The Normans bequeathed over 10,000 words to English, including a huge number of abstract nouns ending in the suffixes “-age”, “-ance/-ence”, “-ant/-ent”, “-ment”, “-ity” and “-tion”, or starting with the prefixes “con-”, “de-”, “ex-”, “trans-” and “pre-”. Perhaps predictably, many of them related to matters of crown and nobility (e.g. crown, castle, prince); of government and administration (e.g. parliament, government); of court and law (e.g. court, judge, justice); of war and combat (e.g. army, armour, archer, battle); of authority and control (e.g. authority, obedience, servant); of fashion and high living (e.g. mansion, money); and of art and literature (e.g. art, colour, language, literature, poet). Curiously, though, the Anglo-Saxon words cyning (king), cwene (queen), erl (earl), cniht (knight), ladi (lady) and lord persisted. While humble trades retained their Anglo-Saxon names (e.g. baker, miller, etc), the more skilled trades adopted French names (e.g. mason, painter, tailor,etc). While the animals in the field generally kept their English names (e.g. sheep, cow, deer), once cooked and served their names often became French (e.g. beef, pork, bacon, etc). Sometimes a French word completely replaced an Old English word (e.g. crimereplaced firen, place replaced stow, people replaced leod,etc). Sometimes French and Old English components combined to form a new word, such as the French gentleand the Germanic man combined to formed gentleman. Sometimes, both English and French words survived, but with significantly different senses (e.g. the Old English doomand French judgement, house and mansion, etc).
But, often, different words with roughly the same meaning survived, and a whole host of new, French-based synonyms entered the English language (e.g. the French maternity in addition to the Old English motherhood, infant to child, amity to friendship, battle to fight, liberty to freedom, etc). Even today, phrases combining Anglo-Saxon and Norman French doublets are still in common use (e.g. law and order, lord and master, love and cherish, etc).
But, often, different words with roughly the same meaning survived, and a whole host of new, French-based synonyms entered the English language (e.g. the French maternity in addition to the Old English motherhood, infant to child, amity to friendship, battle to fight, liberty to freedom, etc). Even today, phrases combining Anglo-Saxon and Norman French doublets are still in common use (e.g. law and order, lord and master, love and cherish, etc).
The pronunciation differences between the harsher, more guttural Anglo-Norman and the softer Francien dialect of Paris were also carried over into English pronunciations. For instance, words like quit, question, quarter, etc, were pronounced with the familiar “kw” sound in Anglo-Norman rather than the “k” sound of Parisian French. The Normans tended to use a hard “c” sound instead of the softer Francien “ch”, so that charrier became carry, chaudron became cauldron, etc. The Normans tended to use the suffixes “-arie” and “-orie” instead of the French “-aire” and “-oire”, so that English has words like victory (as compared to victoire) and salary (as compared to salaire), etc. The Normans, and therefore the English, retained the “s” in words like estate, hostel, forest and beast, while the French gradually lost it (état, hôtel, forêt, bête).
