Foreign Elements In The English Word

The Foreign Elements in the English Word-Stock

As we all know the most important language in the world is English, which is a language of the Indo-European family, particularly West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. English is the official language of approximately 66 countries; it is the most frequently spoken language in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, and a broadly spoken language in Africa, and South Asia. While more than 60 countries have English as their official language, around 35 of them have made English as their one and only official language. English has become the most important language of international communications and the main language in many areas

What a lot of people don 't know is how much the French language has influenced it. The time where French had the greatest influence on English was during the Norman occupation, which happened in the 11th century. During this time French was the official language in England, used in every field of society, and according to some experts more than 10.000 thousand words were adjusted into English. But because languages evolve every day not all of these words managed to survive even today, but with confidence we can say that 75 percent of them are still in use nowadays. It is estimated that more than a third of English words are of French origin; because of this every English speaker knows some French words even if they never studied French. Something rare but interesting that French influenced in English is the word order of expressions. For example: noun + adjective word order which is a French word order rather than adjective + noun which is an English word order.

Another major influence of French was pronunciation, a good example are fricatives where French made it possible to pronounce voiced fricatives [v], [z], [ð] [ʒ] the opposites of [f], [s], [θ] [∫]. Now we are going to list some English words with French

Achilles was a Greek hero and central character in Homer 's epic poem, The Iliad. He was only vulnerable at his heel. Example sentence: I 'm trying to eat more healthily, but chocolate is my Achilles heel”.” The 'Midas touch ' is another common expression deriving from Greek mythology, which describes a magical ability to succeed at anything one undertakes, the expression originates from a story of King Midas, who is remembered for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. Example sentence: My brother 's business is so successful; he really has the