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Anglicisms in French—Notes on their Chronology, Range, and Reception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Stephen de Ullmann
Stephen de Ullmann*
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University of Glasgow
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Extract

The large volume of literature on foreign elements in English has not been matched so far by enquiries on a comparable scale into the history of English words abroad. The disproportion is indeed so great that it is apt to give an erroneous idea of the balance sheet of linguistic debit and credit. Studies of lexicological expansion are still in their infancy; and in this particular case, the chronology and character of the process may have acted as a deterrent. England's prestige and influence began to make themselves felt at the very end of the seventeenth century and quickly reached a climax in the eighteenth. By that time, however, all Western languages had developed too far, and their speakers had become too language conscious, for the newcomer to make any lasting and decisive impression. Most Anglicisms would seem at first sight superficial, easy to detect, and without any serious problems for the student of diachronistic linguistics. Nevertheless, a synthesis is urgently required, for the late inception of the process does not lessen in any way its paramount significance in the political and cultural history of Europe, and the most tangible and accurate method devised so far for a structural analysis of such influences consists in careful scrutiny of their linguistic deposit. The general framework of such a comprehensive survey has been outlined by L. P. Smith,1 while a good deal of valuable spadework has been accomplished in French and German, and to some extent in Dutch and Italian.2 To undertake a synthesis would be therefore distinctly premature; but in French at least, sufficient data are available to attempt a piecing together of the picture.

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Research Article
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PMLA , Volume 62 , Issue 4 , December 1947, pp. 1153 - 1177
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Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947

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References

1 L. P. Smith, “The English Element in Foreign Languages,” Words and Idioms, ch. ii, repr. from English (1919). See also his “Four Romantic Words,” S. P. E. Tracts (1924) also repr. in Words and Idioms.

2 For French the basic works are E. Bonnaffé's dictionary and its preface; P. Barbier's two S. P. E. Tracts, vii (1921) and xiii (1923); and D. Behrens, “Über englisches Sprachgut im Französichen,” Giessener Beiträge zur rom. Phil., iv, Zusatzheft (1927)—unfortunately I have been unable to consult the latter work. All these monographs have now been largely superseded by the first volume of Professor Fraser Mackenzie's Les Relations de l'Angleterre et de la France d'après le vocabulaire (Paris: Droz, 1939-1946), reviewed by Ch. Bruneau, Le Français Moderne, xiv, no. 4 (1946), 312-314. See also Barbier in MLR, xvi, 90, 138, 252, and in Modern Languages, iv, 139 and 175, as well as his Miscellanea Lexicographica, passim; Bonnaffé in French Quarterly, iv, 164; W. Fischer in Anglia-Beiblatt, xxix, 64. For German see mainly the various monographs and articles of J. A. Walz in Zeitschrift für deutsche Wortforschung, GR., JEGP, and elsewhere, and A. B. Stiven's thesis, Englands Einfluss auf den deutschen Wortschatz, Diss. Marburg (1936). For Italian, Arturo Graf, L'Anglomania e l'influsso inglese nel secolo xviii (Turin, 1911), remains the main source; cf. also E. Re, Archivio Storico Italiano, lxxi, i, 249-282, especially 272-278; A. Butti, Archivio Storico Lombardo, xxxvi, 429; B. Migliorini, Lingua Contemporanea (1938), passim; M. A. Pei, The Italian Language (Columbia University Press, 1941), p. 133. There are two monographs on Dutch: C. G. N. de Vooys, “Hoe zijn anglicismen te beschouwen,” De Nieuwe Taalgids, vii, 124, 161, 225, and W. de Hoog, Studien over de Nederlandsche en Engelsche Taal (1902-1903), esp. I, x. For fuller bibliographies and background information, see my book, Europe's Debt to the English Language (London, 1940) and two papers in Modern Languages (1942, 1945-1946).

3 Cf. F. Brunot's preface to Bonnaffé's dictionary and A. Dauzat's introduction to his own Dictionnaire Etymologique, 4th ed. (1946), p. vi.

4 Quoted after H. V. Velten, “The Germanic Names of the Cardinal Points,” JEGP, xxxix, 443-449; for further cognate forms, see F. Holthausen, Altenglisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, s. v. éast.

