The history of the French influence over the English language

Rybakova Anna S.

The influence of French culture on the development of the English language, especially on its literary aspect, is enormous. For a short period the Norman Conquest made English the language of the lower classes. However, it gradually reemerged as a language with a simplified structure, whose spelling and vocabulary were influenced by both the French language and the French culture. In this article, we analyse some of the groups of lexical borrowings in English that appeared due to the invasion of William the Conqueror.

Keywords:assimilation, dialects, history of the English language, regional peculiarities, French borrowings.