1380984377.3491A History of English Language

A history of the english language 164
making itself felt outside the capital and it is probable that the French of England was
gradually modified in the direction of conformity with that dialect. In spite of Chaucer’s
jest about the French of Stratford-at-Bow and the undoubted fact that the French of
England was ridiculed by those who spoke the dialect of the Ile-de-France, we know that
English children were at times sent abroad to correct their accent and that there was much
travel to the continent. All this could not have been without some effect in making the
forms of Central French more familiar in England. There was moreover the constant
influence of French literature. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that as time went on
and the use of French in England became more artificial, a larger share of the English
borrowing was from Central French. This was more particularly the case in the fifteenth
century when the less popular character of many of the words borrowed suggests that
they came more often through literary than through colloquial channels. 21
132. Popular and Literary Borrowings.
There can be little doubt that a large proportion of the words borrowed from French were
thoroughly popular in character, that is, words current in the everyday French spoken in
England. At the same time the importance of literature is not to be underestimated as a
means of transfer. So much of Middle English literature was based directly on French
originals that it would have been rather exceptional if English writers had consistently
resisted the temptation to carry French words over into their adaptations. Layamon
resisted, but most others did not, and when in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
French words were being taken by the hundreds into the popular speech, the way was
made easier for the entrance of literary words as well. Although literature was one of the
channels by which French words entered English all through the Middle English period,
in the fifteenth century it became the principal source. Words like adolescence, affability,
appellation, cohort, combustion, destitution, harangue, immensity, ingenious,
pacification, representation, sumptuous betray their learned or bookish origin, and in the
works of Caxton at the end of the century new words like aggravation, diversify, furtive,
prolongation, and ravishment abound. The number of such words entering the language
at this time is probably no greater than in the preceding century, but they are more
prominent because the adoption of popular words was now greatly curtailed by the
practical disappearance of French as a spoken language in England.
133. The Period of Greatest Influence.
Some time elapsed after the Norman Conquest before its effects were felt to any
appreciable degree by the
21
There is a discussion of the Central French element in English in Skeat, Principles of English
Etymology, Second Series (Oxford, 1891), chap. 8.