How to spot the impact of French on our modern English
Any word with EI, EY, OY come from French origins. Seems an odd thing to say but a whole range of letter combinations never existed until Norman French was assimilated into old English. SEIGE. JOY. ABEYANCE.
ION is the French form of the latin ‘ix’ suffixes and so are all French in origin. ABLUTION. ACCORDION. LEGION. Similarly, words with MENT, ANCE or ENCE on the end or anything with OR or OUR in it.
Of course the same could be true in return and we have ‘lost’ a heap of fantastic letter combinations and sounds in the evolution of old English to modern English.
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