Marcos Campano, Ana Luisa2024-05-202024-05-202016-06-01https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/13429The history of languages is one of the most wonderful studies to such an extent that one could spend all his life trying to unveil the secrets of this unique and particular vehicle that has contributed to the construction of our societies since ancient times. Both oral and written languages have not only shaped the full history of humanity, but also evolved throughout the centuries. They have undergone substantial changes, whether semantic, syntactic or morphological, they are still in motion and will always be. With regard to English language, it is noticeable that among the Indo-European languages it may be the one that has undergone the deepest transformations since its origins that go back to the multiple invasions that England suffered from the Roman colonization until the Norman Conquest. The Norman Conquest of 1066 has left a considerable mark on the English landscape in the form of cathedrals, churches, and castles, and had a massive impact on the English language (Trotter 39). Both of these are still visible today. It is well known that a high percentage of the vocabulary of our Modern English is of French origin. Although the roots of the English language come from different origins, such as Celtic, German, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian, French can be regarded as the key language that has subsequently influenced the development and the complexity of the world’s major “lingua franca” nowadays. The introduction of the French lexicon did not take place immediately, but was gradually adapted to the wants of daily matters. Initially, the language of the Norman conquerors including the specific vocabulary of the army was necessarily adopted. Then, it was followed by the French origin terms referring to law and administration, which were part of the elite that ruled England. Most French words are not to be deemed as loanwords in the conventional sense, that is to say words incorporated from a foreign language, but terms taken over into English at a time of sustained language contact between English and French, when the two languages coexisted in the country. At the same time, due to the strong influence of the various cultural aspects that the Normans brought to England, Old English terms derived from German lexicon started to disappear, given that the duplicity of two words meaning the same concept made often Old English vocabulary die out in favour of its French counterpart, although sometimes both terms were kept.enAtribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacionalinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessproyecto fin de carrera