Etimology: French derived English words?

D

Dinosaur

Rational Skeptic
Valued Senior Member
A long time ago a linguist told me that an analysis of English would imply that England was ruled by a French speaking culture for a long time.

In particular, he mentaioned that various English words for food (EG: Ham & beef) as it is served are French derived, while the names of barnyard animals (EG: Pig & cow) are Anglo Saxon derived. The theory is that Anglo Saxon household servants had to learn the French words for food in order to respond to the French lord of the manor. The lord seldom interacted directly with those who tended the animals so that Anglo Saxon words like pig and cow were not replaced by French words.

Now a friend of mine is claiming that ham is an Anglo Saxon word, which I doubt.

Is there somebody here with a knowledge of etimology? Does anybody have other examples whihc might support the linguistic theory?

BTW: What were Anglo Saxon words for pig meat and cow meat?
 
Pollux V to the rescue.

The Normans (who are French) invaded England in 1066. Over the course of a century or two, Old English gradually turned to Middle English. Notice how it's relatively easy to read most Old English but altogether impossible to understand more than a word here or there of Old English--this is because of the Normans, and this is also why English has so many cognates with the Romance Languages like French, Spanish, Italian, etcetera.

Ham is probably not an Anglo-Saxon word. The French word for Ham is jambon and the Spanish word is Jamon, which means that the word ham is undoubtedly descended from Latin. Anglo-Saxon was mostly a German languagem, I doubt there was much of Latin influence before the Norman Conquest. I don't think there's an English-Old English translator online, but the German word for Ham is Schinken. If ham was an Anglo-Saxon word, it would probably sound more like Schinken.

Hope I answered your question. Take an interest in Entimology! It's wonderfully intertwined with world history! It's fascinating!

Like, look at this. Until a little before Columbus' conquest of America, the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) was controlled by a Muslim faction called the Moors. A little after Islam's establishment in the late seventh century I believe they took Spain from the descendants of the Huns...or something like that...anyway, Spain was largely controlled by Muslims for a hefty portion of its history, probably about as much as the Spanish have controlled it. As such, they left their mark on the Spanish language. The most clear mark is in the Spanish phrase "ojala que" which means "I hope that," or "I have faith that." Notice the last three letters of the word. Ala. Allah. Fascinating. Also, while this is a little theory of my own (haven't mentioned this to anyone, nor have I found any evidence to support it), I noticed that the Spanish word for pillow, Almohad, is identical in name to a Muslim faction that fought in Spain during the Middle Ages (the Almohads). Maybe they made good pillows.

Yeah, anyway, good stuff.
 
Dangit, Pollux beat me.

Pretty much, a long time ago this English King said that a French guy could take the throne when he died. The King's relative was cool with that. Then the King died, and guess what? The relative wasn't cool with it anymore. So then the French guy came and invaded England. French words became steadily integrated into the English language, affecting our language today.

Just a simplified version. :D

Edit: It's 'etymology,' not 'etimology.' :)
 
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From an online etymology dictionary:
ham (1) - "meat of a hog's hind leg used for food," 1637, from O.E. hamm "hollow or bend of the knee," from P.Gmc. *kham- (cf. O.N. höm, M.Du. hamme), from PIE *konemo- "shin bone," originally "be crooked" (cf. Gk. kneme "part between the knee and ankle," O.Ir. cnaim "bone"). Ham-fisted (1928) was originally in reference to pilots who were heavy on the controls.
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:m: Peace.
 
ham (1) - "meat of a hog's hind leg used for food," 1637, from O.E. hamm "hollow or bend of the knee," from P.Gmc. *kham- (cf. O.N. höm, M.Du. hamme), from PIE *konemo- "shin bone," originally "be crooked" (cf. Gk. kneme "part between the knee and ankle," O.Ir. cnaim "bone").
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That doesn't make any sense! How the hell did the Anglos influence the French and the Spanish? Is the word older than I thought?

edit: hmmm...interesting, it's "prosciutto" in Italian, "presunto" in Portugese, according to Babel Fish. This is a most intriguing mystery. It seems to go on to say that ham came from different Nordic (?) cultures, but that still doesn't explain how it influenced the Spanish but not the Portugese.

