How you can tell When a French word was borrowed

How's your French?

Last week we talked about how French changed some of the traditional Old English spelling. This week, we’re going to talk about pronunciation.

French, as did English, underwent some changes in pronunciations over the centuries. These changes in pronunciations can give us insight into when a particular French word was introduced into the English language. For example, in Old French, the letters ch were pronounced /ʧ/ (as in modern church) and words borrowed during the Middle English period reflect this pronunciation such as in chief, chamber, bachelor, duchess, or chivalry.

Later on, however, the affricate /ʧ/ was replaced by the fricative [š] (as in  shenanigan… don’t ask, that’s the first word that popped into my head), and French words introduced in English more recently reflect this shift in pronunciation:  For example, words such as attaché, brochure, champagne, chef, chaperon or chauffeur were borrowed during the Modern English period.

Similarly, the Old French sound [dž] as in judge, savage, damage, journey or large later shifted to the sound [ž] as reflected in words borrowed more recently such as bonjour, négligé, garage or collage.

Finally, the French vowels oi/oy  were diphthongized in Middle English in words such as loyal, royal, or joy, but retained their French pronunciation in later introduction such as soirée, joie de vivre or foie gras.

Between the Middle and the Modern periods, English had a tendency to develop diphthongs. This tendency disappeared over time which explains why French words borrowed well into the Modern English period did not have to undergo the same sound changes that they underwent during the Middle English period and that made them so different from their native pronunciation: “For example, the words fine, nice, guile, which had the vowel [ī] (as in Modern English feed) in Middle English, now have developed a diphthong [ai] along with the native find, mine, write ; but words like machine, clique, pique, élite did not become liable to this change since when they were borrowed the English tendency to diphthongize [ī] to [ai] had passed” (Serjeanston 157).

So now you can tell your friends that the word bachelor was borrowed from the French during the Middle English period but that the word chauffeur was borrowed more recently, and definitely during the Modern English period. How’s that for some trivia?

Source: Algeo, John, and Thomas Pyles. The Origins and Development of the English Language. 5^th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2004. Print. / Serjeanston, Mary S. A History of Foreign Words in English. London: Routledge & Keagan Paul, 1968. Print.

See also: Pronunciation Changes in French on Wikipedia.