Michael Everson wrote:
>
> Languages don't mess with languages. People mess with languages.
Useful reminder, but obviously it is an image just as much as when we
say French has enriched or polluted English.
>>> It isn't as if French hasn't been polluting English for a thousand
>>> years or anything, is it?!
>>>
>> No, no, no. French has enriched English, not polluted it, by
>> bestowing it a wealth of new words. I wonder if we could start the
>> millenium celebration of this wonderful hybridization before 2066?
>
>
> Yes. French has given us things like "fin de siècle".
If it were only those visible words! The influence goes much deeper and
most English speakers are unaware of it (flower, fail, faith, round,
vow, discard, deny, easy, difficult, cream, etc.).
> And English has given you "le weekend".
No, some French in France have borrowed this word. You will know that in
Quebec, as in the rest of the Latin world, we use a native form: "fin de
semaine" ("fin de la semaine" being the end of the week).
To close this off-topic discussion, I do firmly believe that foreign
loan-words taken with their original spelling (geüpdatet in Dutch or
week-end in French) upset the native spelling rules. I am not against
loan-words if they are useful (used and well-accepted), but I am for
their blending into the native spelling system. A way to say welcome.
Patrick
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