Ça alors, the number of French words in English

As I continue my adventure to learn French, I wonder just how many French words have made it into English. As a near-native English speaker, I realized that this could serve as a handy shortcut to make a mental connection between some English and French words. Or, to simply focus more on English words that really have their origin in French.

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Little did I expect the estimates that I found. On Babbel, one article mentioned that some 30 percent of English words come from French. I’m still astounded by this number and remain skeptical, but happily so.

But then, as I read more, or, je recherche plus, I see that historically, the French language indeed influenced French heavily during the Norman times (11th century). So English is a wonderful mix of language influences (and English remains one of my favourite languages – Note the ‘ou’ :).

So let me pick two words that come from French..

Étiquettes

Etiquette. This word comes from the court of Louis XIV in Versailles. At the time, the courtiers would use étiquettes to recall rules they had to be aware of. Over time this word changed its meaning to how one should behave in polite society. Now, I’m sure we use this word much more freely in this day and age (21st century, for you in the future who might read this), but still, it is amusing to see how a simple word, can have such an intriguing background and history.

Cinéma

Cinema, who doesn’t love movies.. But did you know that the word cinema comes from cinéma and was invented by the Lumière brothers who also (ta-da) invented the cinematograph. That was also the first way to show projected film. Imagine that. Next time you casually suggest going to the cinema, you are paying tribute to cinéma, the cinematograph, and an invention from 1892.

Imagine that. Imaginez l’histoire des mots.

Photo attribution: Victorgrigas, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Wikimedia, cinematograph by the Lumière brothers)