Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
Yeah ... sometimes it a matter of degrees .... like the one I mentioned about a regular house coming from haus, but a ginormous house being a mansion from maison. Because of course, when the Norman gentlemen pointed to his "house" it was a larger house than that of his Germanic neighbor.
Also .... while we get boat and ship from the German, we get navy from the French. Most of the time, if having a lot of something made you powerful, then you would use the French based word for the thing.
The history of English is really a history of the merging of two very different cultures. Yet another thing I enjoy about the language.
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