Edit: It's 'etymology,' not 'etimology.'
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Ahhh, go rape a pig:p
 
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:bugeye: That takes place as the weirdest suggestion I've gotten, tied with 'Go eat your babies.' (I have no babies.) :eek:
 
gosh, goofy, why do I find the explanation you quoted so unclear?
(in other word, the site must suck for beginners...)
 
Strictly speaking the normans were norsemen who'd settled in Normandy and adopted the french way of life over a couple of generations. And old english is extraordinarily like german in many ways, i have a book of rhymes and verse from 600, 700 years ago, and the words and meaning are remarkably germanic.
 
Okay, but none of this explains how either the Normans, the English, or both, influenced the Spanish language enough to change whatever the Latin word was to an Old English one. The only other explanation I can think of is the possibility that ham is a much older word that goes back farther than the English or the Normans, but then somehow it didn't influence the Germans or the Normans. I don't get it...
 
Spanish "jamón" (Ham) derives from French "Jambon" (Ham) that in turn
derives from french "jambe" (leg) that in turn derives from latin "gamba"
(horse's leg) that in turn derives from greek "kampê" (curvature, horse's leg articulation).

The influence of French in English is huge. Conservative estimates are that
over 100.000 contemporary english words have French origin.
 
100,000 English words derived from French seems very high. How many words are there in the English language?
 
Pollux V said:
Okay, but none of this explains how either the Normans, the English, or both, influenced the Spanish language enough to change whatever the Latin word was to an Old English one.
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BTW, Spanish had Germanic influence via the Visigoths that ruled most of southern Gaul prior to the Frankish conquest in 507 & most of the Iberian Pennisula prior to the moorish conquest in 711. after the Visigoths converted to catholicism, they blended with the latinized celto-iberians & left words & proper names; like Adolfo, Rodolfo, Randolfo & last names; like Aleman, German, Rodriguez. because they were catholic, both fought the moors & became spanish together (minus Portugal (germanic) Suevi & (hunnic) Alans), (Basque areas by the Pyrennes) & (Catalonia (french marche))
see:
http://www.tacitus.nu/historical-atlas/rome3.htm
The only other explanation I can think of is the possibility that ham is a much older word that goes back farther than the English or the Normans, but then somehow it didn't influence the Germans or the Normans. I don't get it...
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check the indo-european cognates
 
Pollux V said:
Like, look at this. Until a little before Columbus' conquest of America, the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) was controlled by a Muslim faction called the Moors. A little after Islam's establishment in the late seventh century I believe they took Spain from the descendants of the Huns...or something like that...anyway, Spain was largely controlled by Muslims for a hefty portion of its history, probably about as much as the Spanish have controlled it. As such, they left their mark on the Spanish language. The most clear mark is in the Spanish phrase "ojala que" which means "I hope that," or "I have faith that." Notice the last three letters of the word. Ala. Allah. Fascinating. Also, while this is a little theory of my own (haven't mentioned this to anyone, nor have I found any evidence to support it), I noticed that the Spanish word for pillow, Almohad, is identical in name to a Muslim faction that fought in Spain during the Middle Ages (the Almohads). Maybe they made good pillows.
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I like your theory, maybe "close, no cigar", maybe right, who knows? maybe the Almohads introduced the cushy pillow to the hard-scrabble spaniards? beats sleeping on a rock or hay on dirt

Using this online translator,
http://translation.paralink.com/
you get the following:
pillow, carpet, bed, bedspread, mattress, sofa, covers
almohada, alfombra, cama, sobrecama, colchón, sofá, tapas
most instenses of the letter combo "al" in spanish denotes "the" in arabic, showing origin.
'ala' means 'wing', while "Alá" means 'allah'
"ojala" probably means "God willing" in arabic, while in spanish it means more or less,
'God willing', 'I hope', 'I wish', 'perhaps', & 'maybe'
though all those words have more percise translations, like so:
'Dios complaciente', 'espero', 'deseo', 'quizás', 'y tal vez'
 
