The Influence Anglo-Norman French Had On English
The major Norman-French influence on English can still be seen in today's vocabulary. An enormous number of Norman-French words came into the language, and about three-quarters of them are still used today. Very often, the Norman-French word supplanted the Anglo-Saxon term. Or both words would co-exist, but with slightly different nuances, for example ox (describing the animal) and beef (describing the meat). In other cases, the Norman-French word was adopted to signify a new reality, such as judge, castle, warranty.
In general, the Norman-French borrowings concerned the fields of culture, aristocratic life, politics and religion, and war, whereas the English words were used to describe everyday experience. When the Normans arrived in England, their copyists wrote English as they heard it, not realizing that there was no correspondence between the Anglo-Saxon pronunciation and spelling, and in this way the spelling changed. There appeared different regional Modern-English written dialects, of which the one that the king chose in the 15th century became the standard variety.
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