foreign languages.

Answer 10

Years ago, at a grammar school in UK, I was able to learn five languages simply because I studied Latin. French was one of those Romance languages, but I did tend later on to focus on it because I love that particular language. I have a really dear friend called Francoise, who is French, and one day she told me that my French was better than hers! She meant that it was better grammatically, that's all. She was brought up in the south of France, then in Paris in one of the roughest suburbs.
Anyway ... put it down to Latin.