5 There is nothing like unanimity on the etymology of these words. Bonnaffé, Barbier, Nyrop, and Littré do not consider them Anglicisms; on the other hand, there is a fair consensus of opinion in etymological dictionaries about their English provenance: Hatzfeld-Darmesteter, Gamillscheg, Wartburg, Bloch-Wartburg, Dauzat, NED and REW, as well as Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, i, 287.

6 Ibid., i, 563. Cf. also L. Spitzer, “Bigot,” ZRPh, xliv, 188-192 (derivation from a dialectal word for goat); Rohlfs, ZRPh, xlv, 668 S.; C. Nigra, Romania, xxxi, 505.

7 Bonnaffé, Bloch, Nyrop, NED, but not Gamillscheg; cf. also Dauzat, op. cit., and Histoire de la langue française (1930), p. 184, n. 1. For a full list of mediaeval Anglicisms, including some doubtful cases, see F. Mackenzie, op. cit., pp. 55-58; cf. also L. Sainéan, Autour des sources indigènes (1935), pp. 405-410. For the background, interesting data will be found in Fritz Bestmann, Die lautliche Gestaltung englischer Ortsnamen im Altfranzösischen und Anglonormannischen, “Romanica Helvetica,” vol. ix (Paris: Droz; Zürich-Leipzig: Max Niehans, 1938). Cf. also the treatment of early Anglicisms in A. Ewert, The French Language (1933), passim. English influence on Anglo-Norman, which lies outside the scope of the present enquiry, has been exhaustively investigated by M. K. Pope, From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman (1934), esp. pp. 431 ff.

8 Gamillscheg, Bloch, and REW, s. v. addubare

9 M. Roques, “Sur quelques mots anglais dans le Roman des Franceis d'André,” Mélanges … Antoine Thomas (1927), pp. 377-381.

10 L. Sainéan, La Langue de Rabelais (1922-1923), il, 12-14 and 395 f.

11 Ibid., and K. Vossler, Frankreichs Kultur und Sprache (1929 ed.), p. 156.

12 It may be noted that in his Introduction, Bonnaffé records rather fewer mediaeval Anglicisms than A. Thomas in his Preface to the Dictionnaire général. In his review of Bonnaffé's dictionary, Barbier (MLR, xvi, 90-94) pointed out that most of the words he traces back to the sixteenth century were actually borrowed at an earlier date. On conflicting period divisions in the history of French, see F. Delattre, “Stages of Old French Phonetic Changes Observed in Modern Spanish,” PMLA, lxi, 7-41, n. 1. English words in language helps like the dialogues composed on the morrow of the battle of Agincourt and published by P. Meyer, Romania, xxxii, 47 (cf. also L. Foulet, Romania, xlvi, 285), are of course irrelevant to our purpose since they do not reflect French usage proper.

13 The earliest example recorded dates from 1382, which is rather too late phonetically—initial sk-!—but sixty years earlier than the first recorded English use of the word in this sense (NED).

14 Cf. Gamillscheg, Sainéan, and especially A. Thomas, “Ostade,” Nouveaux Essais de philologie française (1904), pp. 311-314.

15 See E. Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue française au XVIe siècle (in progress), s. v. Carisé, a quotation from a sixteenth century cosmography : “Il vient de ceste Ile là (l'Angleterre) grand quantité de drapperie, comme carisez, frises, et autres sortes de draps fins et gros.” Kerseys d'Abyndone (Abingdon in Berkshire) are one of a number of English-made cloths mentioned in the language help referred to in note 12 above (Romania, xxxii, 55).

16 See Brüch, ZRPh, xxxviii, 693, and Barbier, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (Dec., 1933), p. 142.

17 For all these examples, see Sainéan, La Langue de Rabelais, loc. cit. For French influence in Scotland, cf. Janet M. Smith, The French Background of Middle Scots Literature (1934); on Rabelais' influence in England, see C. Whibley, Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes (1903), 1-12; A. D. MacKillop, MLN, xxvi, 469-474, and Huntingdon Brown, Rabelais in English Literature (1933). On Panurge's English see W. P. Ker, An English Miscellany Presented to Dr. Furnivall (1901), pp. 196-198; cf. also Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, i, 151 f.

18 For a recent discussion of this play, see H. Carrington Lancaster, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the XVIIth Century, Part iv, vol. i (1940), 148-152. On couleur locale, see MLN, lx, 98 f.

