The most familiar examples of food words borrowed into English from the Anglo-Norman form of French are names for the meat of the pig, sheep, and ox, the three major farm animals of medieval Europe. In the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) language, just one basic word existed for each of these three animals, alive or dead. So also in Old French; so also in modern French, in which the basic words are porc (pig), mouton (sheep), and boeuf (ox).
In Norman times, English borrowed those three French words, pork, mutton, beef. So, unusually, ever since then, English has had six basic words in this semantic field, three for the living animals and three for the meats. Why were the extra three words borrowed at all? Why were the borrowed words used in the special sense of ready-to-eat meats?
The likely answer is that because the English nobles of that period spoke French and ordered their food in French, others eventually thought it fashionable and classy to use French for the names of fine foods. In just the same way, after a successful hunt, the huntsmen demanded in French to be served with la veneson, meaning literally 'the game we just hunted', and that is whyvenison has its modern English meaning of 'deer meat'.
No comments:
Post a Comment