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
Probably through French: the noble were speaking French in England at some point, after the Norman Conquest. That’s why you’ll see that many «high-tier» words (in education, legislation etc.) look like French and «low-tier» (basic stuff and food) look like German.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest
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