19 On Vigny's English affiliations, cf. E. Lebbin, Alfred de Vignys Beziehungen zu England und zur engl. Literatur (1936).

20 This difference in standing is well brought out by D. B. Wyndham Lewis in his recent Ronsard biography (1944), pp. 57-67.

21 See on these A. Baesecke, Das Schauspiel der englischen Komödianlen in Deutschland (Studien zur engl. Philologie, Heft 87; Diss. Marburg, 1935).

22 The period division suggested by Professor Mackenzie (op. cit., pp. 64 ff. and 269 ff.) relates to alien terms appearing in translations or discussions of British affairs; it is only after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes that admiration for, and imitation of, things English gives rise to Anglicisms proper. For the seventeenth century background (knowledge of English, language helps, distortions of English words, the slow infiltration of loanwords, and the general attitude towards the English language), see G. Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne devant l'opinion française du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1930), ii, 1-18.

23 A. C. Baugh, “The Chronology of French Loan-Words in English,” MLN, l, 90-93, and A. Koszul, “Notes sur la courbe des emprunts de l'anglais au français,” Bulletin de la Faculté des Lettres de Strasbourg (1937), pp. 79-82.

24 “Notes sur la chronologie des Anglicismes en français classique et postclassique,” Le Français Moderne, viii, 345-349. It may be contended that the turn of political events should demand a demarcation line between loans before and after 1800; F. Mackenzie's rich lists for the latter period (op. cit., pp. 195-200; cf. also pp. 122 f. and 275) do not, however, appear to confirm this a priori assumption.

25 On political loans, see esp. C. Bastide, “Notes sur les origines de notre vocabulaire politique,” Revue des Sciences Politiques, xviii, 524-543, and F. Brunot, “Juré et jury,” Mélanges … Baldensperger (1932), i, 86-95.

26 See on this question H. Schuchardt, Deutsch gegen Französisch und Englisch (Graz, 1914), and Sprachtherapie (Schuchardt-Brevier (1922), ch. xii, pp. 322-337); L. Spitzer, Fremdwörterhatz und Fremdvölkerhass, (Vienna, 1918), and Anti-Chamberlain (Leipzig, 1918); K. Nyrop, “Krig og Sprog,” Er Krig Kultur? (Copenhagen, 1916), ch. xii, pp. 153-175. Migliorini relates that during the Abyssinian dispute, d'Annunzio suggested that the Anglicism stop should be removed from telegraphic terminology and replaced by slig. Yet d'Annunzio himself had not been averse to the use of English words earlier on in his career; witness the many Anglicisms in Il Piacere.

27 See E. P. Dargan, “The Question of Voltaire's Primacy in Establishing the English Vogue,” Mélanges … Baldensperger, i, 187-198.

58 Quoted by F.. C. Green, Minuet. A Critical Survey of French and English Literary Ideas in the eighteenth century (1935), pp. 144 f.

29 A full discussion of Saurin's play will be found in a paper of mine in Modern Languages (Oct., 1940), pp. 9-16. For the pronunciation of Shakespeare, see F. Baldensperger, “Notes sur la prononciation française du nom de Shakespeare,” Archiv, xv (1915), 399-402; speaking of Saurin's play, he remarks: “La suppression du k serait singulière si Damis n'était un Anglais par occasion et subterfuge.”

30 C. Maxwell, The English Traveller in France, 1698-1815 (London, 1932), p. 243. A good account of eighteenth century Anglomania will be found in F. C. Green, “Anglo-maniacs and Francophiles,” Eighteenth-Century France (1929), ch. ii, and in J-J. Jusserand, Shakespeare en France sows l'Ancien Régime (1895), passim.

31 Quoted by Armand Weil in his recent addenda to Dauzat's Dictionnaire Etymologique: Le Français Moderne, xiii (1945), 133. Many interesting contexts of nineteenth century Anglicisms can be collected from this article and its sequel (ibid., 271).

32 For the examples that follow, see M. Kuttner, “Anglomanie im heutigen Französischen,” Zeitschrift fur französische Sprache und Literalur, xlviii (1926), 446-465; see also G. Koehler, “Der Dandysmus im frz. Roman des xix. Jh.,” Beiheft zur ZRPk, xxxiii, and M. M. Goodell, The Snob in Literature I (Hamburg: Britannica, xvii, 1939). A similar collection concerning Modern German will be found in A. J. F. Zieglschmid, JEGP, xxxiv 24-35. I regret not to have been able to consult M. Scherer, “Engl. Sprachgut in der frz. Tagespresse der Gegenwart,” Giessener Beiträge zur romanischen Philologie, ix (1923).

