| Front | How were the French loan words that came into English different to the Scandinavian ones that had previously come into the lexicon? |
|---|---|
| Back | The Scandinavians had operated in similar circles to the English, and had not existed almost exclusively in an upper-class vacuum as many of the French did. This accounts for the great amount of vocabulary relating to high society that is borrowed from French. Scandinavian and English had the same ancestor and most of the time a word was settled on because it was the best alternative, and led to the eradication of the other less popular word, or a divergence in meaning of said word. |
Tags: english, middle
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