As far as I’ve been taught, English is not a romance language like French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or Romanian. The Roman Empire didn’t stretch as far as the United Kingdom, and English is an Anglo-Saxonic language closer to German or Dutch than, say, Italian. So… how come words like “ambulance” (ambulat) and “transition” (transit) seem to be directly ripped from the original Latin?
In: Other
The Roman Empire did stretch to the United Kingdom! Hadrian’s wall was the northern border, roughly equivalent to the modern day English-Scottish border. The Roman presence lasted roughly 300 years in England and Wales.
But to answer your question: Latin influence in English comes mainly through French words. Those were adopted due to the Norman (basically Vikings who started speaking Frankish/Middle French) conquest of 1066, French being the language of English and European royalty, the language of law, science, diplomacy, theology and intellectual discourse for hundreds of years. In the renaissance it also became customary to use New Latin as the language for any kind of written publication in sciences, law, letters etc.
Many royals and diplomats in Europe communicated solely in French, law-french or new Latin well into the 18th century. English was influenced through all of these mentioned channels and today 30% of English vocabulary can be linked directly to French origins, therefore to the Romance language family, coming directly from Latin.
PS: funny anecdote, George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and did not speak English at all. He communicated in French and Latin with the English nobility, government and his ministers, but also spoke high German, low German/Dutch and Italian. Even without speaking English, his reign is considered very successful and he is the founder of the English royal house of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Hanover line (lasting 200 years), which later directly became the royal house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (renamed Windsor in the 1st world war).
Latest Answers