Vocabulary 249

4.3.2.1Scandinavian

As has already been mentioned, the majority of the Scandinavian loans make their appearance in Middle English. To these belong many everyday words such as anger, bag, cake, dirt, flat, fog, husband, leg, neck, silver, skin, sky, smile, Thursday, window; happy, ill, low, odd; raise, seem, take, want, etc. In some instances borrowing resulted in doublets, e.g. skirt vs shirt, dike vs ditch, scrub vs shrub, but in many other pairs only one pair member survived the Middle English period, e.g. give vs yive, gate vs yate. Especially remarkable is the fact that function words were also borrowed, e.g. the personal pronouns they, their, them, but also both, same, against, though. Many more loans survived in the English dialects spoken in the original settlement areas of the Scandinavians but have been lost in the emerging standard; for further details see Burnley (1992: 414–23).

4.3.2.2French

French loans were adopted in two stages from two different varieties of French, with the dividing line around 1250. During the first period, the borrowings are less numerous and are more likely to exhibit peculiarities of Norman and Anglo-Norman in their phonology. Moreover, the roughly 900 words borrowed during this period are such that the lower classes would become familiar with them through contact with a French-speaking nobility, e.g. baron, noble, dame, servant, messenger, feast, minstrel, juggler, i.e. they reflect the ‘superiority’ of the French culture. In the period after 1250, the pattern changed: now words were introduced by those who so far had spoken French but now turned to English as their normal, everyday spoken language. This introduced many words related to government and administration, but also words drawn from the domains of fashion, food, social life, art, learning and medicine, and other domains of everyday life. Moreover, the source was now Central French, which had had a different phonological development. This occasionally also led to doublets. The following are examples of the more important differences (the first represents the Norman or AngloNorman form, the second the Central French one): /k/ vs /tʃ/ (catch vs chase), /w/ vs /g/ (wile vs guile, warrant vs guarantee, warden vs guardian), /e, ei/ vs /oi/ (convey vs convoy).

Typical examples representing the areas mentioned above are:

1.Government and administration: authority, court, crown, government, majesty, reign, state; alliance, parliament, treaty; record, revenue, tax; exile, rebel, traitor, treason, liberty, office; chancellor, constable, governor, mayor, treasure; count, duke, madam, mistress, page, peer, prince, peasant, slave; administer, govern, oppress, usurp; royal

2.Ecclesiastical words: clergy, clerk, confession, lesson, prayer, religion, sacrament, sermon, theology; cardinal, chaplain, dean, hermit, parson, vicar, abbey, convent, image, incense, miracle, priory;