How do French words like “cul-de-sac” and “hors d’oeuvres“ end up part of the English language without being translated to English words?

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How do French words like “cul-de-sac” and “hors d’oeuvres“ end up part of the English language without being translated to English words?

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There’s a relationship between Normandy French and Anglo Saxon English, two languages from a few hundred years ago (a lot of *fews*). They coexisted at one point with rich people using the French one and poor people using the English one. As people hung out with each other more and people who had different amounts of money interacted (think of stuff like rich people entertaining by pretending to be poor people, poor people working for and hearing rich people), the two languages melded over time. So, you get linguistic artifacts! This is why a living chicken is a chicken and a dead chicken is poultry (same with cow/beef or pork/pig). One is the Anglo Saxon word and the other is the Normandy word (boeuf in French and cow in English!). But because people used them together, the two melted into one and we use bits of each still.

(Far more complicated than this, but this is explain like I’m five!)

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