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letqin | 2 years ago

They for sure do, they spell a lot of words different as they use the French spelling. Like neighbour and favour.

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MikeSchurman|2 years ago

I've never considered it the french spelling. It's the british english spelling: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

US tends to drop the u's in a lot of words. It doesn't make the original word french.

That said, a lot of english words do come from french. In fact, the english word favour came from the old french favor, apparently?

c. 1300, "attractiveness, beauty, charm" (archaic), from Old French favor "a favor; approval, praise; applause; partiality" (13c., Modern French faveur), from Latin favorem (nominative favor) "good will, inclination, partiality, support," coined by Cicero from stem of favere "to show kindness to," from PIE *ghow-e- "to honor, revere, worship" (cognate: Old Norse ga "to heed").

rerx|2 years ago

I literally can't tell how much you're joking. There's nothing French about the spelling of these contemporary English words, even though they have norman roots.

rscho|2 years ago

I didn't know english and french were only a single letter apart in some cases. Is there a common root of some kind?

vmilner|2 years ago

Very basic words in english (eg water, man, milk, drink) tend to have Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) roots whereas newer more abstract words tend to have come in after the 1066 Norman Conquest, with French words eclipsing their Anglo-Saxon equivalents, as the Norman aristocracy supplanted the Anglo-Saxon rulers.