XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.language.latin   
   From: ed@somewhere.in.the.uk   
      
   Steve Hayes wrote:   
   > On Sat, 14 Sep 2024 22:58:09 +0100, Janet  wrote:   
   >   
   >> In article ,   
   >> ed@somewhere.in.the.uk says...   
   >   
   >>> I can't help but wonder how to account for that, since, when Latin was   
   >>> the lingua franca of European education, German scholars used it too.   
   >>> But Germany had never become a Roman province; unlike Spain, France,   
   >>> Britain.   
   >>   
   >>    Quite aside from Roman occupation,  Latin was the   
   >> language of the  Catholic Church and many legal documents.   
   >   
   > I don't think either of those had much influence on English.   
   >   
   > The English arived in Britain after the Romans departed, and they   
   > conquered the Romano-British, and so imposed their language rather   
   > than adopting the language of those they had conquered (though their   
   > cousins the Franks did the opposite when they conquered Gaul).   
   >   
   > But when the Norman-French conquered England in the 11th century they   
   > brought their laqnguage as the overlords, and it exerted a strong   
   > influence on the English, so many Latin words came in via French.   
   >   
   > And the Renaissance was another infuence, bringing in a lot of Greek   
   > and Latin words, which had higher social status.   
   >   
   > So four-letter Anglo-Saxon words were rude, crude, common, vulgar and   
   > churlish, while much longer words derived from Greek and Latin were   
   > refined, upper-class (at least until the middle-class started to   
   > emulate the upper-class, when some of them became non-U).   
   >   
   > So a refined and educated female had a uterus, while a churlish one   
   > had a womb. A refined and educated male had a penis, while a peasant   
   > yobbo had a cock.   
   >   
   > One could make a long list of them:   
   >   
   > shit		-- faeces   
   > fuck		-- copulate   
   > and so on.   
   >   
   > It's one of the reasons why English has so many different words for   
   > the same thing, with the Germanic ones having a lower class status   
   > compared with the Greek/Latin/French ones.   
   >   
   >   
   >   
      
   I think you've hit the answer here with the Normandy French invasion. It   
   was complete and utterly changed Britain And it brought in a very strong   
   class divide. The feudal serfs tended cows, pigs, sheep; the Norman   
   masters ate beef, pork, mutton.   
      
   To step up the social ladder you had to use French language.   
      
   Ed   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)