How ancient french dialects have impacted today’s english

WE LOOK AT SOME OF THE MODERN-DAY ENGLISH WORDS AND THEIR ROOTS IN AN OLD DIALECT OF FRENCH There are many English and French words which have similar structures despite being different

types of languages. English is a West Germanic language while French is a Latin one, meaning the way they are constructed is different. However, although English mainly stems from West

Germanic, it borrows around 28% of its words from French and a further 28% from Latin. As a result, there are often similarities in meaning and in appearance between certain French and

English words. READ ALSO: PROVENÇAL PRONUNCIATION: HOW DOES IT DIFFER FROM STANDARD FRENCH? This is frequently true of words in French that begin with ‘gu’ and words in English that begin

with ‘w’. Examples are ‘war’, which means _guerre_; ‘wardrobe’, which translates as _garde-robe_ and ‘William’, which equals _Guillaume_. These English words derived from a dialect from

Northern France at the time of the Norman Conquest. As with many northern French dialects, this particular one came from a Germanic language, Frankish. Frankish was a West-Germanic language

spoken by the Franks from the 5th to the 9th century. In the northern French dialect which borrowed from Frankish, these words originally started with a ‘w’, like their modern-day English

counterparts. For example, in Frankonian, _guerre_ (war) was ‘werra’. Meanwhile, in non-northern French dialects the ‘w’ sound became a ‘gu’. It is largely from non-Northern dialects that

modern French was established, meaning that in the language we speak today, we have taken the ‘gu’ forms rather than the ‘w’ forms. READ ALSO: 14 WORDS THAT CHANGE DEPENDENT ON WHERE YOU ARE

IN FRANCE It is thought that modern French has taken around 1000 stems from Old Frankonian. . This means that certain words in English and French have both derived from the Frankish

dialect, explaining their similarities. Other examples include _guepe_ meaning ‘wasp’ and both ‘warden’ and ‘guardian’, which English has borrowed from the French gardien. In this case,

‘warden’ was used in older English, therefore following the same format as guerre/war, while ‘guardian’ was taken more recently and keeps more faithful to the French origins. RELATED

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