English, French language

Here is a little less than a thousand years, the Normans conquered England, imposing French as the language of administration. Since then, despite strong reactions, English has continued to Frenchify successive waves. It is often unaware of both sides of the Channel over 80% of English words are French or Latin!
Originally Canadian English, Thora van Male is a lecturer in English at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Grenoble. It dissects his two languages with a mixture of erudition and fun. In The Spirit of the letter (Editions Alternatives, 2007), it tells the history of our alphabet, letter by letter.
For us English, the Norman Conquest has almost no secret. We are proud to see the latest example of successful invasion of England. The symbolic date, 1066, sank in the milk of our mother. Speechless, breathless, children continue to be told, at home or school trip to Bayeux, the history of Anglo-Saxon King Harold, killed by an arrow in the eye at the Battle of Hastings ( 1). But even if the English psyche has included in his subconscious the idea that the feudal ruling class and a French - clergy, nobility, merchants and administrators - then came to overlap with the Anglo-Saxon, the language question remains, she oddly camouflaged. Nobody really recognizes - whisper it! - Formerly the British spoke French.
And indeed, it is always the case. Such is the thesis of the book Thora van Male, generous Liaisons, who observes with irreverent humor and tongue-in-cheek "the tremendous influence of French on English." Van Male is particularly interested in borrowing of vocabulary rather than syntax or spelling, and she opens her book on how the debts were contracted first. It includes words borrowed (...)