33 E.g., M. Koessler-J. Derocqigny, Les Faux Amis, ou les trahisons du vocabulaire anglais (1928, continued in 1931); see also F. Boillot's comments in French Quarterly, x and xi.

34 A. Thérive, Querelles de langage (1929-33), i, 61-64.

36 A. Hermant, Ainsi parla M. Lancelot (1932), pp. 161, 187-189.

36 E. Bourciez, Eléments de linguistique romane (Paris, 1923 ed.), pp. 618 f. A less pessimistic appraisal of the process can be found in F. Brunot-C. Bruneau, Précis de grammaire historique (Paris, 1933), pp. 191-193. Cf. also Dauzat, Histoire, pp. 185 f. I regret not to have had access to R. Frey, Das englische Lehnwort in modernsten Französisch (Zürich: E. Lang, 1943), of which I had when writing only seen a brief mention in Le Français Moderne, xv, no. 1 (1947), 80.

37 J. Robillot, “Un curieux barbarisme des géologues: surimposé,” Le Français Moderne, xiv, no. 2 (1946), 100-102.

38 J. Damourette-E. Pichon, Des Mots à la pensée (Paris, 1911-1936), i, 148 f.

39 A. Dauzat, “Etymologies françaises et provençales: Gode, godon,” Romania, xliv, 244-246. See also his Etudes de linguistique française (2nd ed., 1946).

40 Quoted in a review of R. Doussinet's Grammaire saintongeaise, Le Français Moderne, xiii (1945), 318.

41 A. Dauzat, “Les Mots d'emprunt dans l'argot,” Revue de Philologie Française, xliv, 41-72.

42 L. Spitzer, “Le business,” Zeitschrifl für französische Sprache und Literatur, lvii, 364.

43 E. Pichon, “L'Enrichissement lexical dans le français d'aujourd'hui,” Le Français Moderne, iii, 325-344, quotes the nonce-word expliqueur.

44 See ibid. and P. Fouché, “L'Evolution phonétique du francais du XVIe siècle à nos jours,” Le Français Moderne, ii, 217-236. Some shrewd remarks on the synchronistic analysis of English compounds and significations will be found in Ch. Bally, Linguistique générale et linguistique française (ed. 1944, 315): five o'clock à toute heure, irish stew à l'irlandaise, or the meaning of meeting, pronounced métingue, and hemmed in by the associative influence of réunion and assemblée. See also F. Mackenzie's interesting attempt to distinguish between words borrowed orally or in a written form: op. cit., pp. 144-150.

45 The international history of this word has been analysed by Nyrop, “Qu'est-ce qu'un Gentleman?,” reprinted in Linguistique et histoire des moeurs (1934), ch. ii.

46 E. Benveniste, “Deux mots anglais en français moderne,” Le Français Moderne xv, no. 1 (1947), 1-4.

47 On calques see K. Sandfeld-Jensen, “Notes sur les calques linguistiques,” Thomsen-Festschrift (1912), pp. 160-173; F. Seiler, “Lehnübersetzungen und Verwandtes,” Zeitschrift für den deutschen Unterricht, xxxi, 241-246; O. J. Tallgren-Tuulio, “Locutions figurées calquées et non calquées,” Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsing fors, ix, 279-324; M. Deanovic, “Osservazioni sulle origini dei caichi linguistici,” Archivant Romanicum, xviii, 129-142; E. Back, “Wesen und Wert der Lehnübersetzung,” Giessener Beitràge zur deutschen Philologie, xl (1935).

48 K. Nyrop, “Etudes de Grammaire Française 8,” Det Kgl. Danske VedenskabernesSelskab. Hist.-filol. Meddelelser (1920-21), p. 22.