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The reason English words for meat comes from French while the words for the animals is germanic is more likely that the herders were Anglo-Saxon while the people who ate the meat spoke French. Ham as meat actually comes from "ham-bone"- I've had smoked mutton ham and very good it was too, but pig-meat was the usual peasant meat and so the one which was most often smoked to see through the winter.
The connection jambon/jamon/gambon/ham may be through an earlier common ancestral language- there's thought to be a common Indo-european ancestral language for nearly all modern European languages- I think Basque, and Finnish are supposed to be exceptions.
The moors never controlled all of spain and were restricted to a small part- Granada- from about 1200 AD, There are Arabic words in all european languages- alcohol, algorithm, algebra...- if a word begins al--- there's achance it's from arabic.
 
Pollux V said:
“ ham (1) - "meat of a hog's hind leg used for food," 1637, from O.E. hamm "hollow or bend of the knee," from P.Gmc. *kham- O.N. höm, M.Du. hamme), from PIE *konemo- "shin bone," originally "be crooked" (cf. Gk. kneme "part between the knee and ankle," O.Ir. cnaim "bone"). ”
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That doesn't make any sense! How the hell did the Anglos influence the French and the Spanish? Is the word older than I thought?
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Yes, the word must be older.
Of interest is this part of the etymological explanation -- the PIE. That's Protoindoeuropean.
Indoeuropean is the mother language of most languages spoken in Europe, notably the Germanic languages (German, English, Swedish, Dutch, ...), the Slavic languages, and the Romance languages (Latin; French, Italian, Spanish, ...). To these languages, Indoeuropean is the common ancestor, and the individual languages then developed divergently from it (or with secondary convergences).

Many words originating from Indoeuropean are still recognizable throughout the sister languages: like Lat. pater, Old German fadar, English father, Italian padre, German Vater, etc.
The basic words of the vocabulary are usually of the same descent (numerale to ten, words for some domestic animals, some plants, some names for familial relations).
 
Pollux V said:
Take an interest in Entimology! It's wonderfully intertwined with world history! It's fascinating!
Click to expand...
That's true. The study of insects (entomology) is all of those things. But the study of word origins is etymology. ^_^
Ala. Allah. Fascinating. Also, while this is a little theory of my own (haven't mentioned this to anyone, nor have I found any evidence to support it), I noticed that the Spanish word for pillow, Almohad, is identical in name to a Muslim faction that fought in Spain during the Middle Ages (the Almohads). Maybe they made good pillows.
Click to expand...
Actually, "al" is the Arabic definite article, "the." As in "al Qaeda" and "al Jazeera." Even English is full of words of Arabic origin that start with "al-". Alcohol, algebra, alkiline, just browse through that section of the dictionary, you'll find a lot of English words borrowed from Arabic starting with "al-".

As you say, Spanish and Portuguese have far more because of the Moorish occupation and a lot more of them retained the definite article than they did in English, for reasons I'm not clear about. For example, English "giraffe" = Spanish "aljirafe." Many Spanish place names are hispanicizations of Arabic names that start with "al-", such as Alameda, Alhambra, and Alcatraz.

If you're looking for the Arabic root of "almohada," separate the article and look for "al mohada." Since H is silent in Spanish it's not clear what Arabic letter or sound it stands for. It might be Q or GH, sounds that Spanish doesn't have, or just punctuation between two adjacent vowels.

It's a coincidence that the Arabic word for God, "Allah," starts with "al." It's not a definite article. Its Semitic cousin language Hebrew has a cognate, the ancient word "eloh," that occurs in the Bible exactly once, meaning "god" with a small "g". The rest of the time it's Yahweh for God with a capital G.

"Ojalá" is an Arabic expletive meaning, "I wish to God." "Ojalá que haya paz en el mundo." "I wish to God there will be peace in the world."
 
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