French Borrowings in the Modern English Language

МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ

Учреждение образования

"Гомельский государственный университет

имени Франциска Скорины"

Факультет иностранных языков

Кафедра теории и практики английского языка

French Borrowings in the Modern English Language

Курсовая работа

Исполнитель:

студент группы Векшин П.А.

Научный руководитель: Лобанкова Т.А.

Гомель 2006

Contents

Introduction

French borrowings in the modern english language

Conclusion

Biblography

Introduction

A foreign language is not just a

subject learnt in the classroom…

it is something which is used for

communication by real people

in real situations.

We live in Belarus and our native language is Belarusian. Almost all the words are native in our language. But some of them are borrowed from other languages, though they got their meanings, spelling, according to the Belarusian language. I have been learning English since the first form, so English is the third language in which I can communicate a little. Since the sixth form I began to study German, comparing pronunciations of the words, grammar rules, spelling it became easier for me to learn these languages. And I am sure that it is easier to learn several languages comparing them.

Last year I took part in the research work and I got a deeper knowledge of borrowings in English language. And this year I decided to deepen my knowledge in this theme too. So today we would like to present you more information about borrowings in English language. This theme sounds interesting for us and we guess you will be interested in it too.

An international vocabulary in any language changes due to the development of economy, science, education etc. Everything depends on time. The same is in English.

The purpose of our research work is to study French borrowings in the modern English language.

The purpose has defined the following tasks:

try to highlight the oldest words borrowed from French;

compare unique domination of widespread languages in a certain epoch;

show that English is now the most widespread of the word's languages;

discern the influence of the French language in the early modern period;

compare the sound of "Norman English" of the middle ages and the modern variant.

French borrowings in the modern english language

English is a Germanic Language of the Indo-European Family. It is the second most spoken language in the world.

It is estimated that there are 300 million native speakers and 300 million who use English as a second language and a further 100 million use it as a foreign language. It is the language of science, aviation, computing, diplomacy, and tourism. It is listed as the official or co-official language of over 45 countries and is spoken extensively in other countries where it has no official status.

This domination is unique in history. English is on its way to becoming the world's unofficial international language. Mandarin (Chinese) is spoken by more people, but English is now the most widespread of the world's languages.

Half of all business deals are conducted in English. Two thirds of all scientific papers are written in English. Over 70% of all post / mail is written and addressed in English. Most international tourism, aviation and diplomacy are conducted in English.

English contains many words from Norman French, brought to England during the 11th century Norman Conquest.

In 1066 the Normans conquered Britain. French became the language of the Norman aristocracy and added more vocabulary to English. More pairs of similar words arose.

Table 1. French-English bilinguism