49 K. Nyrop, “Réaliser, ” Mélanges A. Thomas, pp. 319-322.

50 P. Barbier, SPE Tract vu., 31.—The history of this calque is thus parallel to that of German Steckenpferd, also a Sternian imitation recorded in 1763; vide J. A. Walz, “Steckenpferd,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Wortforschung, xii, 124-128. It is probably through German that this Anglicism penetrated into most languages of Northern and Central Europe (Russian KOHËK, and corresponding calques in Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, Dutch, Scandinavian and Finnish, Hungarian), but not into any language of the three South European peninsulas. The struggle between the German and English rivals is well illustrated by Swedish: vide E. Hellquist, Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok (1922), 5. v. käpp.

51 Vide J. Pignon, Le Français Moderne, xiv (1946), 60, in response to a suggestion by Dauzat, ibid., xiii, 241f.

52 J. Orr, “Les Anglicismes du vocabulaire sportif,” Le Français Moderne, iii, 293-311.

53 Cf. M. Praz, “The Italian Element in English,” Essays and Studies, xv, 20-65, and B. Fehr, “Beiträge zur Sprache des Handels in England im xvi. u. xvii. Jh., ”ESt, xlii, 381-392; cf. also recent numbers of the journal Lingua Nostra.

54 Remy de Gourmont, Esthétique de la langue française, 10th ed., p. 98.

55 For these examples see the REW, and for the last one, G. Baist, “Germanische Seemannsworte in der frz. Sprache,” Zeilschrift für deutsche Wortforschung, iv, 257-276, esp. 261-267.

56 Originally the word meant enclosed space for animals, and seems to be connected with English paddock, dialectal parrock, German Pferch and possibly Pfarre (vide Kluge and NED).

57 J. A. Walz, “Fei, Fee-Elfe,” Zschr. f. dt. Wortforschung, xiv, 196-210.

58 See esp. F. Baldensperger, “Romantique,” Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, xiv, 13-105, and R. UIlmann-H. Gotthard, “Geschichte des Wortes Romantisch im Deutschen,” Germanische Studien, Heft 50 (1927). Cf. also F. Mackenzie, N&Q, June, 1946.

59 See A. Panzini, Dizionario Moderno, 6th ed. (1931), S.v. esperto.

60 Migliorini, op cit., pp. 66 and 183. For more general issues raised by such examples, vide V. Mathesius, “Zur synchronischen Analyse fremden Sprachguts, ” ESt, lxx, 21-35.

61 O. Behaghel, Deutsche Syntax (1923-1932), passim.

62 Elsewhere, however, Turgenev is not so lenient towards Anglo-maniacs: cf. Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov in Fathers and Sons, Voroshilov and the young generals in Smoke, Lavretsky's father in A Bouse of Gentlefolk, etc. On English influence in Russia, see E. J. Simmons, English Literature and Culture in Russia (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, vol. xii, 1935).

63 See J-J. Salverda de Grave, L'Influence de la langue française en Hollande (1913).

64 See A. Graf, op. cit., pp. 229f. Cf. also A Schiaffini, “Aspetti della crisi linguistica italiana nel Settecento,” ZRPh, lvii, 275-295, and A. del Re, “English Influence in Italian Literature in the eighteenth century,” The Secret of the Renaissance (1930), 138-153.

65 See my paper, “Anglomaniacs in Hungary a Century Ago,” Hungarian Quarterly, vi, 367-369. Cf. also H. Tronchon,“ Bibliographie critique de l'influence anglaise en Hongrie,” Revue des Etudes Hongroises, vi, 46-51.

66 Among major expansion studies concerning other languages, mention may be made of K. Bergmann, Die gegenseitigen Beziehungen der dt., engl. und frz. Sprache. (Klöppers Neusprachliche Abhandlungen, Heft xviii, 1912); A. Senn's fragmentary Germanische Lehnwortstudien (Freiburg, 1921) ; B. E. Vidos, Espansione della lingua italiana (Nimègue, 1932) and Storia delle parole marinaresche italiane passate in francese (Biblioteca dell' Archivum Romanicum, 2, 24, 1938-1939); G. Bertoni, Lingua e Cultura (1939), ch. iii; R. Menéndez Pidal, El lenguaje del siglo XVI (Madrid, 1933), pp. 25-28 (interesting terminology; cf. also its review by W. Giese in ZKPh, lvii, 669 f.).

67 This point has been argued quite recently, in connection with French words in English, by Professor Spitzer, “Mots anglo-francais, ”Le Français Moderne, xiv, no. 2 (1946), 67-99.