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Saturday Quiz: English and French (April 19, 2008) Readers Journal has been updated with more great thought-provoking comments (and I do mean provocative!) and excellent new essays by Steve R. Schizoid Boundary Condition and Michael Goodfellow, Employment Penalties. Read these two essays--they are quite different but equally thoughtful. Q:How much of the English language is derived from French? A: About 30%. From The English language (wikipedia)
Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (though pronunciations are often quite different) because English absorbed a large vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman conquest and directly from French in subsequent centuries. As a result, a large portion of English vocabulary is derived from French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.).Examples of French-based words include formidable and casserole.
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