French loanwords in modern English: peculiarities of the assimilation

Abstract

When learning foreign languages, we come across quite a lot of words that do not comply with generally accepted rules of reading and pronunciation. The matter is that we deal with the process of linguistic interaction as a result of socio-economic, historical and cultural ties between peoples. The most significant layer of borrowings is made up of words that entered English during the Norman conquest and the Renaissance period. In this connection, the following article researches the impact of French loanwords on modern English word-stock, focuses on the reasons for linguistic assimilation, cultural and historical aspects of the process. The paper aims to analyze peculiarities of French borrowings and their adaptation in contemporary English in context of semantic, morphological and phonological changes