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English is a barbarian language with French nouns, as a result of the Norman conquest of England.

Amusingly, using the French words is a signal to being upper class. Such as "purchase" (pourchacier) instead of "buy" (byan).



Or stuff like "cow" (from Old English) vs "beef" (from Old French). Which kinda makes sense when you consider who grew meet vs who ate it.

It's a pretty common thing worldwide, though. French played a similar role as upper class marker in many other countries that were influenced by it when France was at the peak of its global dominance. For Slavic languages, German also played this role at one point, and IIRC there is something similar historically with Chinese in areas in its cultural dominance.


Cutlery (fr), silverware (de)

I was taught that this is because the Normans pushed the Germanics out and up north. French dominated the royal court.


All non-Greek languages are barbarian, since apparently it sounds like we are saying barbarbar to the ancient Greeks.


Imagine how those Greeks resented scribes trying to separate words and phrases with spaces on precious vellum!

Those crazy Masoretic Jews trying to pollute sacred texts with vowels... You're just supposed to know them!

Punctuation was probably introduced by leaky quills dripping until someone put a positive spin on it.

What twist of fate gave us ampersands? Lets keep Ye Olde English pure! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Modern_English




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