Sundries

It was more like the French became the ruling class and brought their language with them. They were never actually overthrown: there's been a continuity of British nobility from 1066 to the present.

The Norman occupiers spoke a variety of dialects of Old French (or should I say "sundry dialects"

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) which, in their newly conquered homeland, merged into a variant of Old French now called Anglo-Norman. French underwent as much evolution as English in the last millennium. H was pronounced, OI sounded like OY instead of WA, the last three letters of every word were not silent, etc.

Anglo-Norman was spoken until the 1400s, but by then the French had done what the Mongols did in all of their conquered territories: assimilated into the occupied population and adopted their language.

Of course Middle English by now had adopted thousands of French words, just as the language of any conquered people adopts words from the language of the conquerors. It's commonly asserted that French had no other influence on English, but I look at the evolution from Anglo-Saxon, the language spoken up until 1066, to Modern English, the language spoken since the late 15th century, and what I see is a conspicuous simplification of English grammar. No more declension by case of nouns, adjectives and articles: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative, which German still has. No more bewildering verb paradigms: cook, cooks, cooked, instead of German koche, kochst, kocht, kochen kochte, kochtest, kochten, gekocht. English did not adopt French grammar, which was and still is more complex than Modern English grammar, so much as it simplified its own grammar, as a population of foreigners unwilling to go to the trouble of mastering it streamlined it instead.

Also deer/venison and calf/veal.

What I find surprising is that some of our everyday bread-and-butter words are French: use, very, second, question.

This wholesale acquisition of an entire new vocabulary established an attitude in anglophones that is still used to enrich our language. Our scholars and scientists fill our dictionaries with Greek and Latin words, or words that are an awkward combination of both like nationalism and television. We've never stopped borrowing French words like cliche and grammatical inflections like -ette. And we indiscriminately take words from every people who make an appearance in the historical record: Italian piano, German zeitgeist, Inuit igloo, Spanish rodeo, Czech robot, Fijian taboo, Russian glasnost, Arabic fatwa, Chinese coolie, Algonquin tomahawk.

Ironically, the French, the people who started this by generously loading our language with their words, are very protective of their own language and strive to come up with French words for new concepts. But they have nothing on the Germans, who say Fernsprecher for "telephone" and Kraftwagen for "automobile."

 

But that was the same era. Ethnically French people ruled England, speaking French, until the early 1400s. So of course they were keeping in touch personally, culturally and commercially with France. France had an advanced civilization and was right across the Channel.

England made some tremendous cultural and economic advances toward the end of that period and by the 15th century was ready to take its place as a major power, with the Normans and Anglo-Saxons merged into a single English-speaking people.

 

That's where the color words come from. "Eggshell," "turquoise."

Have you been to a paint store lately? They must have twenty words just for "white." Only women know those words because only women can see the difference. When I need to match a color I just hang out in the paint aisle until a woman walks in and ask her which is the right one. They always take pity on me and they're never wrong.

 

Painting is a huge industry and like any industry it has a standard terminology.

• From Dictionary.com: Eggshell, definition #2: a pale yellowish-white color.
• From Wikipedia: Navajo White is an orangish white color, and derives its name from its similarity to the background color of the Navajo Nation flag. The name "Navajo White" is usually only used when referring to paint.
• From Dictionary.com: Sand, definition #5, a light reddish- or brownish-yellow color. (This is such a unique color that even the dictionary can't find words to define it precisely.)

What do vary tremendously are colors like "blue" and "green." There is no standard and you will not find any paints in Home Depot with those names. Only crayons and ball-point pens.